Re: Dubai impound ships suspected in cable damage

["Martin Hannigan" <hannigan () gmail com>]

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<