Brazil greenlights $200m internet cable to Europe in bid to outfox NSA

"There are economies of scale when it comes to traffic routing, which is why it is currently 12 times cheaper to transit through New York than to route through Brazil's business center of São Paulo."

Yes, but one reason this is true is because of lack of fiber optics running to São Paulo (thank goodness for cut-n-paste, I don't have a ã key and don't know how to type it 8-)

As for evading the NSA... it might be an interesting exercise if they monitored the cable and filed appropriate complaints (lawsuis, complaints to the WIPO, or the UN, or all of the above... whomever) as soon as they find this cable has been tampered with.

The thing with these taps is... you read about Room 641A, a room AT&T operates *for* the NSA, and the fiber optic taps run into a room with AT&T's facility. Most likely, the Florida line is tapped in Florida, and most likely within the building the fiber actually runs into. Underwater? The USS Jimmy Carter has the capability to tap a fiber line, but then what? It seems for now, the Jimmy Carter actually has to sit there to get any information off the tap, or can run a new fiber from the tap to somewhere. If the Florida cable is tapped underwater, it's probably taped just off the Florida coast (although as I say it's far more likely done on land.) On a Brazil to Portugal cable, there's really nowhere to run a tap-cable other than Brazil or Portugal themselves, so these countries just need to watch out for unauthorized fibers running from the coast to mysterious buildings and they are good to go, I doubt the NSA would park the Jimmy Carter there permanently.

Basic encrption vs availability

Basic encryption addresses end to end privacy as well (or badly) as separate lines. But having all your internet run through the US means that the US can cut you off, or at least slow you down, if you do annoy them sufficiently. A separate cable provides independence.

At $200m this is dirt cheap compare to what is wasted by militaries.

Remedial Reading: The Art of War

If you're worried about forensics, rather than wearing a hair net and risk failing to achieve perfection; instead steal a full vacuum cleaner bag from the janitor at your local shopping mall and sprinkle the contents over the scene.

If perfect 'silence' isn't feasible, then try 'noise'. Lots of noise. Encrypted noise.

All the resources in the world, but there's still only 24 hours in a day.

Encryption is a good option

Honestly, link encryption would be a good option. I don't know if any router would be fast enough at crypto to handle a say 1tbps link though.

IN OTHER WORDS...

All your cables are belong to U.S.

Jimmy Carter

With a simple 185 million expense for a new cable, Brazil now forces the USA to spend a pile of money on a new cable tap. It amounts to a tweak of Uncle Sam's nose, but it also opens up bandwidth for new data centres based in Brazil/Spain/Portugal.

Ancient American Proverb, circa 1990:

"You can never the rich enough, thin enough, or have enough bandwidth in your network connection."

Tubes by Andrew Blum

I'm currently reading Tubes by Andrew Blum (it was serialized on Radio4) It's a travel book of sorts where a journalist whose internet connection was savaged by a pesky squirrel, explores the physical infrastructure underpinning the Net . Although relatively low on technical content it does highlight the physical nature of the buildings, cable, kit and people and the importance of peer2peer mega connections.

In the same way the circum-Africa fibre marine cables are changing internet access in that continent, a new Brazil - Europe link could do the same for South America.

Although it may be built following a fit of political peek, ,just seeing it as a purely Brazilian asset may miss the point. A couple of hundred million even for a developing country is still quite cheap and could well cement Brazil as the internet Hub for all South America.

Data independence

Others here have mentioned Russian gas as being a strategic weakness for Europeans and those within the Russian "sphere". America has laws against exporting oil extracted from the USA in order to protect its supply.

Similarly, India has announce that it is planning a (country-wide) GPS system so it's not subject to the whims of a foreign power. Europe is building the Galileo system and independence may be one of the reasons (though you can never tell with Brussels-originated schemes what the hell they are for).

The reason that Brazil (a Portuguese-speaking country) would want its own direct connection to another part of the Portuguese speaking world (viz. Portugal) doesn't have to be about cost - countries spend a great deal of money on "soft power" and building ties with their allies and $180Mil would just about buy you one shiny new fighter aircraft.

So it's not an unreasonable thing to do. It strengthens bonds, adds some self-reliance, gives a powerful northern neighbour something to think about and might even reduce ping-times to Portugal and the rest of Europe. If you're doing financial deals that alone could be worth the cost (there was a new cable laid across the Atlantic a few years ago that paid for itself by cutting 6mSec off traders latency).

Yes, It does make sense

It is basic right of the country not to be subject of criminal activity by another country.

So if Brazil do not want it's traffic to be collected by STASI building the cable it's a great move and make a lot of sense.

Hub

As for someone have mentioned already, Brasil can set themselves as a Hub for the entire South America, or even Latin America. Venezuela, Equador, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, all of them have a big love toward americans...

SA to SA

There needs to be more South Africa to South America bandwidth. At the moment most of that traffic goes via Europe and USA

The USA doesn't let Russia own Verzion or Comcast for a reason

The "it won't make a difference" claims are based on the current situation where, according to what Snowden has released, the USA has US citizens in all the commercial undersea cable companies in return for those companies being given permission to access the US parts of the internet.

That "it will make a difference" is proven by the fact that the USA is very picky over who operates its internal internet.

Which one of those in the "it won't make a difference" crowd would allow an enemy state to run their internet service?

Exactly, the USA doesn't let Russia own Verzion or Comcast for a reason.

And that reason is physical access to the network does make a difference when it comes to mass surveillance.

Of course it won't stop targeted surveillance. But targeted surveillance is not the issue. Mass surveillance of the peaceful citizens of the USA's supposed allies is.

Undersea taps - pah!

What do you think happens when the heavily armoured, hard to cut, undersea cable reaches a beach?

It goes into a little hut, with some termination and power gear, and then the signal is sent on over land via normal easy to cut, easy to access running down the side of the road, land based fibre cable to the nearest telecoms infrastructure (take a look at any cable map and see just how far the landing points are from where the cables actually connect to infrastructure, and hence how many Kilometres the boys in dark glasses have to hide things in.

So why bother with expensive submarines etc, when you can send a few guys out in the middle of the night to do the job! This is how they actually do it.

Remember that the USA has a history of shutting of internet access to countries it dislikes

Remember that the USA has a history of shutting of internet access to countries it dislikes during times of conflict.

Looking at that map...

Looking at that map, what might make a lot more sense would be a cable from Brazil to West Africa. Africa is poorly connected, Africa is rapidly developing, a longer subocean route might be more reliable than one going through or around North Africa to Europe ...

... and Brazil and African countries may have a shared political interest in appearing to be exclusing the NSA from their networks.

Perhaps once Ebola is vanquished?

I'd do it!

1) Having an alternate route means "they" can't switch you off.

2) Having an alternate supplier keeps the monopolist honest

i.e. nothing to do with surveillance which can be sorted through encryption easier and cheaper

BUT

I'd create an data "Freeport"t at the landing site, encouraging Sao Paulo to become an international hub.

Waffle !

That's it , nothing else . She only won , cause the so called "electronic voting machines " are all rigged up . They have been powned in the past and have been tamperede ever since . The net and the industry are all well aware of it . More than a thousand of them had to be replaced in a hurry on election day . Think whatever you may ...

I just cringe...

...every time I see multiple scales¹ on the same axis of a chart. :-(

¹ Unless it's a simple unit conversion such as km / miles or litres / gallons.