SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX disables 2,500 Starlink terminals allegedly used by Asian scam centers

arstechnica.com

235 pointsjnord220 comments

The title is underselling the nuance—there's the entire Myanmar civil war hiding behind the word "allegedly". The group in power claims a group trying to overthrow them is operating scam centers (they deny it); this SpaceX intervention cuts off communications on a large scale, presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way.

> "“Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park,” the AP wrote. The Karen National Union is “part of the larger armed resistance movement in Myanmar’s civil war” and “deny any involvement in the scams.”"

A scam is a scam right

Right - shutdown the scam centers. Why is this so hard? If one group is using the scam center to power their resistance ... that resistance is built on a really bad foundation.

I get that if you are shutting down comms for an an org thats different - but if its a known scam center not a tough decision here.

The nominal group in power should be able to deny/allow communication from the space above their country though.

But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't give the time of day to the requests of a junta commiting crimes against humanity, systemic extermination[0] of ethnic minorities.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohingya_genocide

> But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't...

Should everyone else be allowed to do anything they want in a country as long as it's from a distance because "your laws don't apply to me"? Is it fine when Russian, Chinese, or NK hackers are operating against the US?

If a country is good enough to sell to and provide a service there, it's good enough to obey its laws.

Starlink isn't sold to Myanmar.

Sold in, not sold to. The GP meant: if you consider it legitimate to sell your product in Myanmar, you should obey the laws of Myanmar. If you consider the government is illegitimate, don't do business there.

What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide, as Mynamar's is? Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?

This thread baffles me, that people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians, to tunnel-vision instead on some trivial and insignificant technicalities about satellite law.

Because a good chunk of people on this site have so little moral development that to them "whatever the law says is moral".

> What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide

That's an interesting question, I'll say. I can't say yes or no but I can say that the answer should be consistent. You either support genocidal regimes, or you don't.

So you have Starlink operating in Israel and in Myanmar.

> that people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians, to tunnel-vision instead on some trivial and insignificant technicalities about satellite law.

Imagine the bafflement when some people stick to their tunnel vision while writing about other people's tunnel vision on the same exact topic.

> What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide, as Mynamar's is? Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?

Yes. The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change. But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.

Several international companies have divested or exited due to political risk, sanctions, or human rights concerns.

> people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians

To consider, the following countries, amongst others, retain embassies in Myanmar: Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, UK, USA.

Should embassy staff break the country's laws?

> The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change.

Oh, that is the novel idea. For people being genocided to not be there and for those who are against genocide to let themselves be killed in the first step.

> But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.

Breaking the laws is frequently necessary in the genocide situation, because the laws were designed to create and facilitate the genocide. Genocides do not just happen out of nothing.

>> The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change.

> Oh, that is the novel idea. For people being genocided to not be there and for those who are against genocide to let themselves be killed in the first step.

>> But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.

>Breaking the laws is frequently necessary in the genocide situation, because the laws were designed to create and facilitate the genocide. Genocides do not just happen out of nothing.

My response was to this question: "Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?"

Nothing about the people of Myanmar.

My answer is different if you're a Myanmar person. But you still face the moral question of which laws you should disregard vs. which to follow.

Agreed. I think I have an explanation (a partial one, at best). The tech world is so adept at abstraction that we have made it one of our primary tools in the box. Everything gets abstracted away until we have a nice, clean, uniform representation of the underlying item. Whether that item is people, vehicles, road accident data or private communications doesn't really matter any more once it is abstracted. Then it's just another record.

Ethics and other moral angles no longer apply, after all, how could those apply to bits, that's for 'real' engineers. It's also at the core of the HN "'no politics', please." tenet.

I see a similar deficiency in the legal profession, they too tend to just focus on the words and the letters and don't actually care all that much about the people.

Starlink isn't sold in Myanmar either. SpaceX does not do business in Myanmar.

Starlink has the precise terminal location and gets paid for the subscription for that terminal. They know where it is and who pays for it. From the article they say that they were selling a service there and stopped in order to comply with local laws:

> SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers.'”

I think the point (which you seem to have missed) is: How do you distinguish between a terminal under the control of a scam center versus, say, a journalist who has traveled to the vicinity of the call center to interview people and make a report (The Economist recently had an excellent series of articles about these call centers).

Neither terminal was bought in Myanmar. Both have been transported to and used in the vicinity of the scam center. The difference is purely the intent of the person controlling the terminal. But you can't infer that intent from only the location where it was purchased and the precise location where it is being used.

> > SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers.'”

Sure, because it's currently in the news and it's any easy way to say "we fixed the problem". Maybe some Economist journalist just lost internet access. Oh well. Guess they'll have to find their way out of Myanmar without internet. Sucks to be them, right?

> How do you distinguish between a terminal under the control of a scam center versus, say, a journalist who has traveled to the vicinity of the call center to interview people and make a report.

You are told by the local law enforcement and legal system? Starlink's obligation is only to assist local authorities as per their law. Maybe the local authorities are corrupt but that doesn't give Starlink a free pass from obeying their law.

> Neither terminal was bought in Myanmar.

Does it matter? Starlink does business there, in Myanmar. They offer an internet service. They were asked by the authorities to disable some terminals, and because they want to keep offering the service to other paying customers, they complied. There's no legal grey area here, not even a moral conundrum for Musk. He follows the law of the land, gets to still do business and make more money.

Point being, as long as Starlink wants to keep offering a service and make money in Myanmar the company has to obey local laws. The statement below [0] that started the thread was a kneejerk reaction, keyboard warrior style. Musk "didn't give the time of day" to Brazilian authorities and he was squeezed into compliance. Why fight when there's an easy way to keep making money?

