[HN Gopher] Iran is likely jamming Starlink
___________________________________________________________________
Iran is likely jamming Starlink
Author : ukblewis
Score : 76 points
Date : 2026-01-11 07:18 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.timesofisrael.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.timesofisrael.com)
| ggm wrote:
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| You are acting like people dont upload videos anymore.
|
| The people filming protests in iran are probably not in range
| of their home starlink connected wifi. They are almost
| certainly filming stuff offline then uploading it later, not
| livestreaming.
| tkel wrote:
| 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".
| IlIlIlIIlIlIlI wrote:
| Yes, a "regime" is basically a country where they wants to have
| control but can't for some reason
| epistasis wrote:
| I don't think I've ever read an article using the term "US
| regime," as that usually refers to an undemocratic or
| authoritarian government. You might want to clean up your
| information diet if you're reading lots of articles over the
| years with that term...
|
| Yes it is a value judgement, but Iran's government is nothing
| if not oppressive and authoritarian. Until recently the US had
| taken pride in being nothing like a regime, but that may change
| in the coming years.
| bulbar wrote:
| > Until recently the US had taken pride in being nothing like
| a regime, but that may change in the coming years.
|
| I tend to believe the US is already past that point. It's
| just people are not really realizing that yet. Might take the
| next election for them to realize. That will be to late
| however.
|
| I hope so much that this is wrong and the US turns out to be
| more resilient than it looks like from the outside though.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| >I don't think I've ever read an article using the term "US
| regime," as that usually refers to an undemocratic or
| authoritarian government.
|
| Pretty fuckin' big rock you've been living under for the last
| couple years.
| epistasis wrote:
| Am I under a rock because I haven't seen the articles, or
| because the government has become undemocratic and
| authoritarian?
|
| Since you say "last couple years" I'm guessing you mean the
| articles, it's only in the past year that the government
| has become undemocratic and authoritarian through the
| destruction of its constitution, the abdication of checks
| and balances by Congress and the Supreme Court, and an
| authoritarian running unchecked and saying that the only
| thing controlling him is his own morality.
|
| Or perhaps I'm being too pedantic, but if you're going to
| accuse me of living under a rock hell yes I'm going to be
| pedantic.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Regime refers to who holds power in a nation. It encompasses
| power holders in both formal and informal institutions which
| span beyond just the government. The major distinction is
| democratic versus autocratic regimes, with regime on its own
| referring specifically to the autocratic version. There are
| plenty of autocratic regimes which we (assuming everyone on the
| internet is American or at least from the West) are friendly
| with, like Jordan's.
| stein1946 wrote:
| 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?
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| It is 100% that.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| ...
| lmm wrote:
| I guess the people Israel is murdering on a massive scale are
| generally noncitizens, but it's still not really in a
| position to throw stones.
| jeltz wrote:
| Very, but at the same time the Iranian leadership have been a
| really shitty government and ran the country into the gutter.
| People have genuine grievances.
| HauntingPin wrote:
| The only way to believe this is if you're a Westerner being fed
| a purely US-centric media diet. Otherwise you'd know all the
| ways that the Iranian government has been failing their people
| recently and for a long time now, and how unhappy Iranians are
| with their government. You people act like people can't be
| upset at how they're being treated by their own government
| without being incited by an external actor. That's honestly
| quite the dehumanising and insulting way of looking at it.
|
| Also, if the US wanted to do a regime change, they'd just move
| in militarily a la Venezuela and Trump would be talking about
| it non-stop. He's not the subtle type, I promise. We'd already
| know if they were involved.
| xg15 wrote:
| I mean, Trump _is_ talking about Iran nonstop.
|
| https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/2026-01-10/ty-
| artic...
| HauntingPin wrote:
| I don't see any tweets about how the protesters are working
| for the US. Like, Trump would literally say how involved
| they are right now, and he isn't doing it. He's a child
| who's incapable of being subtle or not talking about how
| great his "accomplishments" are. Your link doesn't show
| anything relevant.
| pyrale wrote:
| > How likely is it that those "protestors" are US and Israel
| propped
|
| It's almost sure that both US and Israel are meddling with the
| current situation. That doesn't mean the situation isn't also
| started by and wanted by the population.
|
| For a comparison point in the past, the civil rights and
| antiwar movements in the US were grass-roots movements started
| by local people with legitimate claims. At the same time,
| opponents of the US like USSR were involved in stirring these
| movements, because of course they would.
|
| There isn't much you can infer about the legitimacy of a
| movement by learning that the movement is helped by foreign
| intelligence agencies.
|
| The best way you can avoid this kind of confusion is 1) make a
| society in which malicious actors don't have many latent issues
| to stir, and 2) make it so _your_ country 's intelligence
| agencies aren't malicious actors. There isn't much else to do.
| bawolff wrote:
| Iran has a water crisis, and allegedly the economic situation
| is so bad that people are starting to wonder if it will soon
| affect their ability to buy food.
|
| Even the Romans knew that if you wanted to stay in power you
| had to provide bread and circuses.
