On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 5:57 PM, Deepak Jain <deepak@ai.net> wrote:
There is no reason to assume these are civilian satellites. Any one of a number of affected or interested countries could have provided the imagery (or ship information) to Reliance. Its not saying *who* analyzed the images. ;)
You can purchase these things from sattelite image services these days as well as get them from intelligence services.
Then again, how are ship's captains supposed to know *where* they are allowed to drop anchor? Is there a "Call before you drop" anchor service similar to "call before you dig?"
The Captain has a responsibility to know where proper anchorages are. That, and they are required to know where oil pipelines, utilities, and other types of cables are run including communications cables. There is a lot of stuff under the water. Cable operators also provide specific locating data so that Captains do have information available to avoid these issues. If it was the result of the specific ships that they've surveilled, it's likely that they were off anchorage and "slipping" their anchor. The anchor catches the cable and then the cable snaps under it's own weight from the pulling. -M<