Back in the 20th century, NSA had this program "echelon" that aimed basically at "tapping" all communications going in/out or inside the US. They had some legal issues but it was ignored as usual and the spying went on. The spying relied mainly on intercepting satellite traffic because back then there was no fiber optics. Since the introduction of the fiber optics network overseas, eavesdropping did not work very well. Tapping wires especially optical fibers weren't that easy. It needed physical access. NSA had a research team working on it. They even sent a submarine to try to find a way to eavesdrop traffic from under sea cables without cutting the cable but they failed. All the previous facts are documented. You may refer to RSA conference 2009 speech of James Bamford, author of "The shadow factory". But doesn't this ring a bell ?? cutting cables ? a series of unclear events happened earlier at the cables joining the middle and far east that was very vague. Cables were cut with no clear logical reason. People were saying all sorts of stories about this like "a ship drop its anchor on a cable" "fish ate it" "Al Qaeda intentionally severed the cables for their own nefarious purposes" "krakens maybe!" (the latter is mine). However, after Bamford speech i think this all makes sense. There are communication corporates/countries that agreed to cooperate and put a tap on its nodes. But when countries don't cooperate what happens ? dozens of cables get cut "accidentely" and fixed right after. That makes perfect sense! :D