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| 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.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Every country needs to be able to defend itself from Russia,
| too, apparently.
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| No, only US-backed puppets that US uses against Russia. For
| example, Russia has very good relations with Belorussia where
| the government wasn't lured into this role and did not let US
| to overthrow it.
| linhns wrote:
| Tell me why Minsk is the most backward capital in Europe
| DANmode wrote:
| What's wrong with that end-result?
|
| Way worse outcomes.
| librasteve wrote:
| mobile phones are primarily a military technology
| lazyeye wrote:
| What an insane take.
| justajew wrote:
| Insane only for americans who refuse to accept the fact that
| their country, with some of their "allies", is the primary
| cause of wars and instability in today's world. And who
| refuse to understand that providing means of communication to
| people of country X to organize military actions against the
| army and police of country X, is a military agression against
| country X.
| lazyeye wrote:
| Again, what an insane take.
| jonway wrote:
| Wow this sucks! however if i were iranian brass i would do it
| too. IT/OT and IoT is not safe full stop. Pull the plug. It
| wouldnt be pretty over here either, also china already got us
| good (Volt Typhoon, OPM hack, why bother to list 30 or 40 more?)
| bawolff wrote:
| 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?
| XorNot wrote:
| In my experience 80% packet loss makes most common protocols
| basically unusable. Yes you can still get data out...but many
| apps will just fail due to timeouts and other things.
| bawolff wrote:
| I imagine the people with illegal starlink terminals are
| fairly tech savy and can use custom protocols. Living in Iran
| they probably already have a lot of experience with vpns and
| lower level protocols to evade censorship.
| aaomidi wrote:
| I wouldn't imagine that no. It's "illegal" but not hard to
| obtain
| onesociety2022 wrote:
| Illegal just means there's a black market. You pay some guy
| in cash and he gives you a smuggled Starlink terminal.
| Neither buyer or seller is likely to be anymore
| sophisticated here than someone trading in any other
| smuggled goods (cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, etc).
| queenkjuul wrote:
| I'm a programmer and even i wouldn't know where to start
| implementing a custom network wire protocol.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Matrix published a proof of concept a few years ago of an
| alternative transport layer designed to work over connections
| with a few hundred bits per second, and massive packet loss,
| while still providing E2EE:
|
| https://matrix.org/blog/2019/03/12/breaking-the-100bps-
| barri...
| bawolff wrote:
| Without knowing that much about this area, i think
| https://mosh.org/ is a traditional choice if you need
| encrypted communication in a high packet loss environment.
| rurban wrote:
| UDP is certainly not known to improve traffic reliability
| in those environments. TCP is
| bawolff wrote:
| UDP is build your own reliability layer, so its going to
| depend on how you use it.
|
| [Of course you could say the same thing about TCP i
| suppose depending on which congestion control algorithm
| is in use]
| dlenski wrote:
| How do these tens of thousands of Starlink terminals get smuggled
| into Iran?
| aaomidi wrote:
| Iran has a thriving black market through its borders
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Trucks I assume
| ACCount37 wrote:
| 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.
| ece wrote:
| It's weird how Apple and Google don't get it, while SpaceX
| does.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Starlink isn't perfect, but at least it doesn't go for "it's
| so not our problem, we'll just make sure that every single
| VPN exit point Iranians use is GeoIP'd as Iran in our
| systems" like Google tends to, or "let's lick every
| authoritarian boot, we control the app distribution and our
| users will suck it up" like Apple does.
|
| Not even Starlink has the balls to oppose the likes of Russia
| and China directly - they aren't operating there without a
| permit, sadly. But at least they don't kneel before every
| two-bit dictatorship and cave to every single "we want you to
| do censorship on our behalf" demand. Way better than what
| most tech companies do now.
| ozlikethewizard wrote:
| I'm unfortunately inclined to not look at their actions so
| favourably. They operate solely in jurisdictions where the
| US state supports open destabilization, and dont where the
| political ramifications would be too high for the US. Makes
| them little more than an extension of the US imperialist
| structure.
|
| And this makes sense for an organization thats so highly
| reliant on federal support, vs Apple and Google who only
| have to just stay somewhat in the states good graces.
| ece wrote:
| As a private platform, SpaceX did try to draw a line with
| where their service could be used in Ukraine, but we're
| talking about Iranian protestors now, a different matter
| I think. If they were offering a firewall as a service,
| then what you're saying would be more true.
|
| Apple and Google have done more than just stay in good
| graces of governments by getting rid of apps governments
| don't like, they haven't enforced their terms against X,
| and given tens of millions to Trump's ballroom.
| freefaler wrote:
| They "operate" in Iran because of OFAC issues general licenses
| under the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations (31
| CFR Part 560) permitting non-commercial personal
| communications, including satellite internet for free
| expression. Starlink activation in 2022 protests and recent
| events exploited these, as Musk sought formal exemptions for
| "internet freedom."