> But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't give the time of day to the requests of a junta

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45680818

> Starlink has the precise terminal location

This place is literally on the border, look: https://www.google.com/maps/place/KK+PARK/@16.7146829,98.479...

They likely allow some margin of error in the positioning so that people on the Thailand side of the border don't get accidentally blocked.

Although... I checked and they also apparently don't provide service in Thailand so I dunno what's going on there.

> Should everyone else be allowed to do anything they want in a country as long as it's from a distance because "your laws don't apply to me"? Is it fine when Russian, Chinese, or NK hackers are operating against the US?

Yes absolutely, see the ridiculous censorship the British government is trying to establish against us companies.

Companies should be forced to comply with local law when they have a physical office there or there is a government to government contract that regulates how commerce should be done between those countries. Now, Myanmar or the british or whoever can block, deny payment services or make it illegal to use such services for their locals but it is ludicrous to accept the laws of foreign countries just because.

> Companies should be forced to comply with local law when they have a physical office there

What happens when they send signals in that country, like Starlink is explicitly doing? What if companies in Mexico or Canada started blasting signals on frequencies used in the US for critical communication, would that fall under "they should comply with US law"? What if Russia does the same with boats on the border?

First, consider separating state actors from companies. Countries actively sabotaging critical infrastructure is an act of war like russia is doing with GPS Signals. It's not a matter of legal or illegal but a matter of are you willing and able to either sanction or bomb the country into changing their behavior.

As for what companies are doing: If i'm legally allowed to send a signal inside mexico that interferes with US Signals, sucks to be an US Person relying on that signal but me as a company wouldn't give a shit. Doubly so for space based assets.

This is where inter country contracts come into play. If your country and my country have a contract that designates some signals for public use and others not, than local law can be changed to comply with those contracts. Everything else is just a matter of tragedy of the commons or questionable encroachments into another countries sovereignity.

> First, consider separating state actors from companies

Can you? Ok, "definitely private company who doesn't operate at the behest of the state". That's a loophole you can fly a country through.

> Countries actively sabotaging critical infrastructure is an act of war

> If i'm legally allowed to send a signal inside mexico that interferes with US Signals, sucks to be an US Person relying on that signal but me as a company wouldn't give a shit.

So is it "an act of war" or a "don't give a shit" situation?

> Can you? Ok, "definitely private company who doesn't operate at the behest of the state". That's a loophole you can fly a country through.

Yeah, no one is making money sabotaging GPS Signals. The reality is that there are numerous agreements that regulate the use of frequencies. If a country tolerates misuse that actively interferes with another countries critical infrastructure that's pretty blatant. And again, you as the country being interfered with can do everything from tariffs, sanctions to destroying boats to make the other country interested in enforcing their laws and stop you from interfering.

> So is it "an act of war" or a "don't give a shit" situation?

This isn't as hard as you try to make it. If country a allows commercial use of a frequency band, any company in that country wouldn't have to give a shit about using it. If you as a country deliberately chose a frequency band for commerical use that just so happens to interfer with your neighbours police signals, enjoy the sanctions, diplomacy or war that follows.

But trying to make companies in country a follow the laws in country b is not going to happen by fiat just because. Imagine Saudi Arabias anti atheism laws being enforced in the USA because they might be able to receive your website. Ridicolous.

As a point of law, when Russia interferes with GPS signals in some third country (like Ukraine or whatever) that wouldn't be considered an act of war against the USA. An act of war would be something like a direct kinetic or cyber attack against our Navstar satellites.

It gets more complicated with international relationships though. If two countries have any kind of relationship, e.g. trade, then a conflict between a company and a government can escalate and bleed out to other relationships.

In this case, the Myanmar government could tell the US that "hey buddy, SpaceX isn't playing ball, make them or we'll kick out your embassy, tourists, and trade relationships". I don't know if they have any of that, but take that as an example.

Sure, but given that the USA isn't a dictatorship on paper, there would have to be some law forbidding SpaceX from doing what they are doing or at least some incentive like the lucrative government contracts. But that's just diplomacy between nations. Consider a country that the USA doesn't give a shit about complaining. They wouldn't stop SpaceX they would tacitly encourage them in fact.

> because "your laws don't apply to me"?

That's exactly how it works, via ability to apply laws. If there is no abiliyt to apply the law, then yeah, everyone allowed to do anything they want.

Allowed, no, but there's also no direct consequences. Indirect consequences though, like counterattacks, sanctions, export restrictions, etc are a thing. But a country like NK doesn't care about relationships with the US or Europe, since they benefit more from their relationship with China and Russia, their close neighbours (physically and culturally).

Anyway, it's like free speech, I can say anything I want on the internet because what are you going to do, huh? But it'll also mean that if I were to contact you for a job later on you'd be like "nu uh you insulted my mother". Plus I'd get banned from HN.

It's not fine I think, and I'm honestly surprised that years of continued cyberattacks haven't led to an escalation outside of the internet yet. Can't be economic sanctions because the US already doesn't deal with NK for example. I am not aware of the victims of state sponsored cyberattacks doing any cyber-counter-attacks either, but that's likely down to a lack of reporting.

That is, cyberattacks are seen as a victimless or economic only thing, not unlike economic sanctions.

I think you'll find this is not 'at the request' of any government but part of a much wider policy being implemented.

Eg, Cambodia just had $15B in crypto confiscated (ostensibly illegal proceeds of the 'Prince' group, but IMHO they are just a front for the state), and is facing a financial blacklisting.

China were pressuring the area to crack down on this stuff early this year, but it's quite possible the trigger for the west to get more involved was the Cambodia/Thai conflict, which was a simple personal feud over this business, provoked by the Cambodian leader, but which risked spreading into a much wider conflict.

