Tuesday, March 6, 2012

More on USAID's m.o.

See a reader’s comment in the update here, continuing the discussion of the AP article’s report that USAID contractor Alan Gross was adding a special SIM card to the satellite Internet devices that he installed in Cuba to make them less susceptible to detection.


Anonymous said...

Mr. Peters,

There is something that I do not understand that is not related to hi-tech communications issues that I would like you or some of your readers to explain to me.

From what I seem to understand a series of BGAN's can be set up in an area and access to receive and send data to them can be granted to a limited quantity of users through passwords.

If this is so and USAID or Alan Gross were trying to set up a network that could connect independent reporters or even spies to satellite internet, why did these BGANS have to be placed in places under Cuban jurisdiction?

Couldn't they have been placed in embassies, consulates or the homes of diplomats that enjoyed diplomatic inmunity where the Cuban counterintelligence could not touch them and then provide the Cuban clients with the necessary passwords to be able to connect to them?

If the US State Department is the institution trying to organize these mesh networks didn't it have sufficient available sites with diplomatic inmunity of its own or belonging to friendly nations in all of Havana or in neighborhoods thereoff to place the necessary BGAN sets?

Wasn't running all this risk to set up a mesh network placing BGANS in unprotected terrain avoidable and therefore totally illogical?

Frankly, without going very deep into the technical aspects, the whole proyect does not make much sense to me.

Can someone tell me if I am missing something?


Anonymous said...

Mr. Peters,

If the previous criticism made by me is correct, then the previous error that caused Alan Gross's arrest is blocking a completely viable policy from being implemented.

Until Alan Gross is freed a policy that would permit non government supervised telephone calls and emails from inside Cuban territory can not be implemented.

The consequences of the original mistake does not allow a rational policy from being applied.

This should no doubt be an incentive for the Cuban gobernment to hang on to Alan Gross for as long as possible.


Anonymous said...

I am not much of a conspiracy theorist, but a third thought suggests itself.

If this program was not needed because a mesh network could be set up from sites with diplomatic immunity, why was it created in the first place?

A horrible suspicion then arises, was Alan Gross being set up so that he could be arrested and thus create a crisis in US Cuban relations?