|
| And no Tesla factories in Iran I suppose helps too :)
| hartator wrote:
| I candidly thought it wasn't possible to block Starlink.
|
| I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If it were impossible, China would've had reason to blow up
| their satellites in orbit. The US would do the same thing for
| Chinese satellite ISPs.
|
| Jamming on such a large scale is expensive, but it's hardly
| impossible.
| gordonhart wrote:
| There's no evidence that China (or anybody else) has the
| capacity to meaningfully harm the 9000+ satellite Starlink
| constellation.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| Debris creating debris creating debris ... ?
| SXX wrote:
| Only if they want to kill 99% of all sattelites since
| this is a game that can be played together.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Yes, I've seen this!
|
| It was a small, triangular ship that blasted big
| asteroids, which in turn spun off and collided with other
| asteroids...
| NitpickLawyer wrote:
| The title is wrong, as usual. This is a re-hash of earlier
| reports. Starlink is getting 30-80% packet loss, depending on
| where they're using it. Likely local jammers. But it still gets
| through.
| iberator wrote:
| Jamming or hijacking geostationary satellites signal is trivial
| for literally a team of 3 hm radio veterans with 10+ years of
| experience.
|
| Jamming RF is easy in general. Nowadays we can even do
| beamforming so i guess it would be trivial.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| There's a difference between possible and plausible. In the
| most absurd case, it was always a given that a sufficiently
| large faraday cage or a literal iron dome would block starlink
| from reaching anybody in iran therefore it was never thought to
| be impossible to block starlink. At best it's implausible but
| that would refer specifically to the construction of the giant
| faraday cage and the literal iron dome, not the concept of
| blocking starlink.
| DivingForGold wrote:
| The Russians have developed rather efficient GPS jamming
| equip., as we know, Iranian Gov't is partners with Russians,
| providing drone technology, so no great mystery where likely
| the jammers originated from.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Any satellite signal is going to be relatively weak compared to
| what you can produce on the ground. Inverse square law, and
| power limitations of a mobile transmitter.
|
| It's fairly trivial to set up a transmitter that saturates a
| slice of spectrum at an amount of power that is ridiculous
| compared to a satellite signal. There are still AM radio
| stations operating that go as high as 50kW. The satellite
| transmitters aren't going to exceed maybe a hundred Watts, at a
| great distance, and that falls off at 1/(distance)^2.
| curiousObject wrote:
| Is this not only a side effect of Iran doing widespread GPS and
| GNSS jamming or spoofing?
| consumer451 wrote:
| I am curious if there are any implications for the Russian
| invasion of Ukraine from this tactic working.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Both sides are using starlink, yes?
|
| Also there's now guowang to contend with. I'm not sure how
| widely available access to it is.
|
| I would assume both sides are heavily jamming the frontlines.
| But presumably long range drone operations are more likely to
| use it.
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| Jamming is subject to the inverse square law.
| GrowingSideways wrote:
| Yes, this is why it happens only on the front line
| Etheryte wrote:
| What do you mean, Russia has been doing the same thing for most
| of the war? The success relies on you controlling the
| territory, or at least territory close enough, so the results
| vary.
| krona wrote:
| Isn't Iran doing this from the air? That would be far more
| effective. In a contested space with AA everywhere that
| wouldn't be feasible (i.e. large parts of Ukraine)
| SXX wrote:
| In a war zone any large high power jammer will be like
| supernova in the darkness visible for detectors from tens of
| kilometers away. So its gonna be immediately destroyed.
|
| Iran protesters cant find or destroy jammers though.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > What do you mean...
|
| I am an RF ignoramus. It all seems like black magic to me. I
| have seen "80% packet loss" being thrown around in these
| discussions, and also that it is just GPS spoofing.
|
| My main question is that is there anything novel happening
| here? What is the actual range of disruption?
| general1465 wrote:
| I don't think it will have much implication. Jamming is a two
| way street. You can erase some spectrums, but you are also
| creating massive electromagnetic beacon for home-on-jam
| ammunition.
|
| However if you are a protester without any advanced weapons,
| then you can't do anything against that.
| perihelions wrote:
| 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.""_
| archerx wrote:
| If the GPS satellites are above the starlink ones how is Iran
| able to disrupt the GPS signals?
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| By jamming the receivers on the ground
| archerx wrote:
| Ok that makes a lot of sense, thank you.
| Neywiny wrote:
| For legal reasons I base this off of nothing but just turn
| your jammer to the sky. Could get fancy and point out
| directly at the satellites since my understanding is it's
| pretty easy to know where they are.
|
| Edit to add: I do not mean the GPS satellites or the starlink
| ground terminals. That was not the question so that is not my
| answer. I mean the starlink satellites
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| That doesn't work. GPS is broadcast, not bidirectional
| communication, so preventing the satellites from seeing the
| GPS receiver does nothing: they're not looking to begin
| with.
