Four Undersea Cables Cut In Middle East In Less Than a Week

By chernyak at 3:06 pm on February 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

As many of you may have heard, two undersea cables were cut on January 31st severing internet to millions of users in the middle east. At first it was reported that these cables were severed by a ship’s anchor, but it is now being confirmed that this is false. The map of undersea cables and those affected can be found here.

However, in the last few days, two more cables have been cut. An illuminating internet traffic report is here.

The probability of all of these events being random accidents seems vanishingly small. Could this be a new sort of attack intended to black out an entire region? If so – what could the motivations be and who could be behind this? Could this be done for commercial reasons? Could this be a government or terrorist organization about to mount an attack?

Some other enlightening posts can be found here: part I, part II, part III

Filed under: Availability,Current Events1 Comment »

Electronic voting?: How about OpenSource?

By zaxim at 12:21 am on Comments Off on Electronic voting?: How about OpenSource?

A recent article posted on slashdot (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/03/173241) talks about the possibility of software on electronic voting machines being open source. One claimed benefit is that open source will provide transparency and lessen the distrust that the public have for e-voting. But the article concludes that as of now there is no person or group working on it.
(Read on …)

Filed under: Current EventsComments Off on Electronic voting?: How about OpenSource?