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I wonder whether SpaceX will allow Starlink service (https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/) to the open Internet even in repressive countries. Obv

I wonder whether SpaceX will allow Starlink service (https://www.starlink.com/ https://www.starlink.com/) to the open Internet even in repressive countries. Obviously there are many barriers, ranging from the states's security apparatuses to getting payment for service to Starlink to smuggling the dishes into the repressive countries, but it's not impossible to imagine a future in which open Internet access is much harder to block in many places.

trillic 6y ago
At some point in the near future there may open source antenna designs that could run SpaceX's closed source software on commodity equipment with service paid for by Bitcoin.
- ducktective 6y ago
  yeah, good luck with hiding the actual physical electromagnetic waves...heard those could be easily tracked.
  - drdaeman 6y ago
    TIL that Starlink uses phased arrays in their terminals, but I wonder if - for discretion's sake - it can be also made to work with parabolic dish antennas. Or do those phased arrays those days have small sidelobes? Either way, still should be possible to catch those in denser areas by wardriving, I think.
    - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
      The satellites are continuously moving so they use the phased array to track the motion of the satellites in real time (I believe). You could make a dish on a movable mount, but from an RF perspective that would be no less detectable than a dish. The point is that Starlink is a two way link, so someone flying overhead in an airplane could detect the transmitted signal. TV dishes are harder to detect because they don’t transmit when receiving TV, not because they are a dish.
      - drdaeman 6y ago
        Yeah, I get it's bidirectional and was thinking about a movable mount exactly. Flying over felt costly which is why I thought about wardriving and relying on transmitter antenna sidelobes for detection - as I believe they're smaller for parabolic antennas. From what I've heard, this is the most common approach - just a van roaming the city and comparing what they see to list of licensed radios. Although, now, thinking about the costs I feel that maybe I was wrong in that assumption, and flying drones is cheap enough for this purpose.
        TaylorAlexander 6y ago
        Ah yes that makes sense. I am not familiar with the differences in emission patterns.
walrus01 6y ago
two problems there: a) the present starlink architecture is bent pipe from each satellite. meaning that a satellite (for uninterrupted service, two or more satellites at the same time), in its moving LEO orbit needs to be simultaneously in view of the customer premises small terminal, and also a starlink earth station which is a link into terrestrial fiber networks. spacex is working on satellite-to-satellite trunk link connectivity but to the best of everyone's knowledge outside of the company, none of those have launched yet. because of that, you can't presently have a starlink terminal for an ordinary customer without a spacex-operated earth station geographically located in the same region. b) an adversarial high tech nation like russia (or iran, whatever) would have absolutely no problems with operating portable spectrum analyzers on the ground to identify and confiscate starlink terminals. it needs to be on a roof or other place with a clear view of the sky, isn't very small, and it needs to transmit. if it transmits in known bands, from the ground towards space, it can be identified from the ground and confiscated. training relatively unskilled law enforcement to use a portable spectrum analyzer and a ku band horn antenna would be at most a one day, eight hour training course. see what happens if you try to operate an unauthorized two-way VSAT link, 1.2 to 2.4m dish size, in the C or Ku bands in Ethiopia today, for example. Men with a pickup truck and firearms will show up to take your equipment and arrest you. all of that said, I think that there is still a lot of possibilities for circumvention of government censorship and filtering, even in an aggressive environment such as behind the great firewall of china. I highly encourage any interested persons with linux/networking software development expertise, and network engineering expertise to put some thought into how they might assist open source projects related to censorship, obfuscation/stego, and traffic-blockage circumvention. Except in an environment where the government literally orders EVERYTHING to be shut off (Kashmir, recently!), there will likely always remain some paths for traffic, because a country can only cripple its own internet for so long without causing significant economic impacts domestically.
- mbar84 6y ago
  I believe data transmission between the satellites is planned, or at least it was, maybe they dropped those plans entirely.
alicorn 6y ago
It is already all but illegal to use Starlink in Russia, and given modern surveillance technologies, setting up an access point against the will of authorities might be practically impossible.
- pietor 6y ago
  Everybody in Teheran has satellite dishes on their roof to watch illegal tv programming. You might be overestimating the efficiency of repressive authorities
  - modeless 6y ago
    Satellite TV dishes don't transmit and don't require the service provider to know your location.
    - bpodgursky 6y ago
      Yeah but if SpaceX has no actual corporate entity in Russia, Russia has no real way to force SpaceX to disclose the data. (short of threatening to shoot down satellites, which would normally be a viable threat, but honestly now SpaceX can launch a StarLink satellite for less than it costs to shoot one down)
      - tristanj 6y ago
        This is not the grandparent comment's point. SpaceX is not the weakest link here, the user on the ground transmitting radio signals is. Satellite communications are easily identifiable, and can be rapidly triangulated.
        bpodgursky 6y ago
        Hmm is it true that the dishes can be triangulated? I was under the impression that they were motorized and directional (not like a cell phone that's omnidirectional). Obviously they're a bit bulky for now, but I suspect they will shrink considerably over time.
modeless 6y ago
The chance of this is about zero unfortunately. Space is very heavily regulated and I don't see SpaceX trying to rock the boat at the expense of any possibility of eventually providing service in those countries. They don't have plausible deniability about where terminals are located. Knowledge of location is required for the system to work.
mrtksn 6y ago
It may not go well for the car business. If I recall correctly, Musk himself said that he will respect countries laws.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Then again, all criminals say that.
eznzt 6y ago
Internet access over satellite has been around since forever. It's a big thing in Cuba for example. Evidently, possession of the necessary equipment is illegal, and smuggling it in is extremely expensive.
rasz 6y ago
Not the space faring ones for sure.

