I wonder if he will shut them down to preserve lives.
this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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I am waiting to find out he violated ITAR.
Traitor
I mean, I’m not a Musk fan in the least, but the article does say that the receivers are being sold through an intermediary in Dubai, perhaps unbeknownst to Musk and SpaceX.
Because of how starlink works, they have to aim satellites specifically at areas for data to flow. They have the ability to turn regions on and off (ie, satellites over China).
They know exactly where the transceivers are and based on movement patterns, probably which side they are on.
Unless he is feeding that position data to the Ukrainian military, he knows exactly who is using them and letting it happen. He didnt sell them the dishes, but he lets them be used.
Are you saying there is no authentication whatsoever to use it and anyone with the receiver in Ukraine can just use it?
I don't have starlink nor used it, but if it's anything like other commercial sat internet providers, you register your modem's MAC address or other identifier with the satellite operator and that basically enables you for transmission. It could be that these modems were already authorized for transmission before resale to Russia. You can buy starlink modems in big box stores now so I'm sure the transmission process is automated as well.
That is what's happening.
SpaceX knows which satellites were sold to the Ukrainian government though and could apply additional filtering. That's the easiest first step.
To prevent Ukrainian dishes from falling into Russian hands you'd also need some sort of rolling authentication code so the dish becomes inoperable after a period of time.
Simply being in Russian territory doesn't guarantee a Russian is using it as it could be Ukrainian special forces deep in enemy territory.
Musk is a cancer on humanity.
The real cancer is the capitalism that birthed him.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ukrainian soldiers say Russia's military have begun using Elon Musk's Starlink satellite communications network in Ukraine, according to a journalist in the country.
"They began to deliver Starlink en masse, via Dubai, accounts are activated, they work in the occupied territories," one of the soldiers with the X handle @Serhij wrote, referring to the four regions of Ukraine that were illegally annexed by Russia in the fall of 2022—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Musk's SpaceX deployed its Starlink satellites to help provide Kyiv with internet service in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
A source in the satellite communications market, familiar with the situation, told ComNews that Starlink systems are being delivered in bulk to Russia, and named Dubai as the location for the wholesale purchase of the equipment.
"Before being imported into Russia, terminals are registered under various foreign companies (Cyprus is often included), after which an account is activated under any name, often a fictitious one," the source said.
Musk previously refused to allow Ukraine to use Starlink internet services to launch an attack on Crimea to avoid complicity in a "major act of war."
The original article contains 688 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I don’t think Musk is the rogue element people think he is. I think he’s as integral a part of the US military-industrial complex as any other US tech billionaire, no different from say Peter Thiel or Eric Schmidt.
He's not a bought agent but a useful greedy moron to them.
I presume that by them you mean the Russian state. This sounds like BlueAnonsense.
Have you considered that the NSA likely has full access to everything that happens on Starlink?
They do not. At best, they have the metadata which would let them ID the location of anyone using it, but that is a whole different thing to view the traffic.
The ability to communicate over vast distances is WAY too big of a boon to give to russia... Encryption and ciphers can be added ontop of the connection. Ever heard of a VPN...?
Russia cannot be given StarLink.
Do you think Russia doesn't have the internet or something? Do Russians not have cell-phones? What do you think Starlink actually is?
Do you? You seem to fail to realize what a data link is and that different data can be stuffed in to the generic parts, you fucking numpty.
Do you think StarLink cannot send generic data? Do you think it inspects everything it sends to make sure it's not encrypted? Or does it just route and send the data. You have no fucking clue what you're even trying to retort.
I highly doubt the US intelligence agencies aren't tapping StarLink. We already know for a fact that they were/are tapping Google and other carriers (if they didn't already have actual backdoors made for them by the companies). We also know that the intelligence agencies also like to either flip employees or simply have their own people get jobs there and get access. Being honest, for all the bans on using Chinese equipment/devices for fear of spying (even when other governments were already analyzing and finding nothing). I don't see why any other nation shouldn't be doing the same for US stuff on their infrastructure/networks.
We are historically not very trustworthy, and have been basically one of the top nations for getting into shit that wasn't even made by us (along with Israel) like the Stuxnet attack. We accuse other nations of shit while damn sure doing it ourselves, like a cheater that then constantly accuses the other partner of cheating.
Obviously any nation trying to use something like StarLink would be foolish to not use any and all methods for encrypting all traffic.
They can tap all they want. His post is saying that due to encryption it doesn't matter.
I just hope they feed the gps coords of Russians using it to Ukraine.