On Feb 2, 2008, at 8:56 AM, George William Herbert wrote:
However, despite the "attractive target" angle of what got busted, and the proximity of the breaks to Islamic Terrorist problem spots, I don't see a statistical or evidentiary case made that these were anything but the usual occasional strings of normal random problems spiking up at the same time
My instinctive reaction was to recall the Auric Goldfinger quote as smb did - after reflection, however, it's highly unlikely that these issues are the result of a terrorist group action simply because, just like the economically-driven miscreants, the ideologically-driven miscreants have a vested interest in the communications infrastructure remaining intact, as they're so heavily dependent upon it. There are always corner-cases like the Tamil Tiger incident, and people don't always act rationally even in the context of their own perceived (as opposed to actual) self-interest, but I just don't see any terrorist groups nor any governments involved in some kind of cable-cutting plot, as it's diametrically opposed to their commonality of interests (i.e., the terrorist groups want the comms to stay up so that they can make use of them, and the governments want the comms to stay up so that they can monitor the terrorist group comms). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Roland Dobbins <rdobbins@cisco.com> // 408.527.6376 voice Culture eats strategy for breakfast. -- Ford Motor Company