Starlink's base stations follow the laws of every country they are on the ground in.

Really? Even Darth vader?

Who defines "should"?

> Who defines "should"?

The group in power of the country

No, it's the group in power in outer space.

I agree with the parent comment, each country should control the communications in its own airspace. Surely this is how it works? Starlink cant just start selling internet in countries it has no jurisdiction or communications license in?

Why not? Isn't the entire point of the internet to make access to communication of information equal?

We're playing around with the word "should" here, but from a moral standpoint, I disagree with any opinion that a sovereign power should(morally) be able to control communication at all - short of immediate threats to public safety (yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater).

Theres a difference between people in different countries talking freely, and people selling internet connections to residents in another country where they have no company registration.

Control vs want. If you don't have power in outer space, you simply don't control what happens. You can hope that whoever has power respects your desires.

If the country can't control it, what power do they have? GPS and sattelite TV can also be received anywhere, as long as you can somehow get a receiver for it there's little that can be done about it except maybe jamming. (I don't actually know if systems like GPS can be turned off on a per country basis)

That said, Starlink can be turned off on a per country basis, so the government can ask (or demand) that to be done. If they refuse, there may be consequences that can be escalated to a political level.

For GPS, jamming does happen: https://gpsjam.org/

9/11 was perpetrated by people who couldn't have knocked out Starlink or anything else in space but still found a way to harm their enemies. Simply not being a superpower doesn't make one entirely harmless. Starlink has assets, soft and hard, all over the globe, in easy to destroy places. No one even needs to claim responsibility for the damage. It just needs to be understood that it was the result of ignoring the threat of retaliation by those being imposed upon. Whether or not that imposition is moral in a particular set of eyes doesn't change the reality of what happens when those imposed upon decide to lash out.

So Israel should control Palestinian communications because they are in control and dubiously claim legal ownership of settlements?

Communication is a tool of freedom and these comments seem so willing to give it away.

Sovereign is he who decides the exception.

Schmitt is so quotable, haha.

Churchill would not have approved quoting a Nazi to buttress an argument.

I can denounce Nazis while admitting an objective point made by Schmitt. Churchill himself was a ghoul who considered Indians, Africans, etc. inferior and while he denounced the Nazis' tactics, he had no problem using similar ones to suppress colonized natives.

In other words, Churchill might have hated the Nazis (because they threatened his beloved England), but he believed in the state of exception they promoted. He believed he wasn't obligated to obey basic decency when dealing with non-European natives because, like Schmitt would say, "sovereign is he who determines the exception."

Could equally have quoted G.Mosca, that power must sometimes circumvent norms or use extra-legal means to preserve the system.

They can. They can have laws and try to enforce them. International Law and Companies should not be in the business of doing jackbooted thugs work for them.

The same apply for other stuff like chat cryptography. No, we shouldn't fuck everyone's right to privacy because your fat policemen are unable to conduct an investigation on meatspace and prefer to just have a digital panopticon.

obs: I upvoted you because while I consider your position absolutely abhorrent, I believe you're entitled to it and we should not downvote comments just because we don't agree with them.

Would SpaceX comply if it was an order from a Brazilian court?

You think resistance movements should never have telecommunications access?

You think the issue is that black and white?

That's not what OP is saying.

An entity truly in control should be able to deny access to insurrectionists because of you know, being in control.

Clearly, they are not in control of SpaceX.

Yes they are, if they are able to force SpaceX to do as they want.

They are in control of the military, and presumably the capital city area and a majority of the country's resources.

That says nothing about their power to control the satellites overhead.

I think the commenter only meant that there is such a thing as RF engineering. But that to be effective, RF engineering would require the local authorities to have some level of control over the region they want to shut down.

Thus, the authorities must not have that control.

I agree with the commenter from a technical perspective. It's extremely easy to cut off SpaceX terminals in some area if you control that area.

I just don't think that's relevant. It's not the local authorities the rest of the world is lining up behind, it's the regional players around Myanmar. The regional players can countenance the local authorities only slightly more than the warlords and gang leaders. What the local authorities want is almost completely irrelevant to the regional players.

One's freedom fighter is someone else terrorist.

One's nominal group in power is someone else's genocidal occupier.

Again, this is often the case in civil conflicts (factional fighting). But the subjects of this action are undeniably bad actors. Are the authorities bad actors as well, yes, very likely. But the regional players want the targeted subject's abilities degraded and their options strangled regardless of what the local authority wants. I think the rest of the world is simply lining up behind the regional players. Which was inevitable really.

And frequently the so called terrorist is not a terrorist by any reasonable meaning of that world. Like, frequently they are non violent.

However, in this specific situation, they are definitely terrorists.

"armed resistance movement" sounds pretty close to terrorists to me

Was the US revolution against the British empire terrorism?

Nowadays talking about independence would be considered "Terrorism" This word is a new "Catch all" for everything you don't like (immigrants, antifa, any protest...)

> antifa

To be fair, Antifa is objectively a terrorist organization, given that they employ violence on innocents to cause fear in the populace to achieve political goals. That's literally the definition of terrorism.

Yes, although the term hadn't yet been invented:)

Only if you redefine "terrorism" to include any armed resistance/revolution.

What word, terrorism? In my head the term was much older, but looking it up shows it's a late 18th century French word. TIL, lucky 10k I guess. Then I realized I was confusing it with assassin.

Unless, of course, they're freedom fighters.

That is definitely an "It Depends"

It depends a lot on who they are shooting

If they are shooting irrelevant and innocent civilians (with the goal of introducing broader fear in the population to somehow change their minds), then definitely terrorists.

