<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=iso-8859-1"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 14/07/2013, at 2:15 PM, Tony <<a href="mailto:td_miles@yahoo.com">td_miles@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: 'times new roman', 'new york', times, serif; font-size: 12pt; position: static; z-index: auto; ">Two guys in black suits walk in, look all around the room, then a third suit walks in. He puts it to you that you will do what is outlined in the document being given to you. You essentially have two
choices:<br><br>1. Comply.<br>2. Politely deline and effectively disconnect Australian Internet from the rest of the world.<br></div></div></blockquote></div><br><div>I put it to you that a choice like that would never be presented, because the fallout</div><div>arising from (2) would be (to coin a phrase) "diplomatically apeshit."</div><div><br></div><div>What's more likely is that (2) would be, "Find another landing station operated by someone</div><div>who has already complied."</div><div><br></div><div>That'd delay the project, place the installer in a position where they'd know that landing</div><div>parties would have them by the short and curlies on price and access to cross connects,</div><div>and also ensure that the cable would be in a place where the landing party who had</div><div>already complied would be able to intercept the cable in any case.</div><div><br></div><div>Sometimes small threats are more effective.</div><div><br></div><div>The FCC license grant documents for foreign cables are reasonably open documents, and</div><div>lay out the terms and conditions of the license (including interceptability) and usually</div><div>include the Lat/Long of the cable stations at each end (although sometimes they</div><div>"accidentally" transpose digits, those darn typos!). Pretty sure that a little bit of googling</div><div>will reveal that REACH wasn't being treated at all uniquely here, and nor was Australia.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> - mark</div><div><br></div><div><br></div></body></html>