| Neywiny wrote:
| What are you talking about? The jammers are on the
| ground. Just like receivers on the ground can be jammed
| with bad RF nearby, so can receivers in space. You just
| point the bad RF towards the receiver
| sciurus wrote:
| The GPS satellites aren't receiving anything. The GPS
| satellites transmit signals, and the starlink terminals
| (and other users of GPS) receive those signals.
| sanex wrote:
| Maybe he's implying they're literally cancelling out the
| waves like ANC headphones but with emf and a large
| geographic area.
| tatjam wrote:
| Wellll you could technically jam their uplink channels,
| but doing so may get the US in your doorstep quite
| quickly
| spwa4 wrote:
| More to the point, to do that to this number of
| satellites on this big an area you'd need nuclear power
| plant levels of power, and it would only degrade GPS a
| bit (their clocks _slowly_ desync when uplink is blocked)
| Neywiny wrote:
| Ok they said the GPS of the starlink satellites is being
| jammed, and the question was how. The comment I was
| replying to did not say the terminal, it said the
| satellite. Maybe that's the confusion
| Majromax wrote:
| GPS signals are extremely weak, and they're necessarily
| received from omnidirectional antennas that can't provide
| much antenna gain. In some sense it's a miracle of signal
| processing that GPS can ever be received.
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| There have been developments in receiving antennas that are
| harder to jam.
|
| Most jamming is horizontal and limited to a few bands. So
| by having a directional antenna and listening to all
| services for now it seems to work. But this is a cat and
| mouse game.
|
| https://furuno.eu/gr-en/marine-solutions/gnss-positioning-
| ti...
| Majromax wrote:
| It sounds like Starlink uses GPS to localize the receiver,
| rather than for any active step in the communication link.
| Since most receivers are static, I wonder if an effective
| workaround to this is for the receiver to just remember its
| last GPS fix for longer, or worst-case allow a manual location
| specification in lieu of a GPS fix.
| ovi256 wrote:
| A user provided location cannot be trusted for geofencing
| purposes. A GNSS (GPS or other) is needed sooner or later.
| This is a legal requirement for sanction and regulation
| enforcement (US, if not others).
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Starlink system inevitably knows the terminal location down
| to a service cell, which is what, a 20km grain? Good enough
| for "regulation enforcement".
| 15155 wrote:
| The satellites know where they are TX beamforming to a
| fine-enough degree of specificity for geofencing.
| schiffern wrote:
| The user-provided location would only be used for the
| initial bootstrapping. After it connects, the Starlink
| network itself will localize the receiver to within 1 km.
|
| If the user inputs a bogus lat/lon, it would simply fail to
| connect. There's no way to 'spoof' your location on this
| type of global satellite comm network.
|
| EDIT It will be interesting to see what anti-censorship and
| anti-DOS hardening features are coming in future software
| updates. Full GPS denial bootstrapping is the most obvious,
| and actually this should be possible without needing to
| input a location. Adding offline update packages, so signed
| anti-denial firmware updates can "sneakernet" across
| oppressive regimes to recover DOSed terminals, would be
| even better.
| bri3d wrote:
| This isn't even true; Starlink can use the local starlink
| constellation for positioning and the option is available in
| the customer facing configuration specifically for GPS denied
| areas (since about two years ago), where it's been used for
| ages.
|
| Something else is going on here - perhaps there's an edge case
| where Starlink can be made to perform poorly without falling
| back away from GPS, but I wouldn't expect this since it's been
| "tested" in the most GPS hostile places for quite some time
| now.
| stereo wrote:
| Gps is free to use. Running your own gnss service requires an
| atomic clock and possibly separate transmission hardware, which
| is possible, but adds cost, volume, and weight.
|
| According to [1], "[o]ne of the current generation of GPS
| satellites (Block III) weighs over 2,200 kg (4,850 lb), the
| weight of an average pickup truck. The body of these satellites
| are 1.8 m x 2.5 m x 3.4 m (5.9' x 8.2' x 11.2') in size". In
| comparison, "the current V2 Starlink satellite version weighs
| approximately 1,760 lbs (800 kilograms) at launch, almost three
| times heavier than the older generation satellites (weighing in
| at 573 lbs or 260 kg)" [2]
|
| [1] https://novatel.com/an-introduction-to-gnss/basic-
| concepts/s... [2] https://www.space.com/spacex-starlink-
| satellites.html
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Gps is free to use. Running your own gnss service requires
| an atomic clock and possibly separate transmission hardware,
| which is possible, but adds cost, volume, and weight.
|
| Thanks you provide some great insights on why starlink didnt
| use gps but still if starlink wants to focus itself as the
| uncensorable internet in places like protests etc. I feel
| like they can probably do this after this recent incident
|
| I just can't feel but sad right now because starlink was
| still providing activists ways to report outside and that
| helped protestors a lot and information. Now even starlink
| got removed because starlink tried to save money and I think
| might not have thought about what if gps itself gets blocked.
|
| This is giving very bad signals for Iran. Is there any way
| now that Protestors are able to communicate to the outside
| world/ activists be able to report data outside?
| afavour wrote:
| > if starlink wants to focus itself as the uncensorable
| internet in places like protests etc
|
| I'm not sure Musk would actually want that though,
| especially these days.
| sawjet wrote:
| Why not?
