Starlink geofence appears to have some gaping holes
theregister.com
theregister.com
* Russia is reportedly buying dishes (and the service attached to the dishes) in the Middle East.
* Ukraine has its own fleet of dishes (being paid for by the US, after Musk initially provided free service early in the war after a Ukrainian request), but also many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
US law prohibits Russia from using Starlink. The problem is, how to stop Russia from doing so? A simple location-based ban won't work, because the front line is constantly shifting. Whitelisting only Ukraine's own dishes to work within Ukrainian territory might work, but 1) what about dishes that get captured by Russia? 2) As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
Another way to think about this is that this demonstrates just how lifesaving for Ukraine Starlink has become in the past two years. Ukraine could ask Starlink to disable all dishes within its territory; while not perfect, it would likely take out the bulk of Russian dishes. Ukraine has decided that the benefits of Starlink to Ukrainians outweighs Russians also benefiting from it.
This is just Elon being a little shit.
Where's this magical self created or auto created whitelist in a country where most of the dishes are paid for with foreign payment cards?
List the entire conflict zone as blocked by default and require special permission from any terminal in it, as opposed to just allowing random residential $100/month dishes with any valid credit card on file in it?
If Starlink cared enough, this would be solved today.
Where's the list of equipment with permission?
> but also many individual dishes that were donated, and being paid for, by private individuals outside Ukraine.
And do you actually think you could get everyone to register their starlink, while fighting?
It's a logistical nightmare getting them all registered now.
Don't let the fact that starlink belongs to Elon influence your critical thinking.
1 Musk never provided free service for Ukraine. All dishes have subscription. What Musk alluded to was "free upgrade" while demanding Ukrainians start paying for Mobile Priority plans.
2 "As of October 2022 there were 18k Starlink terminals in Ukraine. At the time State Department (USAID) paid for ~2K units, Poland paid for >12K units – over half of all terminals came from one relatively poor EU country.
December 2022 number rose to 22K. Apparently as of June 2023 there are >40K terminals in use, with USAID share rising to at least ~5K."
US paid for 1/8 of all terminals up to June 2023. I stopped tracking numbers last year.
>what about dishes that get captured by Russia?
Havent heard a single case of this happening.
>As noted, what about all the privately paid-for dishes?
should still be registered with AFU
We have video from the Avdeevka coke plant of captured equipment
I then ordered a second one later in 2022, thinking it will be years away. It was ready to ship in a month or so and spacex offered to ship it with no additional charge (just the $99 deposit I paid). I accepted this generous offer and am grateful to SpaceX for their help.
So technically it’s correct that SpaceX did not provide either of these dishes for free. I also paid the monthly service which is discounted compared to US rates but not free. However it’s also correct to say that SpaceX was generous in making Starlink available and gave at least one dish away for nominal cost in the early days. I’m sure I’m not the only one who benefited from this.
Starlinks are used a lot on the front. Of course they get captured by Russian forces sometimes.
Apart from that those dishes were sold at a loss in general and until recently starlink dishes were manufactured above 599. Ukranians still go abroad today and buy it on sale. Leading to a situation where most dishes in Ukraine are imported. And contributing to the Russians are using starlink crisis.
There's people that would go ahead and tell you they've never and there's never been a free dish in Ukraine. Not even from any government. Or service.
If anything they should be using their position to obliterate the whole idea of region-locking anything.
Or local businesses as they are sometimes known
But there is a good point and pattern to notice here, that further consolidation into a global companies providing internet access put resources and power into even fewer hands, but now that power is no longer being held by potentially authoritarian politicians and their Gestapo.
The solution for that means requiring multiple satellite internet providers, and people paying attention always to prevent a critical mass or majority of them from capture by bad actors - which we know happened with MSM consolidation, as well as more recently with social media platforms all illegally colluding with the US government - exposed due to Elon buying Twitter-X and releasing the Twitter Files.
But what point were you trying to make? That Starlink is bad for local economies because people are paying a non-local company?
It's certainly a good way to suppress local infrastructure development, yes
Musk once said that, in that case, the country's leaders could "shake their fists impotently at the sky". Which is imho the right answer.
It's not difficult for a state level entity to create problems for his businesses.
