Middle East Blackouts

Multiple internet blackouts overseas are beginning to concern those in the global internet community. The cable breaks have been causing a growing buzz on technical blogs and drawing attention from conspiracy theorists, who suspect everything from information warfare to terrorism to sabotage by the United States to take out Internet connections to Iran, whose connectivity indeed has been pretty much blacked out for most of the past week. Personally I think that it is coincidental that these blackouts are occurring in the Middle East, but that is just my opinion. Many skeptics believe that the US has sabotaged lines and cables to affect the Middle East, especially Iraq and Iran. These blackouts have affected over 80 million internet users. A group of workers says that it will take about two weeks to repair the problems in the fiber optic cables that have been the cause of the blackouts.
Many believe that these blackouts are not an accident and that it could be a terrorist attempt to cripple banks and other information systems over seas. Despite all the conspiracy speculation, such breaks are not without precedence. In December 2006, seven of the eight Internet cables connected to Taiwan were damaged by an earthquake. Internet communications in much of Asia were disrupted for weeks. However, these blackouts have been a wake up call, and have focused on the vulnerability of the over seas systems. I don’t think that it is a terrorist action or a attempt at sabotaging the internet for those in the middle east but I could be wrong. Over the next few days officials will be investigating the situation further.