| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Danyel Woods) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Tapping fibre-optic lines (was Re: Viability/Use of Foreign Listening Posts) |
| Date: | Mon Jun 24 08:15:01 2002 |
> > <MODE_ENGAGE: nitpick>
> > Actually, according to SR near-canon (the novel 'Shadowplay'),
> >>fibre-optic
> > lines *can* be tapped, and the traffic even monitored and recorded
> >>from a
> > distance, along the same lines as how someone with a sensitive->>enough
> > magnetic-anomaly-detector can read the electrical impulses >>travelling
>along
> > RL copper wires. Don't ask me how they does it in SR, they jes' >>does
>it -
> > and have been since at least mid-2054, apparently. Don't'cha just
> >>love
>the
> > SOTA curve?
>
>I would assume that they the tap into the signal booster which have to
>be integrated into fiber optics if you want to use them over long
>distances.
A good guess, Thorger, and possibly (probably?) correct under today's
technology, but according to the novel, incorrect by 2054; it seems to be a
similar principle to EM induction. <digs out novel> What the hell; I'll
quote the entire in-character conversation here (it's only a few paragraphs,
so I presume it falls under 'fair use')....
<BEGIN QUOTE>
"Way back, in the nineteen-eighties, I think it was - maybe the
nineties... or maybe the seventies; I'm not slick on ancient history - the
world started swining over to fiber-optics for communication. Before then,
everything was transmitted by radio or by electrons flowing through copper
wires. Barbaric," [Nightwalker] pronounced, "and risky. If you broadcast
something, anyone can pick it up, maybe break your code and know what you're
sending. If you put it through wires, people can read the data flow by
induction. You scan?"
... "Electricity flowing through wires makes magnetism, right?" [Falcon]
ventured...
"Yeah, right... You can detect the magnetic field at a distance, and by
measuring how it changes, you can figure out the electric flow in the wires.
If it's data being sent down those wires, you can read it. And with the
right gear you can change it. You following me?
...
"So when fiber optics came along... everybody jumped aboard. Light
flowing in a fire isn't like electricity in a wire. There's no magnetic
field. You can't read it, you can't tap into it, you can't change it.
Totally secure.
"Or so everybody thought. Then some big-dome scientists figured something
out. They worked for one of the big corps back then - 3M, or 4F, or
something like that, I think it was. They figured out there was a way to
read fiber-optic communication. You could read it from a distance, you
could even diddle a few bits here and there, change the information that's
going through the light pipe... 'Course, it wasn't too practical. From what
I hear, it took two Cray supercomputers, *big* electronic brains, the
biggest they'd made to that time, plus a semi-trailer full of other
high-tech drek, *plus* a fragging platoon of big-domes to run it all. I
don't know how it works, I'm no technoweenie. But, frag if it didn't work."
<END QUOTE>
Nightwalker, the samurai doing the explaining, goes on to say that the
original project data was eaten by the virus in the '29 Crash, then
resurrected (in violation of an solemn secret agreement) by the corp his
team was contracted to steal the research datafile from... before the
notorious Mr Murphy intervened.
No actual scientific or pseudo-scientific explanation was given for this
ability to monitor and alter fibre-optic comms remotely; being a Nigel
Findley novel (bless the man :-J), it was simply a McGuffin that required
the characters to Save The World (and themselves along with it). But
nonetheless, it is official flavour-text (if not quite out-and-out canon)
which makes it something for all the spooks and agencies in the SR world to
consider. :-J
Really needing to get a booster for his anti-pedantic medication,
-> Danyel
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