Them’s the (Data Line) Breaks

December 10, 2008 - 1:15 AM by DavidS

Israel, being the high-tech powerhouse that it is, should be able to handle something as simple as a computerized primary election. But for two weeks in a row, in two different primary contests, the computers seemingly caused more problems than they solved.

All three major parties – Labor, Likud and Kadima – had decided to dispense with traditional paper balloting in their primaries this year. A paper ballot election run by party insiders almost guarantees allegations of corruption – and past scandals have proven that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In order to remove from party functionaries the temptation to, say, “lose” some ballot boxes (as has happened several times in the past) and to head off accusations of corruption, even if they were untrue, the parties decided to computerize the process.

Last week, the computer system crashed on Labor primary day, forcing the party to cancel the whole thing and reschedule for two days later. In Monday’s Likud primary, the system more or less worked, but it was slow – so slow that voting hours had to be extended for three hours, while party members spent hours waiting on line for their chance to choose. As a result of their rivals’ experiences, Kadima, which has its primary next week, has begged off using computers, and will instead go back to paper ballots, despite the problems.

Network experts still haven’t figured out what caused the Labor system crash, but in the case of the Likud slowdown, at least part of the problem was attributed to – a tractor. While digging the foundation for a structure outside Jerusalem, a tractor apparently damaged a fiber-optic communications cable, shutting down communications in the Jerusalem area (and beyond) for several hours, a delay from which the Jerusalem area Likud polls apparently never recovered.

Could a similar communications line cut have been responsible for Labor’s computer problems too? It’s very possible – because it happens far more often than people realize. Erez Ronen in Yediot Achronot tells the story of his trip to the mall to buy a computer – and how he couldn’t check how well it surfed the internet, because a tractor doing construction in the area had broken the data line. Clearly, it happens more often than we realize. It’s the digital age’s equivalent of a water main break (those still happen a lot, too).

It’s not just tractors that can break data cables – ships at sea do their share of damage. Earlier this year, in fact, most of the Middle East – except Israel – was off the net for several days, and in some cases for weeks, because a ship’s anchor had spliced through one of the main underwater communication cables running from Egypt to Europe. Most of the Arab countries, Iran, and India, used the line for their internet and e-mail connections to the rest of the world. Israel, which uses a separate cable (the MedNautilus cable, pictured), wasn’t affected – leading to accusations that somehow Israel had engineered the shutdown of the internet, in preparation for a war against Iran! Eventually the break was discovered, but countries affected, including Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and India said they lost billions of dollars. Losing our net connection is annoying, whether you’re running an election or just surfing. But for communication companies – like the ones that ran the Labor and Likud primaries – there’s a bright spot: You can always find someone to blame for the fashla!

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