On Fri, 8 Feb 2008, Scott Francis wrote:

Ran across this at Wired today, and it seemed apropos to recent events: http://www.wired.com/culture/art/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_simon?slide=10&slideView=10

I particularly liked the photographer's observation: "There's a humor because the cables are so important, yet they look so unguarded and unimportant," Simon said.

they probably look even more unguarded and unimportant on the seafloor ...

If you think about it, how many of the 1.5 trillion miles of telephone wires in the USA are "guarded?" How much is left in the open, hanging exposed on telephone poles, passing through unlocked manholes, etc, etc, etc. Sometimes people misunderstand how things actually work in the world. We don't have "secure roads." If you are going to ship valuable stuff over the highway hire a armored car, and plan multiple alternate routes. Likewise, the telecommunications network outside plant is pretty basic without any special protection unless you plan (and usually pay) for it. There are some telecommunication routes with pressurized conduits, special fiber optic laser monitoring to detect bending or tampering, and so forth. But I'm not sure how much of that James Bond stuff is just expensive or actually makes a difference for those particular subscribers. Or does all that security generate a lot of false alarms and ends up with a self-inflicted denial of service. Do you think the US Embassy in Moscow really trusts the Moscow telephone company?