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Because Musk is a fickle, unethical individual with poor
| impulse control and too much money who only talks about
| high minded concepts like "free speech" and "battling
| censorship" when it serves his interests at that moment.
| lostlogin wrote:
| You are correct. It's interesting to watch how 'free
| speech' works on Twitter.
| afavour wrote:
| Because his enthusiasm for free speech is variable
| depending on whether he likes the speech or not.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Why not? Has Musk shut off Starlink? The reporting out of
| Ukraine was almost entirely wrong.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-
| Ukrain...
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Nobody brought up Ukraine
| lostlogin wrote:
| From your link, with good sources:
|
| In 2022, Elon Musk denied a Ukrainian request to extend
| Starlink's coverage up to Russian-occupied Crimea during
| a counterattack on a Crimean port, from which Russia had
| been launching attacks against Ukrainian civilians; doing
| so would have violated US sanctions on Russia.[18] This
| event was widely reported in 2023, erroneously
| characterizing it as Musk "turning off" Starlink coverage
| in Crimea.[19][20] SpaceX executives repeatedly stated
| that Starlink needed to remain a civilian
| network;[21][22][12] in late 2022, as Starlink was being
| used as a tool in combat in Ukraine, SpaceX announced
| Starshield, a Starlink-like program designed for
| government customers.[23][21] Musk is reported to have
| said that Ukraine was "going too far" in threatening to
| inflict a "strategic defeat" on the Kremlin.[24]
|
| Musk, like Trump, has an interesting relationship with
| Russia. The investigations into that have been quashed,
| so we don't get to find out about the rumoured Kremlin
| calls he was making.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/25/business/dealbook/musk
| -pu...
| exe34 wrote:
| > doing so would have violated US sanctions on Russia.
|
| that made me laugh!
| paganel wrote:
| Yes, ask their Mossad direct and local handlers (as per
| Mike Pompeo [1]) about how things are going, I'm sure that
| this being Mossad they have a ground-based way to get the
| information out.
|
| [1]
| https://xcancel.com/mikepompeo/status/2007180411638620659
| woodruffw wrote:
| Mike Pompeo is a private citizen; is there some reason to
| believe that he has direct knowledge of foreign
| involvement in these protests? It seems unlikely, and
| doubly so that he'd actually _disclose_ it if he did.
| paganel wrote:
| You and I are private citizens, he's former US Secretary
| of State, let's quit the charade.
| woodruffw wrote:
| "Former" is operative. I don't see any reason to believe
| that Pompeo has special insider knowledge here, and
| _sharing_ it makes zero sense even if he did. The more
| parsimonious explanation is that he's a sidelined grifter
| whose only way to stay relevant is to speculate on social
| media.
| tucnak wrote:
| GPS comparison is moot in this case, as there's no need for
| Starlink constellations to provide full GNSS capability, just
| locating the satellites precisely enough to facilitate
| beamforming.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Chip scale atomic clocks are quite small[1], have been used
| in space, and could be part of the existing Starlink
| satellites. Finding reliable details about the orbital
| vehicles the internet eludes me.
|
| [1] https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/document
| s/F...
| throwaway85825 wrote:
| A CRPA should still work.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Musk tweeted a while back that the constellation could be used
| as its own GPS service, but it wasn't a priority right now.
| Maybe later.
| Noaidi wrote:
| This whole stalink for military use (Starshield) was a scam
| Elon sold the military from the beginning. Just like his dumb
| ass tunnels and his self driving cars. He is putting the
| military at risk.
| nradov wrote:
| Is there any actual evidence that Starshield doesn't work
| substantially as promised?
| Noaidi wrote:
| I don't know. Has the military ever relied so heavily on a
| company who's CEO frequently uses ketamine?
| try_the_bass wrote:
| > I don't know.
|
| So why are you making claims predicated on having
| knowledge of the situation?
| almogo wrote:
| 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
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I think IPv4 services are still present no?
|
| So like they are very heavily DPI censored though and maybe
| govts able to spy on any messages you send right now but I feel
| like there is a still possibility that for the average
| communication, they might still exist but although heavily
| heavily censored/bad and I feel like protestors might not be
| able to communicate (which I feel like is the question you
| meant to be asking)
|
| https://radar.cloudflare.com/routing/ir
|
| So TLDR: protestors must have a hard time sadly and they may be
| using bluetooth mesh or other tech, only they can tell after we
| figure things out but also lets say some major services
| websites might still exist after all if they bypass the dpi
| censorship for IPv4 services.
|
| In my opinion, I feel like Protestors must be using mesh based
| technologies as you mention. We'll see what really ends up
| happening after we get some reports from Iran.
