Scavenging OAP Crashes Georgia's Internet
Thursday, 7th April, 2011
A retired 75-year-old woman has single-handedly managed to cut off the Internet connection of two countries.
She was digging around for scrap metal when she stumbled upon something far more valuable: Armenia and Georgia’s connection to the Internet.
The interior ministry in Tbilisi said the woman hacked into a fibre-optic cable which runs through Georgia to Armenia, causing thousands of Internet users in both countries to lose connection for a few hours on March 28.
Georgian interior ministry spokesman Zura Gvenetadze told the Associated Foreign Press that she found the cable and had intended to steal it.
She was then found in the village of Ksani, north of Tbilisi, Georgia’s capitol, and has been charged with damaging property. The woman could be looking at up to
three years in prison if convicted.
Gvenetadze said the woman’s age has been taken into account and she has been released pending the end of the investigation and upcoming trial.
The cable is owned by the Georgian Railway Telecom company, which clearly now has some major repair work to do. Hopefully that includes placing the new cable a little deeper underground. Although the connection has now been re-established, for 12 hours 90% of Armenia was without the web, and some ISPs in Georgia also went down. Georgian Railway also owns cables in Azerbaijan, which were not effected.
The CentrumWEB Team Opinion
Although it may feel like it to some of us, the Internet hasn’t been around forever.
There are some people of a certain age that just don’t know much about the Internet and the hardware that goes along with it, like cables.
My gran doesn’t even own a computer, She thought the TV remote control was cutting edge technology and thats been around since the early 80's and she just got a mobile phone for the first time a few months ago, the buttons are massive and the ring tone is louder than Big Ben. The Georgian woman most likely had no idea that the cable she thought she’d get a few quid for was actually the cord that connected thousands of people to the Internet.
Is it really fair for her to get three years in prison at such an old age for something that was clearly an accident?
Yes, she was trying to steal something, but she didn’t know the weight of what she was stealing. I think they should let her of with a warning, or give her a job digging up other cables to test if they are placed deep enough under ground. If a 73 year old woman can cause this much damage then think of the damage that could be caused by someone with far sinister motives. What do you think?
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