Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts | Hacker News Reader

Brazil blocks Starlink bank accounts

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40 pointsshark149 comments

Isn’t Brazil like notoriously light on rule of law? I don’t feel surprised or outraged by this, more like— what did you expect?

Alternative take: what would you expect by consistently and publicly antagonizing a supreme court justice?

Pursuing legal action against the person (Elon) and not an unrelated business he owns (Starlink)? Wasn't the entire thing caused by a disagreement over X anyway?

Elon Musk is not in Brazil so action against him would be a waste of time.

Action was against X, and then Musk shut down X's Brazilian office and left outstanding debts. The supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership and therefore Starlink (which still has local representation) is being held responsible for X's delinquent debts.

I am not a lawyer so can't comment on legality of this but it's obvious that X's stance on free speech is incompatible with Brazil's legislation on hate speech. My opinion is that X never had any intention to observe Brazilian law, and ran out of options to delay and deflect.

As with all thing Musk I feel like there's a need to separate the artist from the art.

If this happened in a liberal democracy there is due process, you can't unilateraly freeze a corporation account, they would prevent whatever company is in violation of the law from doing business in the country and that's it. If the owner can be charged for wrongdoing you can do that too, and then finally if the owner has outstanding debts to the country you can liquidate their assets to recoup the amount.

This is not what happened here, a company is accused of breaking the law so another company which, beside partial ownership has nothing to do with it is getting its account frozen.

It's weird to see people cheering in the comments for this. If Jeff Bezos gets in hot water with the US government over Blue Origin, should they just freeze Amazon's account?

Elon Musk makes it abundantly clear that he has absolute control of his companies and publicly entangles them (e.g. sending Tesla engineers to audit Twitter).

X was operating in Brazil while being maliciously non-compliant, in a manner obviously directed by Elon.

Ergo, Elon is playing games to operate global companies without complying with local legislation.

I am pleased to see a government willing to put a stop to this madness, and I am comfortable with piercing the corporate veil to prosecute this bad actor who is at the root of public and consistent malfeasance. The US government seems entirely unable or unwilling to offer any enforcement.

> Action was against X, and then Musk shut down X's Brazilian office and left outstanding debts. The supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership and therefore Starlink (which still has local representation) is being held responsible for X's delinquent debts.

This defeats the purpose of corporations.

If that's the purpose of corporations, I'm happy to declare victory.

SpaceX has other shareholders as well. How would you feel if the Florida government got mad at blackrock for ESG, fined them for it, and took that money out of your 401k?

> This defeats the purpose of corporations.

I'm this context, this declaration makes me believe the purpose of corporations is to allow billionaires to disregard laws.

Musk is a minority shareholder in SpaceX which owns Starlink. One corporation (SpaceX) is not supposed to be liable for the actions of another (X), even if they are owned by the same person.

The correct move is to go after Musk directly.

Musk doesn't refrain from using his companies, mainly Twitter, as weapons in petty personal disputes and showdowns. It's a situation that allows piercing the corporate veil, even under US law. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#...

> supreme court evaluates that X and Starlink have same ownership

They don’t though. And this is obvious even with the most basic web search. To me this looks like political intimidation and retribution by an out of control Supreme Court justice (Alexandre de Moraes). It’s a shame to see Brazil turn into a lawless banana republic.

Legally this is known as "piercing the veil" and if generally reserved for situations like this where someone is attempting to use a corporation to evade responsibility for law breaking.

Am I understanding this correctly? The judge didn't like what X did (or didn't do) so he is making moves against StarLink, which would allow users to potentially bypass the censorship this judge is pushing for.

It's not a question whether the judge disliked what X did or not. They were subpoenaed to block the accounts engaged in anti-democratic speech. Failing to do so, X would have to pay a 2k USD daily fine until they cooperated.

X decided to challenge, Moraes raised the fine to 20k USD daily, they continued defying the order, until they closed the company thinking this is a legal way to circumvent the debt they owe to the state.

Moraes found out that there are links between Starlink and X (Musk), so he decided to go after Starlink instead, blocking their bank accounts until X pays what they owe to the Brazilian state.

They were subpoenaed because of the judge's personal dislike for those accounts. It had nothing to do with the law.

As I understand it, X was fined, didn't pay, and the judge pierced a few corporate veils to discover that Starlink and X share a majority owner.

> Starlink and X share a majority owner

Musk doesn’t own a majority of Starlink or SpaceX. (SpaceX owns Starlink. SpaceX is controlled by Musk. But he owns less than 50% of the shares.)

Musk owns 79% of voting shares of spacex (but yes, only 42% of equity). I guess it depends on your definition of “owns”, but its not unreasonable to say he owns spacex.

He had to pierce veils to figure that out? Couldn’t he just check Wikipedia like everyone else?

Is this legal in the US?

If company A owns B and C; and C does something bad, can A or B be fined?

“Piercing the corporate veil” isn’t about discovering something that is a secret. It’s a legal principle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil

> Is this legal in the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piercing_the_corporate_veil#Un...

that's the idea of "limited liability". it has a lot of downsides in practice.

[dupe]

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41392962

That post is flagged though.

What are the lumps on his face in that picture?

Starlink is widely used in deforestation and mining in Brazil. Elon Musk personally flew to Brazil to promote it (with Balsenero?), despite the predictions that Starlink would be used that way. The political pitch was that schools in the far reaches would use it - that has measurably failed to materialize. Meanwhile, Federal raids on gold mining operations show Starlink transceivers routinely.

source: Brazilian activist report

The issue is not Starlink. It's that the Brazilian government is too inept and corrupt to tackle illegal mining in its backyard. Many countries have huge landmasses (US, Canada, China, etc.), yet no one gets away with something as brash as illegal mining.

Chainsaws are used as well. And fossil fuels. And electricity.

I’m sure if the Feds raid gold mining they’ll find some copper wires and other infrastructure.

Ah the why ban guns since knives can kill people too argument.

Different argument altogether.

Starlink does nothing special to enable mining. Thousands of people and industries use it. It’s just infrastructure.

I’m not arguing for replacements. I’m arguing that it’s stupid to blame infrastructure for the sins of the people using it.

That’s like blaming vegetables because Hitler was a vegetarian.

no it is nothing at all like blaming vegetables.. there is no cell phone coverage in the distant edges of inland Brazil.. and cell towers can track users.. Starlink directly enables clandestine communication where that is otherwise not possible.

But starlink does that for everyone. They don’t do anything special for mining.

Just like the mining operations use petroleum to mine. Petroleum directly enabled mining.

Mining uses electricity. Electricity directly enabled mining.

Directly enabling something doesn’t matter. If the tool is made to only do that, then it does. There are a lot of cases in the US about this. Like Betamax case where the court ruled that just being used for something illegal doesn’t give culpability, it’s necessary to be made specifically to do something illegal.

If starlink specifically added functionality to enable illegal mining then you might have a valid argument.

no - in those cases you mention there are alternatives or work-around products available.. what work-around product is available to have real-time communication from remote spots in the Brazilian territory ?

Satellite internet from other providers that’s available at a higher price.

But that’s not relevant. Because starlink is usable by everyone. Do you think they should have some way to prevent mining companies from using it? Is there a law in Brazil that prevents starlink from selling to miners?

that's not a source, could you link the report?

https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2024/05/15/find-out-how-ille...

and if someone questions this is a leftist website: https://fortune.com/2023/03/15/elon-musk-starlink-brazil-ama...

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