Five Eyes and submarine cables in the Middle East
Giuseppe Gagliano's point on Five Eyes and submarine cables in the Middle East
The expansion of fiber optic cable networks in the Middle East has provided Western intelligence agencies with unprecedented access to the region's data and communications traffic.
There is no doubt that, in a broad sense, the Port Said region is one of the most important areas for telecommunications traffic and therefore for surveillance.
Everything that happens in the Middle East passes through this region, with the exception of the connection through Turkey.
The Five Eyes, the intelligence alliance of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, has spied on the Middle East since the formation of the network during World War II.
In fact, let us not forget that the Middle East is a fundamental strategic hub for surveillance for obvious reasons: its political-economic strategic importance, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the political divisions between the allies of the Five Eyes and their adversaries such as Iran and Syria. Above all, let's not forget that the economic and technological conflict between the United States , China and Russia also involves submarine cables.
Its main players are the American NSA and the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), which use well-known but also secret surveillance infrastructures in the region to collect data.
While falling within all conventional forms of surveillance, from airspace to telephone lines, the region represents a strategic resource for mass surveillance thanks to current fiber optic cable routes.
Spy agencies have used optical cables to intercept vast volumes of data, ranging from phone calls and email content, web browsing histories and metadata. Financial, military and government data also go through these cables.
This intercepted data is screened by analysts, while specific filters extract material based on the 40,000 search terms used by the NSA and GCHQ and related to certain subjects, telephone numbers and email addresses for further checks.
Between the Red Sea and Iran, no terrestrial optical cable crosses the Arabian Peninsula. All Internet traffic from Europe to Asia passes through the Caucasus and Iran, using the Europe Persia Express Gateway (EPEG), or the much more congested infrastructure of Egypt and the Red Sea.
Well, Egypt is a big bottleneck: it manages traffic from Europe to the Middle East, Asia and Africa and vice versa.
The fifteen cables that cross Egypt between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea handle between 17% and 30% of the Internet traffic of the world population, or a volume of data relating to about two billion people. Geography and politics have led to this particular configuration.
It is not possible to establish a connection through Syria or Iran due to the conflict and the political situation, and the war in Yemen. As a result the cables take another route such as the Red Sea and Djibouti while the cables cross the Egypt and crossing the Suez Canal also pose logistical risks due to the shallow waters of the Suez Canal.
Returning to Egypt, the cables that cross it do not, however, give the Egyptian state the freedom to intercept data on behalf of the Five Eyes, despite the importance given by President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and by his son Mahmoud, deputy head of the General Directorate of intelligence to the mass surveillance of Egyptian citizens.
Even though Egyptians are best placed to gain access to cable data they are not seen as a reliable or stable partner.
In fact, despite its strategic importance, Egypt is not part of any electronic surveillance network.
The Five Eyes Alliance has information exchange agreements in place with some European countries, with Japan and South Korea, for example, to intercept data from Russia and China. The NSA also has a relationship with Sweden, because it is a central hub for all cable traffic in the Baltic region of Russia. Specifically, the United States has less formal information exchange relations with a number of countries in the Middle East region, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
In fact, the Egyptians have an intelligence sharing agreement with the United States but are not particularly active in this respect. In fact, the NSA has an underground base in the Middle East nicknamed Dancing Oasis, also known as DGO.
The cables connecting Europe, Africa and Asia cross Egypt and then descend the Red Sea to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between Yemen and Djibouti. Eastbound cables divert to Oman. West of the capital Muscat is a GCHQ monitoring site in Seeb, codenamed Circuit. According to Snowden's revelations, underwater intercepts are being carried out by a converted submarine, the USS Jimmy Carter.
That could all change if Google's plans for its new “Blue Raman” cable, which runs from Europe to India, including Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Oman, are realized.
Egypt is the hub of the cables that connect East and West. But the political instability of the country led by Al Sisi is fueling the search for alternative routes.
The first part of the cable, namely Blue, should be built by Sparkle, a Telecom Italia company and should start from the port of Genoa and arrive in Israel, crossing the Mediterranean Sea.
The second part, that is Raman, should be managed by Oman Telecommunications and depart from the port of Mumbai, under the Indian Ocean to reach Aqaba in Jordan. Precisely because Egypt is historically an unstable political system, the only alternative way to go is that of the Red Sea.
Of course Google is fully aware of the fact that Israel has very efficient electronic intelligence and therefore it is assumed that it will collect data by encrypting it in order to protect it and certainly use it in its favor. In short, this cable could represent a tool for Israel to guide choices in both the economic and military fields in a more targeted and efficient way.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cosa-fa-five-eyes-con-i-cavi-sottomarini-nel-medio-oriente/ on Thu, 18 Mar 2021 07:10:56 +0000.