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I am looking forward to LEO satellite networks that are connected to the Internet. Won't be easy to suppres yoir people then.

jiggawatts 6y ago
SpaceX is working on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink
- mrtksn 6y ago
  They will have to turn it off over countries that don't fancy free communication and are capable to get a projectile in LEO or have a market for electric cars.
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    -Given the cost of a StarLink satellite (I've no idea, but seeing as they will be launched in the tens of thousands, they can hardly be a gigabuck a piece), the solution to the first problem is simply to launch more of them. It is probably cheaper to launch a StarLink bird than it is to blow it out of orbit. Think of it as a DoS attack on the launch batteries! As for the second? I find that approach much more likely to succeed. Sigh.
    - pepesza 6y ago
      Think of Kessler syndrome. One can imagine that blowing (small) N of them would create a cloud of shrapnel posing danger for the whole network. Birds are on really low orbits, so it would clear after some time, but network might not survive this.
      - ric2b 6y ago
        Starlink satellites are in decaying orbits, eventually they fall through the atmosphere and burn away. They have some propellant to make adjustments and stay in orbit a bit longer but if you blow them up you just make the decay process quicker.
    - gruturo 6y ago
      Shooting down another country's satellites is an incredibly bad idea. First, it's one of extremely few actions actually likely to get you nuked or "liberated" - you just threatened one of the most valuable strategic advantages (even if it's just a civilian satellite, it wasn't yours, and militaries will consider their satellites under threat). Second, in case you're not aware, the remains of the satellite now are a danger to any other object in that orbital plane, and this can trigger a cascade reaction and take lots of them down, making new launches impossible for many years. Look for Kessler Syndrome.
      - adventured 6y ago
        > Shooting down another country's satellites is an incredibly bad idea. First, it's one of extremely few actions actually likely to get you nuked or "liberated" Nobody is nuking anybody else over satellites. Nukes will only be used in case of regime / home territory threat (eg if Russia were losing a conventional war, and NATO were pushing toward Moscow, Russia could throw down the nuke threat card and say stop or else), or in response to the use of a nuke. If North Korea starts shooting down US satellites at some point, it would prompt a conventional military bombing response (which would attempt to neutralize their ability to launch rockets at US satellites), and possible full-scale war. It would not prompt a nuclear retaliation. There is zero interest - anywhere - in seeing millions of people die over some satellites.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    are capable to get a projectile in LEO The plan for Starlink is to have 12,000 satellites eventually. You'd need to shoot down quite lot a of them to block access to an entire country.
Ninn 6y ago
It still will be for the state that has authority for the given provider.
AndrewBissell 6y ago
The internet is a massive network created by the military with the objective of surveillance baked in from its earliest origins. The LEO systems being built now will extend that network to every last corner of the globe, and the companies building them will do the bidding of the governments at whose behest they're allowed to function.
- trophycase 6y ago
  Yes it will be a sad day when there is nowhere on the globe you can go to be truly dark.
  - Causality1 6y ago
    Starlink has no impact on this nor do any other internet provider. The first spy satellites launched in 1959. Don't carry electronics with you and you can be as dark as any spot on earth has been in the last five decades.
  - wongarsu 6y ago
    While you probably could carry a starlink antenna on a backpack, nobody forces you to (And it would be very inconvenient). They are much to big to be incorporated into smartphones or notebooks.
    - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
      Boss: Vacation? Where are you going? You: Camping, in the mountains, sorry boss, no signal there, I won't be accessible. Boss: No problem.... here's a portable starlink antenna,... just in case... you know... if there is a bug in your code... or if we have a skype call with the clients... or if we need a bug fixed... haha.. you know, fixing bugs in the forest hehe.. well yeah... just have it connected during normal business hours, just in case... and check your emails while you're connected.. and slack... and CI logs... but otherwise, have a nice vacation, I hope you get some rest!
- salawat 6y ago
  It wasn't surveillance. It was providing a self healing command and control network capable of surviving a nuclear attack. It evolved into a Internetwork of trusted hosts to facilitate rapid information dissemination. It took a bunch of advertisers to turn it into surveillance nirvana by realizing that you could use http requests and your own portable sensor platform and in-house OS to rake in profit overwhelming.
wmf 6y ago
Except that distinctive Starlink antenna becomes an "arrest me" sign.
- kardos 6y ago
  Unless its disguised as something else
  - owl57 6y ago
    How do you disguise a radio transmitter? It's about as futile as disguising a searchlight.
    - baybal2 6y ago
      No so fast. China tried to crack down on VSAT terminal possession for years. Up to no, to a very little effect. Brown trucks with gobs of antennas are the guys who are tracking them down, some Chinese 3 letter service.
    - lb1lf 6y ago
      While a transmitter is indeed to a first approximation a beacon screaming 'I'm here!', do keep in mind that these antennas are highly directional, and while there will be side lobes, you basically need to be in the beam path to even detect it's there - complicating matters significantly. Besides, the antenna itself is rather small, and can be hidden inside just about any structure transparent to RF in the relevant frequency bands - say, a seemingly innocuous water cistern on the roof, for instance.
    - hansor 6y ago
      1. Narrow beam antenna (such as satellite antenna) does NOT propagate signal arround it (OMNIdirectional antennas does that). It's almost impossible to detect it unless you fly directly over the beam. Think about it as laser beam. 2. It is possible to build verious kinds of covert antennas. Radio amateurs do that all the time. Just google the term "stealth ham radio"
      - 6y ago
monadic2 6y ago
Depends who has jurisdiction over the satellites.
- chupasaurus 6y ago
  The points of connection to the Internet on Earth are major weak points in the system unless there would be thousands of those.
pjmorris 6y ago
I know you mean Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but it got me wondering about Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) satellite networks.

