HN Reader

Not too surprising, given that Starlink operates in Iran without a permit, "space pirate radio" style, and has something of a habit of making the access free when major protests happen and the government imposes a network blackout. Iranian government and Starlink have no love for each other, clearly.

It's a pattern by now: whenever a government wants to do something awful, it shuts down internet access - so that no one can hear it, see it or coordinate a response. And Starlink becomes a lifeline that the regime would rather people didn't have.

This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place. If you give a government a capability to restrict access to whatever it wants and enact a network blackout whenever it wants, it's a matter of time until it gets abused.

I am wondering if Starlink users can't compensate for it themselves by transmitting a GPS signal using some SDR device locally, just putting in correct coordinates from Google Maps into it? GPS signals are at 1.5GHz which is easily accessible for cheap SDRs.

But really, why doesn't Starlink device allow to simply enter coordinates manually? After all, if someone enters wrong coordinates (say to enable operation in a place where Starlink has no service), it won't work because it won't find satellites where it expects them to be.

Or is there something here that i'm missing?

Seems like a big flaw that low-orbit constellations have a dependency on GPS, which are high-altitude satellites. They're 40x further away and so have 1,600x greater path loss. Why can't they use their own satellites for this?

> "But Starlink receivers use GPS to locate and connect to satellites. “Since its 12-day war with Israel last June," The Times says, “Iran has been disrupting GPS signals.”"

Does anyone know how Iranians are _actually_ communicating right now? I remember seeing here on HN (admittedly a long time ago) some Bluetooth-mesh technologies that promised decentralized solutions to these very type of problems

Under packetloss my assumption is text is king, but I wonder if forward error correcting audio and video is actually better in some ways?

Media is information rich. Maybe we're beyond a samzdat moment and the value in comms is contextual immediacy of live feeds, text can squeeze alongside.

Long ago, broadcast quality TV was shipped as slow feed. Maybe a tiktok generation goes back there: use a phone on the street (probably surreptitiously) do post production and upload asynchronously on 30% packetloss or worse for redistribution.

The article seems quite speculative.

I'm sure the Iranian regime would live to jam starlink, but i don't think we have any ability to know what is actually happening here.

The article claims 80% packetloss. That's still 1 in 5 packets getting through. That is annoying but not going to stop information getting out.

I also wonder, if all other coms are cut off, is it possible star link in the country is just overloaded?

Satellite signals are just weak RF signals and can be disrupted easily. There is nothing 'hardened' about them. It's funny that people think Starlink or any of its many incipient competitors are any different.

These things must be big, stationary and likely very sparsely manned (if anything, they must emit a lot of energy which is not healthy). If there ever were some good targets for a surgical application of some B-2s...

Wasn't not being jam-able a selling point of Starlink?

Which governments are referred to as "regimes" is usually propaganda about how you should feel about them. Consider: all articles written about US using the words "The US regime".

Some personal observations as I am in touch with a few folks inside Iran through Starlink.

1. The jamming/disruption is local to large cities most notably the capital, Tehran.

2. Even in Tehran it is not complete and my friends are able to send and receive messages. Uploading videos is harder.

3. The regime is now raiding homes that they suspect have Starlink terminals. I don't know how they identify them but I do wonder if they are using technology to locate them.

I candidly thought it wasn’t possible to block Starlink.

I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.

Funny considering the top comment from the two-day old "Iran Goes Into IPv6 Blackout" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46542683):

> Fortunately, the government cannot enforce complete blackout because thousands of startlink terminals are active inside the country. They have been complaining about it to no avail.

Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again, you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.

Hypothecally speaking. If I were to live in an authoritarian country that would shut off all means of communication like that. What off grid technology would be viable?

Lora? Shortwave radio? Or nothing at all?

I am curious how phones now can reach LEO for enough bandwidth for voice calls but you need a full dish, however small, for starlink?

Could you get at least 1mbps from a phone to LEO now for email and non-realtime data?

How do these tens of thousands of Starlink terminals get smuggled into Iran?

My thoughts to the Iranian people, may they get what they need and deserve at a cost that is not too high.

As in all conflicts, there's always a "fog of blame" where there isn't absolute certainty about who is right and who is to blame. Though it's not that hard. Because their survival depends on it, dictators are very good at blaming others--anybody, really--for their own shortcomings, and they usually wield the kind of hard power that makes them extremely costly to topple in terms of suffering and human lives.

Life is too short to have to deal with despots. We need a better, perhaps less-crowded or less xenophobic world where every person can protect their right to exist by simply packing and leaving as a last resort.

Is this not only a side effect of Iran doing widespread GPS and GNSS jamming or spoofing?

HAM Radio still works

[flagged]

Why are none of the people I saw posting non-stop about Palestine saying anything about Iranian freedom? Would honestly love to hear a genuine response from anyone who is against the movement in Iran. Or even conflicted about it.

I am curious if there are any implications for the Russian invasion of Ukraine from this tactic working.

Starlink is primarily a military technology that is used both on a battlefield and to coordinate USA-backed "protests". Why, for instance, it just become free in Venezuela? Every country needs to be able to to defend itself from Starlink.

How likely is it that those "protestors" are US and Israel propped and the plan is to do another regime change via this route?

Isn't this "son of the late Shah" a guy from the US?

Good for them, as they’re under external attack. For example a US ghoul like Mike Pompeo had this to say recently [1]:

> Happy New Year to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking beside them

so under those circumstances anything goes to defeat the likes of Mossad and associated foreign entities doing their thing on Iranian soil.

[1] https://xcancel.com/mikepompeo/status/2007180411638620659