Underseas cables will increasingly become a target for terrorists

International treaties require states to enact laws providing for criminal sanctions against wrongdoers and vessels that injure international cables willfully or by culpable negligence.² But compliance is poor.

Australia and New Zealand have modern and extremely effective deterrent laws that generally comply with the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). In both nations proactive monitoring of cables and effec- tive enforcement of domestic laws has essentially reduced cable faults to zero. But other countries, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, have telegraph-era stat- utes dating to the 1880s that are historical relics having virtually no practical utility.

In the United States, for example, the intentional destruction of an international submarine cable is subject to a ridiculously lenient maximum fine of $5,000 and a prison term of six months.³ The only known attempt to use the archaic law came in 1997, when the U.S. Coast Guard recommended to the U.S. attorney in Florida thathe skipper of a fishing vessel be prosecuted for willfully damaging the U.S.-Cuba cable. The attorney declined to prosecute, deeming the pursuit of a conviction carrying such a paltry penalty to be an inefficient use of his re- sources. Additionally, that sort of handicap for U.S. telecommunications companies is significantly compounded because the United States has not joined the 162 nations that are parties to UNCLOS. Thus there is no UNCLOS protection for their cables outside U.S. territorial seas.

While the United States justifiably can be criticized for allowing its domestic law protecting cables to sink into obsolescence, many nations have no laws whatsoever addressing damage to international cables—even though their economies depend on the critical global infrastructure.