jiggawatts 6y ago

SpaceX is working on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink

mrtksn 6y ago
They will have to turn it off over countries that don't fancy free communication and are capable to get a projectile in LEO or have a market for electric cars.
- lb1lf 6y ago
  -Given the cost of a StarLink satellite (I've no idea, but seeing as they will be launched in the tens of thousands, they can hardly be a gigabuck a piece), the solution to the first problem is simply to launch more of them. It is probably cheaper to launch a StarLink bird than it is to blow it out of orbit. Think of it as a DoS attack on the launch batteries! As for the second? I find that approach much more likely to succeed. Sigh.
  - pepesza 6y ago
    Think of Kessler syndrome. One can imagine that blowing (small) N of them would create a cloud of shrapnel posing danger for the whole network. Birds are on really low orbits, so it would clear after some time, but network might not survive this.
    - ric2b 6y ago
      Starlink satellites are in decaying orbits, eventually they fall through the atmosphere and burn away. They have some propellant to make adjustments and stay in orbit a bit longer but if you blow them up you just make the decay process quicker.
  - gruturo 6y ago
    Shooting down another country's satellites is an incredibly bad idea. First, it's one of extremely few actions actually likely to get you nuked or "liberated" - you just threatened one of the most valuable strategic advantages (even if it's just a civilian satellite, it wasn't yours, and militaries will consider their satellites under threat). Second, in case you're not aware, the remains of the satellite now are a danger to any other object in that orbital plane, and this can trigger a cascade reaction and take lots of them down, making new launches impossible for many years. Look for Kessler Syndrome.
    - adventured 6y ago
      > Shooting down another country's satellites is an incredibly bad idea. First, it's one of extremely few actions actually likely to get you nuked or "liberated" Nobody is nuking anybody else over satellites. Nukes will only be used in case of regime / home territory threat (eg if Russia were losing a conventional war, and NATO were pushing toward Moscow, Russia could throw down the nuke threat card and say stop or else), or in response to the use of a nuke. If North Korea starts shooting down US satellites at some point, it would prompt a conventional military bombing response (which would attempt to neutralize their ability to launch rockets at US satellites), and possible full-scale war. It would not prompt a nuclear retaliation. There is zero interest - anywhere - in seeing millions of people die over some satellites.
- onion2k 6y ago
  are capable to get a projectile in LEO The plan for Starlink is to have 12,000 satellites eventually. You'd need to shoot down quite lot a of them to block access to an entire country.

Ninn 6y ago

It still will be for the state that has authority for the given provider.

AndrewBissell 6y ago

The internet is a massive network created by the military with the objective of surveillance baked in from its earliest origins. The LEO systems being built now will extend that network to every last corner of the globe, and the companies building them will do the bidding of the governments at whose behest they're allowed to function.

trophycase 6y ago
Yes it will be a sad day when there is nowhere on the globe you can go to be truly dark.
- Causality1 6y ago
  Starlink has no impact on this nor do any other internet provider. The first spy satellites launched in 1959. Don't carry electronics with you and you can be as dark as any spot on earth has been in the last five decades.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  While you probably could carry a starlink antenna on a backpack, nobody forces you to (And it would be very inconvenient). They are much to big to be incorporated into smartphones or notebooks.
  - ajsnigrutin 6y ago
    Boss: Vacation? Where are you going? You: Camping, in the mountains, sorry boss, no signal there, I won't be accessible. Boss: No problem.... here's a portable starlink antenna,... just in case... you know... if there is a bug in your code... or if we have a skype call with the clients... or if we need a bug fixed... haha.. you know, fixing bugs in the forest hehe.. well yeah... just have it connected during normal business hours, just in case... and check your emails while you're connected.. and slack... and CI logs... but otherwise, have a nice vacation, I hope you get some rest!
salawat 6y ago
It wasn't surveillance. It was providing a self healing command and control network capable of surviving a nuclear attack. It evolved into a Internetwork of trusted hosts to facilitate rapid information dissemination. It took a bunch of advertisers to turn it into surveillance nirvana by realizing that you could use http requests and your own portable sensor platform and in-house OS to rake in profit overwhelming.

wmf 6y ago

Except that distinctive Starlink antenna becomes an "arrest me" sign.

kardos 6y ago
Unless its disguised as something else
- owl57 6y ago
  How do you disguise a radio transmitter? It's about as futile as disguising a searchlight.
  - baybal2 6y ago
    No so fast. China tried to crack down on VSAT terminal possession for years. Up to no, to a very little effect. Brown trucks with gobs of antennas are the guys who are tracking them down, some Chinese 3 letter service.
  - lb1lf 6y ago
    While a transmitter is indeed to a first approximation a beacon screaming 'I'm here!', do keep in mind that these antennas are highly directional, and while there will be side lobes, you basically need to be in the beam path to even detect it's there - complicating matters significantly. Besides, the antenna itself is rather small, and can be hidden inside just about any structure transparent to RF in the relevant frequency bands - say, a seemingly innocuous water cistern on the roof, for instance.
  - hansor 6y ago
    1. Narrow beam antenna (such as satellite antenna) does NOT propagate signal arround it (OMNIdirectional antennas does that). It's almost impossible to detect it unless you fly directly over the beam. Think about it as laser beam. 2. It is possible to build verious kinds of covert antennas. Radio amateurs do that all the time. Just google the term "stealth ham radio"
    - 6y ago

monadic2 6y ago

Depends who has jurisdiction over the satellites.

chupasaurus 6y ago
The points of connection to the Internet on Earth are major weak points in the system unless there would be thousands of those.

pjmorris 6y ago

I know you mean Low Earth Orbit (LEO), but it got me wondering about Law Enforcement Officer (LEO) satellite networks.