09) BRICS CABLE TO PROVIDE GLOBAL INTERNET ALTERNATIVE
PV Vancouver Bureau
The President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, has announced the creation of a world internet system independent from the US-based internet founded in the 1980s.
The announcement follows the news of U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) spying on an enormous scale, including monitoring communications among Brazilian and Mexican government officials. Rousseff has demanded an apology, and cancelled plans for an Oct. 21 summit in Washington with President Barack Obama. The scandal will likely strengthen the determination of many other countries to challenge the economic, political and military hegemony of "Uncle Sam" and the NATO alliance.
President Rousseff has ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the NSA intercepted her communications, hacked into the state‑owned Petrobras oil company's network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google.
Even before these stunning developments, the alternative infrastructure for a new global internet was under construction. The BRICS cable will link Vladivostok (Russia) to Shantou (China), Chennai (India), Cape Town (South Africa) and Fortaleza (Brazil), and from there to Miami, Florida. Brazil is also said to be preparing for an undersea fibre optic cable to Europe.
According to the www.bricscable.com website, the project is a 34,000 km, 2 fibre pair, 12.8 Tbit/s capacity, fibre optic cable system. The estimated "ready for service date" is mid-to-late 2015.
The BRICS countries comprise 45% of the world's population and 25% of global GDP. With faster growth rates than the U.S. and other major capitalist powers, the BRICS group together create an economy the size of Italy every year, generating "profound new opportunities in global geopolitics and commerce."
The BRICS Cable will interconnect with regional and other continental cable systems in Asia, Africa and South America for improved global coverage. For example, it will provide internet access to 21 African countries, giving them greater access to the BRICS economies.
Currently most of Brazil's global internet traffic passes through the United States. Brazil is not proposing to bar its citizens from US‑based Web services, but wants their data to be stored locally to protect them from NSA snooping. Rousseff is pushing for the United Nations to adopt new international rules on privacy and security in hardware and software.
Ironically, some U.S. observers have expressed fears that the new internet could be a "potentially dangerous first step" toward fracturing a global network built with "minimal interference by governments."
That outlook is based on the argument that U.S. spying on electronic communications is not "government interference." It's a convenient assumption, but hardly likely to convince the countries which are being spied upon by Washington.
Still, there are questions about whether the BRICS Cable can prevent U.S. and other international spies from monitoring communications. The NSA has reportedly tapped into undersea telecoms cables for decades, leading some observers to warn that without significant changes to U.S. policies, such activities will probably continue.
(The above article is from the October 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)