If they are shooting only govt/regime military/police/enforcers or officials, much more like an opposing power.

I'm going to hard disagree here. You're part of this whole sliding of the word terrorism from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.

Using violence to overthrow the Myanmar government is not automatically terrorism at all. Groups throughout history have used organized violence without resorting to inflicting fear to achieve their goals.

>from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.

What's the difference between the two, besides the latter lacking a just cause? If that's the only difference, then that just proves my and OP's point that "one man's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist"

Are you voluntarily dismissing the issue of fear. Rising up, taking weapons, and fighting for a cause does not automatically come with the dispersal of fear on civilian populations. That’s the difference: the choice of not dealing in fear.

Exactly! And that's why we all agree that Nelson Mandela, the WWII French resistance and Native Americans are clearly terrorists!

Frequently they are nonviolent.

In this particular case however, they are decidedly violent and dangerous. So why not cut them off?

Then make that argument instead of arguing by slogan.

Why?

Law of the land. Must follow it to operate in that jurisdiction

Or what?

We're not talking about Russia or China. They don't have the capability to destroy satellite constellations.

Might makes right?

That kind of arrogance is what leads to 9/11, the most successful destruction of a western country since ww2.

Didn't this happen because of the abandonment of this principle?

9/11 would not have happened if there were no radical Muslims in the world, and US had the Might to make such world.

The US had the might to make such a world as demonstrated by... their loss to the Taliban in Afghanistan?

Killing an individual is easy. Killing an ideology next to impossible, and trying tends to make the proponents more violently against you.

>US had the Might to make such world.

It is clear to me that the US never had the capacity to do that.

But they can fly a plane that detects Starlink signals (...I presume, I don't actually know how it works) and target the areas that have them.

But that's an escalation, it's better to talk about it first with the party in question, if they don't answer there can be further legal recourse. International law and -lawsuits are a thing.

But this comment thread sounds like reason and legal systems aren't working, and suppression and military action are the only recourse left. I mean to a point I agree, but at the same time we (as humanity) are not (or should not be) savages.

> fly a plane that detects Starlink signals

Starlink are quite directional. They are easily detected even from a standard vehicle.

> International law and -lawsuits are a thing

No, it's not a thing. International laws operate on exactly the same principle "Or what?".

> but at the same time we (as humanity) are not (or should not be) savages.

Part of not being a savage is the ability to not give a f.ck about what the savages have written on their papers, which we call laws. Or to give a f.ck depending on what is most convenient for us, the non-savages, from the standpoint of the "or what?" principle.

Didn’t Musk ask Brazil the same “or what” question and had to back down? Musk and Starlink do legitimate business in Myanmar, why put it all at risk just to protect those 2500 subscriptions?

Why is everyone with a keyboard so adamant to “fight” when compliance was obviously the better business decision?

You think Starlink should switch off in Sudan? Iran? Cuba?

There's no legit business in Myanmar or any of those other locations

> There's no legit business in Myanmar

I'm thinking the same. But there's probably plenty of illegitimate business, non-scammy terminals in the country which generate revenue.

Complying was the best option for Musk even if he doesn't care about Myanmar local law. It's a bad look to have your brand associated with supporting scam centers that defraud Americans as it was pointed out by the top US senator investigating the use of Starlink in the scam operations. This hits closer to home.

Because that's how a sovereign nation works. Have a problem with it? Talk to the gun.

Hard no. Communications is a human right. I’d say routing communications as a private company is a privilege that can be extended or denied, but this perspective is poison IMO.

It's wild to me how many of these comments are appealing to local law without any thought to what is just.

If the local law was to deny all women or some ethnic group access to communication, the world should do it without question?

>If the local law was to deny all women

Palestine gets widespread support

In that case, they're probably the lesser of two evils. Women can't campaign for more rights if they're dead...

That is sort of the way I see it. It's a leap to ask for gay or women's rights before the county has the right to not be bombed.

It's a leap even without being bombed. Asking for gay or women's rights is asking for reform or elimination of Islam. Leftists never seem to want that, I think because they see Muslims as an oppressed group that should be supported, not have their identity taken away from them.

Queers for Palestine is so hard to wrap my head around.

it's not hard to understand. people simply not liking queers doesn't mean they deserve to be bombed. also there are queers in Palestine and they are getting bombed too by Israel

'not liking' you mean actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis.

https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/queers-for-palestin...

> actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis

There's only one man being killed in the article you linked, and his killing is way more complex that the article made it to be.

https://www.npr.org/2024/09/27/g-s1-17637/hebron-west-bank-i...

Pretty sure that's not enough evidence for 'actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis'.

On the other hand, Israel had probably killed tens if not hundreds or thousands of queers in Gaza as of now. That surely count for 'murdering on a consistent basis'.

> Israel had probably killed tens if not hundreds or thousands of queers in Gaza as of now

When you pull easily google-able numbers out of thin air, you undermine the credibility of your overall point: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/7/two-years-of-israel...

That doesn't undermine their statement at all. They wrote hundreds or thousands, perhaps you misread it as hundreds of thousands? 67,000 killed per your link, assuming only 1% were LGBTQ, means around 670 LGBTQ people killed, which falls well within the standard definition of "hundreds". Even if they only make up 0.5% of the population, it's still hundreds. And to hit "tens" they only need to be about 0.1% of the Gazan population.

There ain’t that many queers in Gaza, genius.

Not anymore...

There aren’t many people out of the closet in repressive regimes, no, but it’s estimated that 5-10% of people will be somewhere on the gay spectrum if allowed (with substantial cultural variation on how they identify themselves and describe their sexuality, of course). It’s exceedingly unlikely that the people in Gaza are freak outliers in this regard, and the population is more than large enough for 5% to mean thousands of people.

