A couple of months ago, there was a undersea cable cuts that affected much of the Middle East and Asia. Today, there are press reports that two ships have been impounded for causing the problems off of Alexandria.

The article says that Reliance Globalcom, the owner of the FLAG cable, had identified those two ships after "studying satellite imagery of ship movements around the breakage area". That’s a good way to do it — but why are there suitable satellite images? There are a number of satellites whose imagery is readily purchasable; is near-realtime coverage that good without prearrangement? There are already conspiracy theories being discussed on the NANOG mailing list…

And the root cause? This might be it:

At the time of the cuts, a Flag spokesperson said that ships in Alexandria had been asked to anchor in a different place to normal, around 8.4km off the beach.

We can all put away our tin foil hats now…