| tucnak wrote:
| It is said they pulled the plug for all peering on Thursday,
| although I would assume some kind of government-run ISP may
| be operational still (I haven't checked Cloudlfare radar)
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Pardon me but can you please provide me more context
| regarding it. I am genuinely confused about the ground
| state of reality in Iran right now regarding Internet
| access at all
|
| can you please take a look at cloudflare radar and see what
| the current ipv4 connectivity means? Even Ipv4 was blocked
| for sometime but then it got back to normal in the graph
| shown in cloudflare radar
|
| Can you please tell me what you mean by plug for all
| peering? Like complete internet blackout?
| s800 wrote:
| Iranian address space is no longer in the public routing
| table.
| simonmales wrote:
| You might be referring to Bitchat.
| westurner wrote:
| https://github.com/x011/smtp-tunnel-proxy :
|
| > _A high-speed covert tunnel that disguises TCP traffic as
| SMTP email communication to bypass Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
| firewalls_
| petcat wrote:
| It seems like these smuggle-disguise protocols are almost
| always trivially detectable.
| VortexLain wrote:
| Yes, but such tools aren't popular enough for the censor to
| specifically target.
| DetectDefect wrote:
| No mention of any security review, or even testing. Reason
| enough to stay away from such tools.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The only working communication I see mentioned on X is
| Starlink.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| I saw a comment yesterday from a user claiming to be in Iran. I
| think he said StarLink was usable. ( Maybe that's changed,
| though. )
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Maybe better for an after the brutal theocratic regime
| crackdown discussion?
| embedding-shape wrote:
| 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.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I wouldn't consider it funny though when you realize the
| gravitas of the situation though but yea.
|
| I just wanted to point out that it felt rude to call it funny
| but I understand what you mean and what intention but please be
| more sincere about such issues.
|
| > Seems they finally figured out a way. Seems like yet again,
| you shouldn't shout hello until you've crossed the stream.
|
| Someone mentions that there is a huge packet loss but its still
| possible. Other mentions that its possible to do this in rural
| villages and there are many nuances. I genuinely dont know the
| technological reasons or know how of what it is or what the
| ground state of reality is and what's actually happening but I
| hope that starlink still works or can have a work-around for
| the activists. We will see in sometime what really happens in
| the ground state as I must admit I still don't know if its 100%
| censored or what the reality is.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| The situation as a whole is in no way funny, sorry I gave you
| that impression. What is funny to me, is a confidently
| incorrect comment from a related story just two days ago that
| also ended up the highest upvoted one, which quickly seemed
| to have been proven wrong. This is still funny to me, yet the
| situation itself remains helplessly depressing.
| malchow wrote:
| 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.
| Rover222 wrote:
| But it's in extremely difficult to disrupt the signals across
| the whole country? I person go go out with a battery and setup
| a starlink terminal in the middle of nowhere in 2 minutes
| (exactly how I'm writing this post right now from Boliva)
| notahacker wrote:
| If your objective is to stop or at least slow coordination of
| protests and flow of information about things the regime is
| doing in the major cities of Tehran and Mashhad, you're a lot
| less worried that plenty of rural villages get completely
| unhindered signals, if anyone in them happens to have a
| Starlink terminal.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Agreed, the only way to get starlink terminal is via
| smuggling it into the country and it costs 1000's of $ or
| 500$ or more which is more than many months of average
| iranian income let alone rural villages
|
| I hope though that perhaps rural villages can shelter
| activists but who knows what happens in the ground level,
| perhaps news development from tehran doesn't reach the
| villages in the first case, maybe they block anyone
| entering and leaving the city I am not sure
|
| This seems to be a really bad development for protestors.
| There were reports that some protestors were killed by the
| govt and now I am genuinely worried about them even more.
| This tyranny needs to be stopped.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Some videos are still leaking out and it's likely via
| starlink (from what I've read). Better than nothing.
| dalben wrote:
| 10W is enough to block GPS signals in a 15-30km radius. The
| signals are below the noise floor and easy to disrupt.
| Geee wrote:
| Starlink uses beamforming with directional antenna arrays, so
| it should be rather difficult to jam compared to
| omnidirectional antennas. It's basically a dish pointed at the
| satellite, so the jammer should be in between to work.
|
| Antenna arrays aren't perfect so it still picks up some energy
| omnidirectionally, but it should be possible to shield it with
| some metal plates in a way that only sky is visible.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
| touisteur wrote:
| I think, to beamform in the right direction you have to be
| able to locate yourself precisely, have an up-to-date
| almanach of the satellites, and a precise enough datation
| source. Jamming GNSS is a source of problems for 2 of those
| issues.
|
| Also, the antennas on starlink dishes are still pretty small,
| likely to pick up some hard-to-remove sidelobes and the tech
| to cancel them properly might be export-controlled. You still
| need to be within electromagnetic visibility to jam them,
| though.
| Geee wrote:
| Yes, afaik the source of issues is GPS jamming.
|
| To add to my point, with multiple antennas it's also
| possible to spatially separate signals. Not sure if
| Starlink is doing that, but I think it should be possible
| to escape GPS jammers by using two antennas with some
| distance between them. Two antennas can pick up the
| direction of the signals and with some math they can be
| separated, at least in theory.