I’m not saying gay, specifically queers.

You ignored the "actively hunting down" part for Israel. Killing gays without realizing they're gay doesn't count. It should be obvious to you that the problem with killing gays isn't that they're more deserving of life than straights but that specifically targeting them puts each gay person in greater danger.

> Killing gays without realizing they're gay doesn't count.

One of the more deranged things I've read today. Then again it's unsurprising coming from an extremist that defends hospital bombings: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45211554

> killing people indiscriminately is better than killing people because they are gays

sometimes I really wonder whether people like you actually read what you just post...

Can you respond to it without resorting to insults? You completely misquoted what I said so first step is to understand before responding.

On a broader scale, the marriage of far left and islam are not from some love of shared values. Its from the love of shared enemy, capitalism and western civilization.

Feels more like a psy-op than anything else. Some on the left can't resist protesting war crimes despite understanding the nuance and that is used to call them the "enemy of western civilization."

I think the biggest reason is that leftists favor weak groups. Muslims are poor and relatively powerless globally so leftists see them as oppressed and deserving sympathy. Combine that with Jews being the polar opposite and it's clear why leftists would favor Palestinians in that war. But yes, anti-Westernism is probably a factor too.

I don't understand why leftists are so ravenous about Palestine, but NOT batting any eye about the [actual] genocide of Christians in Nigeria. I think their empathy comes from a good place, at least in their minds, but it's so selective.

I'm not saying, I'm better, I'm pretty apathetic. But I don't get it.

Because Christians are powerful in America, so as a group, they appear to Americans to be privileged, not oppressed. It's groups that matter, not individuals.

It comes from a need to support slaves, or weak powerless people.

Slaves as a term isn't as relevant today as it was centuries ago, but still it captures the idea of a class of "oppressed and powerless" people well.

In an extreme twist of irony however, both Christianity and Judaism are religions born from slaves, hence the emphasis on classic liberal values (love thy neighbor as thyself). Islam however is not a slave religion, and was born from power, on the other end of the spectrum (kill non-believers who don't convert)

Yes, this exactly. And IMO, mainstream liberals have drifted so far left on some issues, that these views are just... commonplace. Saying this as a disaffected registered democrat.

It isn't at all, this is the dumbest "gotcha" ever.

You can absolutely support someone who doesn't support you back. Queers for Palestine isn't saying "Free Palestine so I can move there and live my life", it's saying "Palestinians should be free even if they don't like me, because freedom is imperative"

The ACLU did the same fucking thing with literal nazi marches decades ago and nobody made this kind of dumb claim, and a shocking number of people who make this "gotcha" about queers for Palestine get upset that the ACLU now says they shouldn't support the right of Nazis.

I support the freedom of religion for people who practice religions that say I am the devil or need to be saved or I should be oppressed. I do NOT support those religions enacting such oppression, or modifying my government for stupid things they believe in, but that doesn't mean they should not have the right to practice their own beliefs that don't affect other people.

I want Palestinians to have a country that does not oppress women and outlaw birth control (That's why most of Palestine is children by the way; oppression), and murder random people in the town square, but that still requires they get "freedom" of some kind. I would argue that freedom also requires the Palestinians are made free from Hamas, but there is an awkward chance that Palestinians right now would choose Hamas given a free choice. I don't have a solution for that.

Regardless, the solution to any of that is still not fairly indiscriminate bombing with high accepted collateral casualties.

I'm not saying I don't understand having empathy for any type of civilians in a war zone. But there are plenty of worse massacres over the last 10 years, and the far left folks aren't up in arms over it. They only care about certain power dynamics.

Do you have an objective source about what law in Palestine denying access to all women?

Whether or not you like it, that's how international relations works.

The US famously has gripes with Cuba, Iran, HK, Afghanistan and others, that affect those countries unfairly. If another country decides to side with Iran, they'll find themselves on the US sanction list. So is it more just to deny the people of your country access to trade and interaction with the US?

Yes, if they are operating within that region, then they should be following local laws. Allowing companies to break laws they don't agree with is a bad precedent to set.

The precedent seems to be that anyone can broadcast anything without caring what territories can receive your broadcast (see Voice of America broadcasts during the Cold War or GPS jamming in the Baltic nowadays). This seems to be extendable to broadcasting from space. The nominal group in power may ban/jam _receiving_ equipment on their territory though.

US law prohibits Starlink from transmitting into countries that don't permit it, with exceptions as directed by the US Government. If this was not the case, Starlink would have made its product available globally instead of having to seek permission from every country they want to service (called "landing rights")

There is no single group which has power over all of Myanmar. It is a failed state.

Depends if your country claims to be free or not, or what your own morals and values are - if you believe in "might makes right", then sure, the ones in power get to suppress freedom of information to the rest of the country. If you believe in a free democracy, then information and communication should be free (think freedom of speech, press, information, etc).

The cool thing about multi national corporations is that you're more powerful than nation states in your respective domain, a demigod

The nominal group in power in Myanmar depends on where you are standing and changes with time. The official government has no authority in most of the country.

They may well deny it, but there's plenty of international documentation showing it is indeed a thing, and presumably starlink have even more evidence.

The truth is more likely that both the junta and local militias have ties to different scam centres. The Myanmar government never does anything for its people, it's motivated by power and money and they were profiting heavily from scam centres until China's patience broke, due to large numbers of Chinese being trafficked and imprisoned at these scam compounds. The junta needs China's support in order to survive. As the junta lost control of the border regions the local militias stepped in to either profit from scams or close them to please China, depending upon what they thought would benefit them most.

i haven’t seen any good evidence tying the Tatmadaw to these large-scale scam operations, while I have seen a fair bit of evidence tying a few of the regional militias.

