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You might anonymize users, but for this tech you can't anonymize location, so blocking communications for certain locations is possible and governments really,
by PeterisP 4y ago
You might anonymize users, but for this tech you can't anonymize location, so blocking communications for certain locations is possible and governments really, really want to ensure that they have a system where nobody else can deny them ability to talk to a certain place.
- karmakaze 4y agoCan satellites know precise location or only timings to get a ring of uncertainty? Also transmissions could be delayed/weakened to simulate being farther away. I don't know much anything about satellite communications which is why I was hoping someone who did could chime in.
- PeterisP 4y agoDepends on the satellites (for GEO ones it's very different), but for the particular case of Starlink, there are two aspects - first, as satellites are relatively low, each satellite can only possibly "see" a ~1000km radius so disconnecting certain large regions is trivial by having the satellite not work when it's above that area; but the main issue is that an important component to ensure their bandwidth is 'beamforming', focusing the antennas to cells which IIRC are something like 50km in size, so a Starlink satellite can be physically reachable for one city and not in the neighboring one, without the ground-based receiver being able to do anything about it.