Elon Musk's Starlink is just used by criminals, says Amazon State Governor | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's Starlink is just used by criminals, says Amazon State Governor

www1.folha.uol.com.br

2 pointsneves6 comments

Ugh. Brazil politics is a contact sport, with Bolsonaro's backers still in a position to make life difficult for Lula. So I expect overstated positions like this, in order to dirty-up a Bolsonaro policy.

There are a couple of technology issues to keep in mind: The first gen Starlink satellites are a "bent pipe." Packets are downlinked as soon as they are recieved, which means a country as large as Brasil needs ground stations (for now) which can be monitored for illegal activity.

Even when 1.5 and 2.0 Starlink satellites are more numerous, almost every nation has lawful intercept (LI) requirements, typically up to 1% (but most telecom gear supports much more) of traffic, and law enforcement agencies control which traffic is monitored from a console provided for that purpose.

To operate legally, SpaceX would have to provide LI capability. If they do, the "criminals use it" complaint is either uninformed or a ruse to get criminals to use it.

Amazon Governor is a Bolsonaro ally: https://g1.globo.com/am/amazonas/eleicoes/2022/noticia/2022/...

Even if ground stations are localized in the middle of the Amazon, it is neither easy nor cheap to gather a resources to disable it.

Huh, I did not know the person making the complaint is a Bolsonaro supporter. Still, I expect that Brazil has lawful intercept (LI) regulations and enforces them on telcos and ISPs.

Also, by "ground stations" I mean downlinks that are part of Starlink's infrastructure, and that would be connected to an LI system. Not user terminals. As far as I know, there are no "rogue" telecom providers that do not observe LI requirements.

The first generation satellites can't communicate with each other. The newer ones can, which means they can cover territory that has no ground stations by relaying traffic to satellites that can see a ground station. This is a big obvious advantage for Starlink but it complicates LI somewhat. It does not make it so difficult that Starlink or the countries it operates in could not do LI on Starlink.

The main Brazilian newspaper reports that Starlink network is just used in Amazon region by outlaws.

Ex-president Bolsonaro announced the partnership with great fanfare. It would empower education, but just 3 schools have it

It makes me wonder what other countries are using Starlink for criminal activity, perhaps it is because there is little to nobody monitoring activities on there.

What use is Starlink if only criminals are using it?

To me starlink was always a way for the US department of defense to have a fleet of low altitude satellites available all over the planet

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/pentagon-...

Through history, CIA used plenty of front companies as cover

So no wonder criminals are using them, it's very useful to have anywhere on the planet

If it's useful for people, it's useful for everyone

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