Many of those regional militias are or were integrated into the Tatmadaw as Border Guard Forces to hold territory against other militias. E.g. the scam centers in Laukkai were run by the local BGF until 2023 when the Tatmadaw lost control to the MNDAA, who then shut them down, presumably as part of a deal with China. The Tatmadaw doesn't control many towns on the eastern border anymore, but they do control Muse near the border with China, where scam centers were operating unimpeded until after that offensive, when the Tatmadaw began to target them with arrests and deportations https://shwepheemyay.org/english-edition/junta-raids-muse-sc... probably to get back on China's good side.

It's a very well proven fact that the scam centers are operated by Chinese given that before covid they were all Chinese casinos that transitioned to online scams because no Chinese could leave China to spend their money there.

If it's a very well proven fact, can you link to some objective sources to your strongly worded claims? Given that clearly this is a very politically sensitive subject, I'm not going to trust a commenter on the internet on their own.

Wikipedia is a good start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KK_Park

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shwe_Kokko

Statement by US Treasury: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0237

If you ever been to Myanmar you'd know that Burmese simply have no capability of operating something like this, especially now.

>presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way

"I'm strongly opposed to one side or the other gaining a possible advantage or disadvantage in some unclear way"

LOL

It's important to know that anything Elon or Tesla or SpaceX says about freedom of speech or libertarianism, is subject to either the US government or President Trump or Elon's personal beliefs about freedom of speech.

Which so far have been "I support complete freedom of speech. (for myself, and censorship for others)"

They aren't going to sell a product that could be used against them. Our allies are reasonably asking if the high-tech F-35 fighters have kill switches too

Any topic related to Elon Musk seems to get flooded with low-entropy uninteresting comments.

It won't be the first time that Starlink takes a side in a military conflict somewhere in the world. Somewhere they do it openly and boast proudly about it, somewhere they just keep it quiet.

I don't think the nuance you believe exists actually exists.

The scam centers at KK Park and Shwe Kokko employ forced laborers numbering in the thousands - they literally kidnap people from neighboring countries, imprison them, confiscate their passports, and force them to conduct scam operations for 17 hours a day, torturing them if they fail to comply.

The KNU is undoubtedly in on this, allowing it to happen within their area of control and almost certainly profiting financially from it.

The stuff going on there is evil of the highest degree. It's evil on a level that many Hacker News users probably did not even realize exists in the world.

Starlink doesn't even offer service in Myanmar! The operators of the scam centers acquired the terminals through their criminal connections.

Yes the Tatmadaw is also evil. It doesn't really matter though. This is a pretty black and white scenario. What's going on is dark beyond belief and any action which curtails it is positive.

> Starlink doesn't even offer service in Myanmar!

If this is the case, what is the justification for allowing them at all? If the receiver's location is not in an authorized service area, why allow it to connect? In fact, I'm surprised that's not automated. I can't access websites due to geofencing, yet Starlink can't figure out the location of the dish accessing their network? I'm not buying that at all.

> If the receiver's location is not in an authorized service area, why allow it to connect?

Money and other KPIs. Money is an obvious KPI - 2500 terminals at 100 $ a month each, 250k a month in income, nothing to sneeze at. The more important KPI however is satellite utilization.

And it's not like either the legitimate Myanmari government nor the various oppositional factions have any interest, much less ability, in trying to curtail Starlink.

they have interest in curtailing for the opposition while keeping it for themselves

In light of this game of cat and mouse, the age of direct satellite-to-handset telecommunications is a harbinger of a more disquieting capability: dirtboxes in orbit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirtbox_(cell_phone)

> A dirtbox (or DRT box) is a cell site simulator, a phone device mimicking a cell phone tower, that creates a signal strong enough to cause nearby dormant mobile phones to switch to it.

They can easily like you say, there's a GPS receiver in each terminal

The compound is located right next to the Thai border, on a section of river that juts into Thailand.

Small parts of the compound actually appear to be within Thailand, at the border resolution Google maps uses: https://www.google.com/maps/place/16%C2%B038'51.2%2522N+98%C...

Yes, but starlink doesn't operate in Thailand either.

Do you have a link/information supporting this? This sounds on the crazy side but considering Dubai and China are reported doing similar things I could believe it.

Not a formal source, but one youtuber went to the zone where these people are being held and found some of the forced scammers https://youtu.be/lx1SIEwwZrU?si=MIO-C14WxNSBMqMK&t=1118 (at 18:30)

The Wikipedia articles on both of those compounds should have sources. I first learned about it by reading Thai media. Abductions of both tourists and Thai nationals in Thailand has become an issue.

The scam centers are real and there has been extensive reporting on them. Look up “Operation Shamrock” and particularly the work by Erin West for some of the work busting them (she even toured a scam center Thea had been recruiting busted and took video and photographic evidence).

Workers from many countries have been lured through Thailand, kidnapped and trafficked across the border forced to work behind bars and under threat of torture.

Not advocating for either side here, but the ability for US gov to control/influence internet access on a global scale is, to me, the main driver behind Starlink. tinfoil hat off

How do Starlink IP addresses work with Geolocation? Does Starlink have access to IP address blocks for all coutnries and issue them out based on registration and/or GPS data? Or do all starlink customers worldwide get issued US IPs?

Note that there's no such thing as "US IPs". GeoIP works by induction: "OK, this operator is in France, so all addresses in this range are probably in France; these ones are probably close to Paris, which is where this internal router is;" etc.

If I had to guess, you probably get the address of the base station whose signals reflect off the satellite, which is probably not very far from you, given the satellites are in LEO.

