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What lies beneath: the growing threat to the hidden network of cables that power the internet
Last month large parts of Tonga were left without internet when an undersea cable was broken. It’s a scenario that is far more common than is understood
Photograph: Mint Images/Getty Images/Mint Images RFAlmost all internet traffic – including Zoom calls, movie streams, emails and social media feeds – reach us via high speed fibre optics laid on the ocean floor. It’s a method of espionage that the US is all too familiar with: in 2013 the Guardian revealed that the UK’s GCHQ had tapped into the network of internet cables to access vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects. Despite the warnings of sabotage or accidental damage – experts say that without the market imperative to create more resilient networks, the real risk is that places like Tonga will continue to go dark, threatening the very promise of digital equity that the internet was founded on.
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