The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping
The Creepy, Long-Standing Practice of Undersea Cable Tapping
The newest NSA leaks reveal that governments are probing "the Internet's backbone." How does that work?
Olga Khazan Jul 16 2013, 1:55 PM ET
A map of undersea cables. (TeleGeography)
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So how does one tap into an underwater cable?
The process is extremely secretive, but it seems similar to tapping an old-fashioned, pre-digital telephone line -- the eavesdropper gathers up all the data that flows past, then deciphers it later.
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In 2005, the Associated Press reported that a submarine called the USS Jimmy Carter had been repurposed to carry crews of technicians to the bottom of the sea so they could tap fiber optic lines. The easiest place to get into the cables is at the regeneration points -- spots where their signals are amplified and pushed forward on their long, circuitous journeys. "At these spots, the fiber optics can be more easily tapped, because they are no longer bundled together, rather laid out individually," Deutsche Welle reported.
But such aquatic endeavors may no longer even be necessary. The cables make landfall at coastal stations in various countries, where their data is sent on to domestic networks, and it's easier to tap them on land than underwater. Britain is, geographically, in an ideal position to access to cables as they emerge from the Atlantic, so the cooperation between the NSA and GCHQ has been key. Beyond that partnership, there are the other members of the "Five Eyes" -- the Australians, the New Zealanders, and the Canadians -- that also collaborate with the U.S., Snowden said.
The tapping process apparently involves using so-called "intercept probes." According to two analysts I spoke to, the intelligence agencies likely gain access to the landing stations, usually with the permission of the host countries or operating companies, and use these small devices to capture the light being sent across the cable. The probe bounces the light through a prism, makes a copy of it, and turns it into binary data without disrupting the flow of the original Internet traffic.
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The British anti-surveillance group Privacy International has filed a lawsuit against the U.K. government, arguing that such practices amount to "blanked surveillance" and saying that British courts do "not provide sufficiently specific or clear authorization for such wide-ranging and universal interception of communications." Their argument is that the existing surveillance laws are from the phone-tapping days and can't be applied to modern, large-scale electronic data collection.
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http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/the-creepy-longstanding-practice-of-undersea-cable-tapping/277855/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Seems it was in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, iirc. Makes ya' wonder...
that it was a conspiracy theory. Can you give me a good reference to that story?
My old laptop was stolen a few years ago, lost lots of great links that don't seem to exist any longer. Had so much on the BFEE, glad Octafish has many.
Sorry!
I'm sure someone will be along with those conspiracy insults soon.
