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"Passive undersea fiber monitoring is well within the means of more than a few intelligence operations"

What kind of equipment/engineering would be required for that?

Has there been any documented cases of a government doing that in the past?

Very roughly, you strip the casing and then bend the fiber until a small amount of light begins escaping through the small gaps created by the bending. Most of the light continues to travel through the cable unharmed aside from a tiny decrease in intensity.

Here is a page with some pictures of something along those lines:

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/security/protect-your-netwo...

Here is an article about a US sub equipped for this kind of job:

http://defensetech.org/2005/02/21/jimmy-carter-super-spy/

There have been documented cases of undersea cables being tapped: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells

Regarding Fibre I am not sure of documented cases but: http://www.zdnet.com/news/spy-agency-taps-into-undersea-cabl...

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