| overfeed wrote:
| > basically a dish pointed at the satellite, so the jammer
| should be in between to work.
|
| Which isn't hard to do if you have the budget of a
| government. Directional antennae, GPS and a helicopter/Cessna
| flying patterns over a metro. Beams from the terminal are
| constantly scanning the sky chasing the constellations.
|
| A higher hit rate option would be a fleet of low altitude
| drones taking high-res pictures of the ground, and running a
| fine-tuned classifier to identify Starlink Dishies which
| require a clear line of sight to the sky.
|
| People who think Starlink is unblockable, or somehow
| anonymous IRL are unimaginative. Iran is well-versed enough
| with electronic warfare that it tricked a RQ-170 Sentinel
| land on it's territory - how hardened are Starlink terminals
| against responding to a spoofed signal and exposing their
| locations?
| ece wrote:
| Doesn't Starlink use some sort wideband signal which is
| hard to jam? Combined with some sort of frequency hopping
| and a moving constellation should mean blocking a user or
| satellite signal should be pretty hard, like many times the
| cost of building and servicing a user terminal for use
| against protesters.
| tim333 wrote:
| Russia seems to have been ineffective at stopping the Ukranians
| using it.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| There are multiple photos of Russian drones using Starlink
| terminals, so they would be blocking their own use of it.
| anovikov wrote:
| 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?
| DoctorOetker wrote:
| I don't own a starlink dish, but I assume one can log in and
| configure some things. It would be a nobrainer to have a way to
| enter coordinates and system time. Also the manual could have
| sane advice like recommendation to use "peace time" to
| establish the locations GPS coordinates and write them down on
| some sticker or so.
|
| If it can serve a basic web page with a world map, it may be
| justifiable to include it for the price of the dish (yes will
| require some flash storage).
| paganel wrote:
| 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
| scythe wrote:
| I think this is a major unforced error by the USG, of course we
| have seen plenty of those of late. There may be Israeli,
| American or other intelligence agencies present. But history
| has shown that spies can't just foment a revolution out of thin
| air. The Americans' first attempt at a coup in Chile, in 1970,
| failed. It was only after three years of US machinations and
| missteps by the Allende administration that Pinochet arose --
| Pinochet was given his fateful promotion by Allende himself!
| And that was in a "friendly" country where the US had many
| connections.
|
| Iranians wouldn't be on the streets right now if the government
| had listened to its own water engineers over the years. But the
| new political culture in our government is more interested in
| braggadocio than achieving real change. I doubt that if the
| protesters succeed that Iran would become friendly to the West.
| At the same time there is probably a not too contrived worry
| among the Iranians that Netanyahu will seize the opportunity to
| attack if a political transition occurs. Bluster like this only
| hurts the cause.
| macintux wrote:
| I have to imagine the protests would stop immediately if Iran
| is attacked by Israel or the U.S. You can be angry at your
| government while not welcoming bombers.
|
| Ordinarily I'd have faith the governments were smart enough
| to know better, but at this point I've lost hope.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Iranians are living under Islamic colonial dictatorship.
| Blaming this unrest on Israeli and US influence is absurd. And
| only exposes you as a sympathizer to the oppressive regime.
| paganel wrote:
| You're saying that the Brits should throw their colonizer and
| Christian king out of the island and return to their old
| Celtic traditions and deities, no? Or what exactly? Because
| the timeframes are very comparable, Saint Colombanus died in
| the early 600s, while the Arabs got all the way to Merv by
| the 670s-680s.
| tim333 wrote:
| Is them the Iranian people or their dictators?
| ck2 wrote:
| 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?
| bearjaws wrote:
| You pretty much nailed it, its all about bandwidth.
|
| The emergency SOS feature is optimized down to the byte to
| ensure it can work with poor signal and low bandwidth.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Link budget cuts both ways. If your user terminal sucks, you
| can compensate somewhat - by building a larger, beefier
| satellite that has better antenna directionality and pumps out
| more transmission juice, and throwing the data rate under the
| bus. This is how it's done now.
|
| Having a terminal that doesn't suck puts less strain on the
| satellite side and, thus, scales better. But for emergencies
| and serving middle of nowhere, "direct to cell" makes sense.
| dsign wrote:
| 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.
| nsmdkdfk wrote:
| The hubris of US idealists. There's no packing up and leaving.
| If you leave your tribe you are dead. This was true 10k years
| ago and it is true again. If you weren't born under the US
| security umbrella you are nothing but an ant avoiding the boots
| of those above you. And the whole world is returning to mean
| once more. There's no packing bags, there's fighting for YOUR
| freedom or being a slave. Those above will always seek to
| oppress those below.
| tim333 wrote:
| There are a lot of people not particularly under the US
| umbrella who are doing ok. India for example. It's debatable
| how under the umbrella Europe is these days with the current
| president.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed, but right now, I'm getting Bay of Pigs vibes from the
| whole affair. Trump baits the protestors into action -- _don 't
| worry, we've got your backs!_ -- and then hangs them out to
| dry.
