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Comment by cozzyd | Hacker News Reader

How is this not a sanctions violation?

Tons of goods of all types are getting into Russia via "neutral" countries. It's hard to stop without causing collateral damage.

Because it's not true, unless they are operating devices stolen from ukranian forces in "ukranian" territory, which becomes funnily enough, ukraines own fault.

Had they not demanded use of starlink be allowed for military action, against SpaceX/Elon's wishes, or had they not publicly guilt tripped him into providing the service at no cost, the devices would be useless in that territory.

Starling is not being provided at “no cost”.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/01/...

How should Starlink know if Russians or Ukrainians use it in the war zone?

I assume that terminals are authenticated, and stolen/diverted terminals can be disabled, so outside willful negligence or failure to report stolen/diverted terminals, it seems like it should be obvious who is accessing their modern communication network.

Don’t disable stolen terminals. Use terminal reported location for targeting.

I assume that in an active war zone, it is kind of hard to track which equipment gets taken by the enemy. We're talking of 50-100 meters of movement per day.

Suppose Starlink would even more aggressively constrain access to "known ukrainian-dominated territory". A possible error would be that an Ukrainian soldier suddenly loses access since a few 50 meters apart Russians captured an Starlink terminal. The news would be even worse in the public opinion in that scenario.

In general it is always better to assume well-intent instead of resorting to reflexive "x is bad" arguments, which was my take of the GP.

The gnss is presumably accurate enough to tell what side of the front lines it's being used on

the one changing weekly?

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