EDIT: I meant to say that you get an address in the ground station's subnetwork. I don't know if Starlink uses NAT.

I hadnt even considered that there were multiple ground stations. I just assumed the Starlink satelites would just all bounce the signal back to base in the US.

That would have a decent amount of latency as you'd have a space trip around the world, then a ground trip to any EU/Asia site.

As opposed to a ground trip to a local base station and then a trip around the world on the ground? Sounds like it would be the same to me.

The first Starlink constellations didn't have inter-satellite links at all:

https://wccftech.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-laser-test/

Also, people in Europe don't want to have to take a round trip to space via America just to pull up IKEA's website hosted next door. That's a lot of pointless latency when you could bounce it down to a nearby ground station instead.

GeoIP works by many different means. There are many different GeoIP databases which contain different data based on different opinions. Some are voluntarily reported, some by ping timings, some based on the registered address of the owner of the block of IPs, some based on business records, some based on third party reporting of other direct measurements, etc.

Starlink, in particular, reports their base station locations: https://geoip.starlinkisp.net/feed.csv

> Note that there's no such thing as "US IPs".

Sure there are. IP addresses assigned to an organization with a US address (typically by ARIN) are US IPs. Of course, there's nothing that requires those IPs to be used exclusively for destinations inside the US.

Exactly. So, there aren't US IPs. At best IP ranges are indicative of network topology, not location.

Starlink IPs are assigned to the closest ground station. I used Starlink during a transatlantic crossing. The first half of the trip our IP address was based in Madrid. At about 2/3 of the way it changed to a Virginia based IP. And as we got closer to the Caribbean a Miami based IP.

That would cause your active connections to break because the source IP changed entirely. Are you sure the IP changes abruptly, or they keep it for as long as the session is live? Though keeping the original IP would mean that, for example, if you are sailing around the world, you'd start getting worse and worse latency as all your data continues going to the original ground station which may be on the other side of the world at that point.

An interesting problem - I wonder what they truly do here. I suppose people expect interruptions with Starlink so doing an IP swap wouldn't be all that different to losing service due to obstruction for a few minutes.

IP addresses change all the time. It changes when connect to WiFi, it changes when enter new country, it changes when provider gives you new address. I cant tell if changes on mobile, it looks like mobile providers hand off to next tower, but there must be a limit of how far can go before routing breaks.

Everything retries cause there isn’t difference between new address or bad connection. Most of time we don’t notice cause not using device. Or because most connections are short lived.

I'm aware that the public IP changes when a phone (on which one hardly has much control over how things run anyway), switches from cellular to a WiFI network.

Your comments are more practical (and maybe aimed at a layman's use of Starlink) but I am talking about the theory of Starlink supposedly interrupting a perfectly-working connection in order to change your IP, which interrupts everything, by design of TCP/conntrack. Whether that operation is fatal or not due to retries or whatever else is not my point at all.

Also, ISPs at home don't randomly disconnect you to give you a new IP. They may give you a new IP when you disconnect and reconnect for other reasons, but they should never dump your connection on purpose just to give you a new IP for no reason. That's not good design at all, hence the question about how Starlink handles wanting to give you a new IP.

As the sibling comment asked, did this change when you reconnected or did it kick you off and give you a new IP in the middle of a connection?

Who knows. I was busy sailing, cooking and fishing. One day my Google searches are Spanish prioritized, the next day they are American prioritized. Starlinks are relatively power hungry so we power it up, connect, gather weather and other tasks, and then power down.

What I do know is our IP changed depending on our geographic location.

I don't know exactly how it works, but I do know that my phone thought it was in Australia after connecting to my Starlink terminal here in BC.

Isn't the percentage of the world population that gets internet via Starlink very low? Also, how was the US government involved in the creation of Starlink?

Agree with you - Starlink doesn't have a government connection. In fact the reason it was successful is that it didn't have one. The government connected internet was the landlines that the cable companies were trying to deploy in the rural America for high cost tax paying dollars.

It is a US company though - but I think this is very tin foil hat territory here.

> Starlink doesn't have a government connection.

US DOD is contracting Starlink in Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...

Originally on inception -- sorry should have clarified for the purposes of the speculation purposes that it is US gov controlled.

Do you honestly think any US industry is impervious to being coopted by this corrupt administration?

I do - more so than most other countries.

Thank you for the optimism. I hope you're right.

Starshield is a very important revenue stream that helps fund Starlink overall.

There is an argument that could be made that if the government didn't provide SpaceX contracts they'd never have the capital available to put Starlink into operation.

That's not a supportable argument. The US government has been extremely fickle about their support of SpaceX's Starlink. Witness the revocation of the funding for rural communities. If you're referring to NASA and other government agencies contracting for launch services, well sure, but that too was an open market that SpaceX won on clear merit.

In my community, Starlink is very popular, because the local DSL (the only option) is terrible. Fiber projects exist, but they are totally blocked by processes requiring the approval of native tribes if trenches dug for fiber discover piles of shells left behind by tribes hundreds of years ago.

In entirely different areas, I see Starlink terminals popping up on every mining and forestry contractor's truck. I suspect Starlink's popularity among those who roam widely is just as important, if not moreso, than any funding the federal government has provided, because that is a clear and sustainable revenue that is entirely based on practical industrial applications.

Oh watch as the new phones get satellite access for cents......

The gov is kinda involved because every rocket launch from US soil must be approved by a gov agency, including the payload manifest.

I want you to seriously imagine a world where any idiot can launch a rocket into space carrying anything they want. You think the FDA is over reach too?