Everywhere else it makes much more sense to get permission to operate (vs. trying some pirate operation where Starlink is treated like a contraband that needs to be illegally imported into the country, the payments must happen stealthily, you get no support etc.).
Space as a shared resource (as opposed to e.g. airspace) only works if countries (and corporations) respect each others sovereignty.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, so I'm probably missing your point. Can you clarify?
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/pentagon-official-warns-r...
Shoot down every one that passes over country X? Hope you've got a few thousand antisatellite weapons, and you're willing to burn them on this...
Also, the countries most likely to do something this stupid are the ones the US government is giving him permission to defy, particularly Iran or Russia. If something happens, it will be more on the US government than SpaceX.
There's not only Starlink in LEO. Some of the existing constellations there are safety-of-life relevant (e.g. Iridium for polar flights or shipping routes), and Iridium doesn't have a stockpile of spares sitting on launchpads for an "Elon poked the bear one too many times" scenario.
So it does seem like some debris making it into higher and lower orbital shells is quite likely.
Iridium is only useful in safety-of-life because it's too expensive for anything else. If SpaceX were that bad at creating a market for satellites no one would be trying to shoot their satellites down.
On the other hand, I also think that some *ground* safety systems will rely on satellite data links as a back-up, as well.
Why would it be one satellite? Many countries consider LEO sovereign airspace. And there would be international cover from countries like China and Russia.
If potting sats becomes normalised it ceases to be something that can be privately financed.
Do you have a source for this?
Inmarsat is the only exception for phones.
But also, from a business point of view, maximum profit might mean offering a $100 a month service for residential users, a $1000 a month service for billionaires' yachts, a $5000 a month service for private jets, and a $100,000 a month service for defence industry applications.
Charging more for use away from home, based on GPS data, could be very profitable. Especially as you need GPS tracking to beam the signals to the right place anyway.
A government gets to decide what their citizens can have.
Think about it the other way around.
Let's say there is a brand new vehicle for sale in China with no airbags, no abs, no emissions controls of any kind, etc.
People in the US are absolutely NOT allowed to purchase that because the government of the US have decided it goes against the public interest (safety, pollution, etc.).
Just because one country thinks people should be able to conceal carry handguns, that doesn't mean other countries have to allow it.
Do Africans deserve less enforcement of things their government has not approved than people in other parts of the world?
Would you be OK if some country started making high-current electrical devices that were not approved and then just forcefully sold them in your country, even though regulations prohibited it?
It's not about what they "deserve". It is about what is physically possible.
I would love it if pirate internet via satellite that cannot be controlled by any government became a common thing in the US (and everywhere in the world). Unfortunately the US does have the enforcement capability to tell starlink what to do.
What are you talking about?
They can make the possession of satellite equipment a crime (already is in quite a few countries), They can fine Starlink for allowing service when it has not been approved, they can ban starlink in the future.
They can take many approaches.
Every terminal needs access to the sky for it to communicate to the satelites. Therefore it has access to GPS satellites too. SpaceX satellites shouldnt allow a credential handshake without an encrypted GPS position which it checks against its geofencing database.
What am I missing?
SpaceX knows exactly where its clients are, give or take ten kilometers, because that's how big its cell size is. No further telemetry is required. SpaceX is just reticent to comply with whatever authorities are leaning on it.
Geofencing is a dark pattern. It’s obviously possible, it just adds cost and complexity and controls that have zero value to the end user.
But what would be the technical limitation of blacklisting entire countries? At that scale, precision wouldn’t really matter.
Anybody here familiar with the problems care to chime in?
Wonder if this is more of a leadership issue…
ICASA (Independent Communications Authority of South Africa) controls telecommunication licences and is an instrument of the state. Elon Musk, who is South African, has refused to pay the 30% BEE-tax, which is why Starlink is not enabled in Elon's home country. Most Southern African countries have Starlink, but not Botswana and South Africa.
Southern African countries with Starlink: Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia and Benin. Namibia and Lesotho.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Economic_Empowerment
Direct access to all the data and locatinos millions of users worldwide, and mostl likekly easy to penetrate connected machines as well. There is no way in hell the NSA isnt the man in the middle of the entire consetellation.
If we expand on the speculation, having hostiles use Starlink might be hihgly adventagous. Russia using it would be far more valuable than them using some domestic system.