| energy123 wrote:
| A politicide is occuring right now in Iran.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| [flagged]
| noman-land wrote:
| I publicly beg people not to do this.
|
| Sharing anything but the prompt you wrote is useless and
| arguably harmful.
| smilesvua wrote:
| HAM Radio still works
| Rover222 wrote:
| 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.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I'm not against the movement, but the last time Iran had
| protests this bad was in 1979. It didn't get better afterwards.
| It's a huge mess and I hope they figure something out to fix
| it, but I'm just pessimistic.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Thanks for the reply. Makes sense.
| tekla wrote:
| I hope the movement succeeds.
|
| I've been curious myself about why the activist class seems
| weirdly quiet on this issue.
|
| On a quick scan of media feeds I've seen a couple of things
| that stand out (I do not confirm or deny how true these claims
| are)
|
| 1) Current Iran is a enemy of the USA and thus activists can't
| support the destruction of the current regime. Iran is able to
| create nukes so can put pressure on the USA in Middle East
| Politics (esp. Palestine and Israel)
|
| 2) The uprising and the Shah are CIA/Western Backed and thus
| supporting the protestors is de-facto colonialism/imperialism.
|
| 3) Contrary to popular belief Iran is not actually a Muslim
| nation, only the leadership is. The population is significantly
| more varied and people do not want to be seen supporting the
| firebombing of Mosques because Islamphobia.
|
| I don't know how widespread these opinions are, but it IS very
| strange how I don't see more outrage.
| Rover222 wrote:
| I think the left-leaning activist people in the Americas are
| so against any position that could align with a Trump
| position, that they can't think beyond those lines. If Trump
| supports the revolution it must be bad.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Or because the Iranian Islamic regime supports Hamas? And
| they somehow align with that side. I don't know.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| The core of far left activism is being anti-Western.
| Therefore, they can't say anything bad about even the most
| despicable anti-Western governments.
| Rover222 wrote:
| That is what it seems like
| breppp wrote:
| There's an alliance between the new left and islamism due to
| some ideological similarities.
|
| Sure one side would march for pride and the other hangs gays
| on cranes.
|
| However, in foreign policy both explain anything as some
| product of colonialism, a phenomena that essentially
| disappeared 60 years ago.
|
| This is due to the effect Edward Said had on US humanities,
| which was in turn was influenced by Muslim Brotherhood
| thought in his home country of Egypt
| Rover222 wrote:
| Ironic considering Iranians consider themselves to be under
| Islamic colonial oppression.
| Rover222 wrote:
| I hadn't heard of Edward Said, thanks for mentioning.
| danny_codes wrote:
| I offer two possibilities:
|
| 1. Iran has frequent large protests that consistently get
| crushed. So while I assume the vast majority of Americans
| oppose the Iranian government, it's hard to get worked up for
| the 5th, 6th time.
|
| 2. The US doesn't support the Iranian government. We already
| sanction them. What additional support can US citizens lobby
| for? In the case of Israel, decreased US support would have a
| tangible effect. Unclear how increased US support for Iranian
| protestors would matter.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Makes sense!
| DesiLurker wrote:
| I have a less charitable and more direct answer. Right now
| there is a notion in Left that Israeli are the oppressor. In
| Iran large majority of population is Persian but MINO (Muslim
| in name only due to dictatorship). They are struggling to get
| freedom from the Islamic regime and getting some help from
| Israel. This flips the narrative in Left's mind (if they accept
| it) that Muslims can be oppressors too and that is untenable
| for them. especially because Left in Western nations has
| basically aligned themselves with muslims so its easier for
| them to just ignore it.
|
| BTW its not just left here, I originally hail from India and
| you can feel the pin-drop silence from left on Iran there too.
| They just hope the rebellion gets crushed by regime like other
| ones and they'll pretend status quo.
|
| My TLDR takeaway: Muslims only care about when they are
| oppressed & Left is completely aligned with them right now.
| Rover222 wrote:
| I completely agree with you.
| whatshisface wrote:
| There are a lot of signs that the leader being suggested would
| be a king, which is not something most citizens in democratic
| nations would feel natural fighting for.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Because the Iranian regime was the one pushing that pro
| Palestine narrative.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Yup. Hard to be pro Hamas and then cheer a secular revolution
| in Iran.
| almogo wrote:
| Speaking from an American perspective, many left-leaning
| commentators I've seen are focused on the ICE situation in the
| states right now.
|
| But that's the most optimistic take I can conjure.
| Rover222 wrote:
| Definitely part of it. But the Mexican leftists I know are
| equally silent. As they were on Ukraine too. It's really only
| when then can root against the US or Jews, as far as I can
| tell.
| terminalshort wrote:
| > It's really only when then can root against the US or
| Jews
|
| Yeah, that's pretty much all the left cares about (also
| hating rich people). I used to try to be open minded to
| them like you are, but now I just dismiss them entirely
| because of this.
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