You are right, only the real men who throw HEILs while k-holing should be able to do it

There are some things that the US does heavily control on a global scale, but internet access is not one of them. It's much easier for countries to create walled internet gardens than to create walled finance gardens. Many of them have been doing it for a long time.

It will never be cost competitive with terrestrial connections in places where most people live. It’s great for remote areas. It will never be able to control a large portion of global internet traffic.

> Starlink is not licensed to operate in Myanmar

> Myanmar’s military has shut down a major online scam operation near the border with Thailand, detaining more than 2,000 people and seizing dozens of Starlink satellite Internet terminals

So Myanmar seized some terminals and Starlink disabled the accounts?

About 80 were seized in raids, SpaceX disabled 2500.

Yes, seems so - but they shut down a lot more terminals too, not just the seized ones.

And it seems the biggest reason for them shutting down the terminals was pressure from US Senator Maggie Hassan to shut down scam centers, not the government in Myanmar.

Next they need to disable the Starlink terminals being used on narco-subs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44477601

> An October 2024 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime described the use of Starlink in fraud operations. About 80 “Starlink satellite dishes linked to cyber-enabled fraud operations” were seized between April and June 2024 in Myanmar and Thailand, the report said. Starlink is prohibited in both countries.

They knew about it over a year ago.

From a Wired article ("Elon Musk’s Starlink Is Keeping Modern Slavery Compounds Online"):

> Starlink connections appeared to be helping criminals at Tai Chang to “scam Americans” and “fuel their internet needs,” West alleged at the end of July 2024. She offered to share more information to help the company in “disrupting the work of bad actors.” > SpaceX and Starlink never replied, West claims.

The whole article is worth a read.

Of course now there are comments here about how evil Musk is "getting political again" or "aiding one side".

But last time (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45422514), allowing it was "walking all over national and international laws".

Exactly.

> What he does is evil. Why is it evil? Because I resent him. Why do you resent him? Because I am no match for him. - Has anyone ever answered like this?

(Nietzsche)

These scams are getting really really out of hand. I mean the ones out of India were pretty bad, but at least there was no slavery/human trafficking/torture involved. Also, most of the Myanmar ones are "pig butchering", so they even play with the victims emotions for a long long time, and it's much much more difficult to get your life back on track after being scammed by someone you thought was the love of your life.

The ones in Myanmar target the Sinosphere. They kidnap Chinese tourists and enslave them. It's run by Taiwanese and Chinese mafia. It's possible they have native English speakers there.. I haven't heard of it before though.

It certainly started focusing on the Sinosphere, but the DW investigation last year talked to Africans who had been persuaded of "job opportunities" at KK Park, who would be far more likely to be fluent in English than Chinese

Add Belarusian girl from yesterday, definitely didnt speak local languages https://www.the-independent.com/asia/southeast-asia/myanmar-...

Maybe, but I get several texts a week (Telegram, SMS, etc) from what are very obvious scams of these types. The classic: "Are you still picking me up from the airport? Oh, this isn't Natasha's phone? <picture of (presumably) AI-generated Asian lady>."

I guess it's possible that they're making an erroneous assumption based on my last name, but I'm not Chinese.

I get a lot of those too! I’ve wondered where they come from. I got one today that just said “where are you now?”. Pretty weird.

/not Chinese either, about as stereotypical white guy from Texas as possible

how do you distinguish one in Myanmar from one in the Philippines?

They target Korea and Japan as well. Thousands of Koreans have been kidnapped by this Chinese crime group. Voice phishing and now even kidnapping of children in South Korea by the same connected criminal syndicate has increased.

The hatred and suspicion towards Chinese is palpable and exploding into collective anger in Korea and Japan.

didnt know about kidnapped of koreans.

weird that the chinese are blamed. bc seemingly only the chinese government is actually trying to do something about it, getting these centers shut down and criminals "deported" and prosecuted

Musk getting political again? Oh no, what a surprise...

I mean this seems to be tied to the Chinese human trafficking/slave call centers, and the terminals are not legal in the country. I suppose everything is politically complex, but I wouldn't really call this "getting political". The US just confiscated 15 billion in bitcoin from what seems to be the same group (although I think there's some discrepancy between what they're doing and how they're doing it).

American Billionaires interfering in Myanmar is hardly unprecedented given the facebook genocide

They're the new East India company.

What is "facebook genocide"?

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...

thanks

Now do the Texan scam center called Tesla, Inc.

(Former Tesla customer here)

A zero effort, dismissive, libelous comment, driven by an emotional reflex befitting the poster’s name.

It’s not libel that Tesla sold me a 7,500 EUR car feature that doesn’t work and never will, and they’ve kept lying about it for almost a decade.

The company’s operations are fraudulent at the core. No business should treat its customers like this.

Oh, the free internet.

I'm appalled that HN seemingly do not care about the human suffering that is going on in these medieval human slavery camps and instead focus on seemingly to regurgitate whatever talking points from their political leanings that were taught.

These "scam" centers kidnap, torture, even harvest organs from victims and have caused extreme violation of human rights but many of you seem more concerned with focusing your hatred towards Elon Musk or how your internet is being censored by this act.

Almost no modern telecom business will allow its customers to engage in terrorism and heinous criminal acts such as this.

This thread is the first time I am disgusted by HN users which in the recent years becomes indistinguishable from Reddit.

Still, on what basis do you, as a company, decide whether you restrict your services or not? Internet is like drinkable water. Imagine someone shutting off water to your area, because the little green elfs said so. There are myriad ways to kneecap these bastards, no, they decided to shut off the internet.

The Internet is still free. Access just got regulated for a region :D

i would prefer to go there and visit to find out the truth before i pass judgement

I really don't think you would prefer to do that

Flights start at ~$1500.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com