trillic 6y ago

At some point in the near future there may open source antenna designs that could run SpaceX's closed source software on commodity equipment with service paid for by Bitcoin.

ducktective 6y ago
yeah, good luck with hiding the actual physical electromagnetic waves...heard those could be easily tracked.
- drdaeman 6y ago
  TIL that Starlink uses phased arrays in their terminals, but I wonder if - for discretion's sake - it can be also made to work with parabolic dish antennas. Or do those phased arrays those days have small sidelobes? Either way, still should be possible to catch those in denser areas by wardriving, I think.
  - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
    The satellites are continuously moving so they use the phased array to track the motion of the satellites in real time (I believe). You could make a dish on a movable mount, but from an RF perspective that would be no less detectable than a dish. The point is that Starlink is a two way link, so someone flying overhead in an airplane could detect the transmitted signal. TV dishes are harder to detect because they don’t transmit when receiving TV, not because they are a dish.
    - drdaeman 6y ago
      Yeah, I get it's bidirectional and was thinking about a movable mount exactly. Flying over felt costly which is why I thought about wardriving and relying on transmitter antenna sidelobes for detection - as I believe they're smaller for parabolic antennas. From what I've heard, this is the most common approach - just a van roaming the city and comparing what they see to list of licensed radios. Although, now, thinking about the costs I feel that maybe I was wrong in that assumption, and flying drones is cheap enough for this purpose.
      - TaylorAlexander 6y ago
        Ah yes that makes sense. I am not familiar with the differences in emission patterns.

walrus01 6y ago

two problems there: a) the present starlink architecture is bent pipe from each satellite. meaning that a satellite (for uninterrupted service, two or more satellites at the same time), in its moving LEO orbit needs to be simultaneously in view of the customer premises small terminal, and also a starlink earth station which is a link into terrestrial fiber networks. spacex is working on satellite-to-satellite trunk link connectivity but to the best of everyone's knowledge outside of the company, none of those have launched yet. because of that, you can't presently have a starlink terminal for an ordinary customer without a spacex-operated earth station geographically located in the same region. b) an adversarial high tech nation like russia (or iran, whatever) would have absolutely no problems with operating portable spectrum analyzers on the ground to identify and confiscate starlink terminals. it needs to be on a roof or other place with a clear view of the sky, isn't very small, and it needs to transmit. if it transmits in known bands, from the ground towards space, it can be identified from the ground and confiscated. training relatively unskilled law enforcement to use a portable spectrum analyzer and a ku band horn antenna would be at most a one day, eight hour training course. see what happens if you try to operate an unauthorized two-way VSAT link, 1.2 to 2.4m dish size, in the C or Ku bands in Ethiopia today, for example. Men with a pickup truck and firearms will show up to take your equipment and arrest you. all of that said, I think that there is still a lot of possibilities for circumvention of government censorship and filtering, even in an aggressive environment such as behind the great firewall of china. I highly encourage any interested persons with linux/networking software development expertise, and network engineering expertise to put some thought into how they might assist open source projects related to censorship, obfuscation/stego, and traffic-blockage circumvention. Except in an environment where the government literally orders EVERYTHING to be shut off (Kashmir, recently!), there will likely always remain some paths for traffic, because a country can only cripple its own internet for so long without causing significant economic impacts domestically.

mbar84 6y ago
I believe data transmission between the satellites is planned, or at least it was, maybe they dropped those plans entirely.

alicorn 6y ago

It is already all but illegal to use Starlink in Russia, and given modern surveillance technologies, setting up an access point against the will of authorities might be practically impossible.

pietor 6y ago
Everybody in Teheran has satellite dishes on their roof to watch illegal tv programming. You might be overestimating the efficiency of repressive authorities
- modeless 6y ago
  Satellite TV dishes don't transmit and don't require the service provider to know your location.
  - bpodgursky 6y ago
    Yeah but if SpaceX has no actual corporate entity in Russia, Russia has no real way to force SpaceX to disclose the data. (short of threatening to shoot down satellites, which would normally be a viable threat, but honestly now SpaceX can launch a StarLink satellite for less than it costs to shoot one down)
    - tristanj 6y ago
      This is not the grandparent comment's point. SpaceX is not the weakest link here, the user on the ground transmitting radio signals is. Satellite communications are easily identifiable, and can be rapidly triangulated.
      - bpodgursky 6y ago
        Hmm is it true that the dishes can be triangulated? I was under the impression that they were motorized and directional (not like a cell phone that's omnidirectional). Obviously they're a bit bulky for now, but I suspect they will shrink considerably over time.

modeless 6y ago

The chance of this is about zero unfortunately. Space is very heavily regulated and I don't see SpaceX trying to rock the boat at the expense of any possibility of eventually providing service in those countries. They don't have plausible deniability about where terminals are located. Knowledge of location is required for the system to work.

mrtksn 6y ago

It may not go well for the car business. If I recall correctly, Musk himself said that he will respect countries laws.

BurningFrog 6y ago
Then again, all criminals say that.

eznzt 6y ago

Internet access over satellite has been around since forever. It's a big thing in Cuba for example. Evidently, possession of the necessary equipment is illegal, and smuggling it in is extremely expensive.

rasz 6y ago

Not the space faring ones for sure.