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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

On the subject of hiding in high traffic channels, I wonder if I can even mention satellite piracy without getting on more watchlists. It's a thing that exists. Many satellites are relatively unsophisticated signal repeaters, and the antenna that receives their uplink signal isn't very directional, either. Or so I heard. Some companies have been known to go crazy trying to find out who's transmitting to their satellite that shouldn't, because they could be almost anywhere. Of course, if caught, they go to prison for a long time.

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The United States military has legacy UHF satcom satellites that are essentially bent-pipes that operate on UHF frequencies. There is an entire subculture of South American and European pirates that uses these transponders for everything from clear voice to encrypted data.

and they do this right alongside active, legit meant US military users. It’s wild.

good god...please dont tell me theres a subreddit for this

> Of course, if caught, they go to prison for a long time.

I can’t imagine how that would work, I could be in a foreign country or international waters. Who would have your jurisdiction? I don’t think it’s forbidden to send radio waves into space

Anyone who can acquire physical access to your body. Don't think that being in lawless places means you can avoid the law - it means they don't have to follow the law either when catching you.

Yeah, it's also worth noting that Starlink and a few other commercial companies are offering text-based services to _unmodified_ cell phones (no special sat hardware), which means they can get signal, IMEI, etc. LoRa is also used as transport layer for some cube sats and edu type sats. A new company just tested Bluetooth-to-sat. So even on the commercial side there are overhead sensors that you may need to be concerned about on the triangulation front. It's a hard problem to crack...

Starlink satellites are not dumb signal repeaters. They also use relatively localised spot beams. But yes, anything you transmit through one probably can't be localised to within more than about a hundred km, if the only available information is which beam you're in at which time.

You'd need to avoid providing information about the time the beam crosses over your position, which means you'd only activate your connection sporadically, at carefully planned times. You might pick a location relatively near you and down-orbit from you, and connect when that location comes into view of a new spot beam, and disconnect when it's directly over that location, perhaps.

I think his point was that unmodified existing phones are now both in range of satellites and able to communicate with them, ie no towers needed for surveillance.

yeah, that was my point. sorry I wasn't more clear

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