[103636] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Dubai impound ships suspected in cable damage
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Martin Hannigan)
Wed Apr 9 11:19:14 2008
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 09:15:03 -0600
From: "Martin Hannigan" <hannigan@gmail.com>
To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
Cc: "Joel Jaeggli" <joelja@bogus.com>, "Patrick Giagnocavo" <patrick@zill.net>,
nanog@nanog.org
In-Reply-To: <20080409121403.76bdaf67@cs.columbia.edu>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 6:14 AM, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu> wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 08 Apr 2008 22:16:57 -0700
> Joel Jaeggli <joelja@bogus.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Patrick Giagnocavo wrote:
> > >
> > > Sean Donelan wrote:
> > >
> > >> Awesome, so could anyone buy a copy of the same images? Which
> > >> satellite do you think happened to be taking images of the area
> > >> with these ships near the time the cables were broken? Which
> > >> company is selling that set of images?
> > >
> > > Wouldn't it be reasonable that, when the break occurred, they used
> > > their optical time domain reflectometer to compute the approximate
> > > location of the break, and then just called around for whoever had
> > > the best images, or who could quickly task the satellite to get an
> > > image?
> >
> > spot can generally deliver an image within 1 day in 60kmx60km blocks
> > assuming no contention for the slot. 20m resolution is more than
> > adequate to pick up ships underway at sea. ikonos can deliver 11x11km
> > swaths.
> >
> Right, but those images would be after the fact.
>
> Assume the ship is moving at 10 knots, which is 18.5 km/hr. In 24
> hours, it can go about 450 km. You can't go south from Alexandria by
> ship, except into the Suez canal, but you can go about that far east
> (eyeballing Google Maps...) before you reach Israel or
> Israeli-controlled waters. A semicircle of that radius has an area of
> about 320,000 km^2. You'd need about 100 images (88 by sheer area, but
> you won't get an exact match); the pictures alone would cost a
> minium of $100K, according to
> http://www.spotimage.fr/automne_modules_files/standard/public/p425_ba582c667a21f3b7d1108ad9773629fdSPOT_Commercial_Price_List_-_Jan_2008_without_EULA.pdf
> and quite possibly considerably more. *Plus* there are a lot of ships
> to consider -- that area includes the northern terminus of the Suez
> Canal, and you want good enough evidence to take to a maritime court
> somewhere.
>
> It might be possible.
There are a number of unique characteristics of ships including
profile and radar fingerprint. I'd like to see the images from the
article that was forwarded to the list.
-M<
