Hackers Think Of Taking Internet Into The Space

I'm not usually one to complain (loudly) about stories, but this is just poor reporting.

> Farr believes that by launching an independent satellite, by the hackers, it will be ensured that internet is no longer uncensorable.

I'll ignore the fact that they're saying that the Internet is unable to be censored now, and this would enable censorship, and move right on to: why does he believe this? How does one satellite handle traffic for more than a small number of users? How does one satellite handle traffic from more than a tiny slice of the Earth? This post is 99.9% content-free.

It's great that hackers everywhere are thumping their chests waiting for the bill to pass so they can prove their flavor of a circumvention scheme works. I don't think anything extra needs to be created from what we have already apart from perhaps easier-to-use interfaces for the plebs. Software, in particular encryption everywhere, is the only viable solution, and we can still use existing hardware.

A satellite seems like a stupid idea though. It can easily be shot down (as both the US and China have demonstrated), costs a lot to get up there (where's this money coming from?), and is technically a weapon of mass destruction (as are all things in space).

Side-note: it was kind of hard to read this, I'm assuming the author's first language isn't English... The MSNBC article was much more readable: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45828456/ns/technology_and_scien...

Sounds like a good idea, until you realize that a satellite can be shot down without much fuss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT