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Comment by busterarm | Hacker News Reader

Satellite phones are extremely easy to determine point of origin, give or take 20m. That's enough to dispatch police or worse, launch an airstrike.

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That's exactly how Dzhokhar Dudayev was killed: using two laser guided missiles while he spoke on sat phone. The signal was interceped by a Russian reconaissance aircraft.

This tactic has been used a number of times that I'm aware of, in Eastern Europe, South America and the Middle East.

...and not just with satellite phones, a normal phone suffices.

A drone will act as a receiver/relay for the phone signal, and then triangulate the phone's location.

Surprising given how easily defeatable it is for anyone sufficiently motivated.

The only "easily defeatable" method that I'm aware of is to make your call from somewhere you don't mind being bombed, make it from a place with multiple egress points, and to stay on the call for at most 90 seconds.

Or put an optical repeater at your target (bombable) site and install a long run of fiber to your safe location, which you then have to abandon. Doesn't seem very practical to me.

Optical repeater? You're overthinking it. You don't need minimal latency or perfect signal quality to make voice calls worthwhile, crap quality is fine. And if you have to abandon a satellite phone because your comms station got blown up...so what? That's just a cost of doing business. They're maybe a couple thousand on the black market, probably the same or less than a MANPAD.

I doubt China is planning to airstrile individual protestor.

Like people doubted they'd run over a protester with a tank, right?

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