They also froze assets from Starlink.
Meanwhile Starlink’s direct to cell capability is only growing. If your phone has 4G, Starlink knows where it is.
So glad we have a private company that we have no affiliation with tracking practically every phone on the planet. Feels like this “feature” is illegal by way of wiretapping and stalking laws.
Remember the holy scriptures. It’s only oppression when the government does it. When it’s a private company it’s freedom!
But, remember: looking up where his personal jet is flying to is bad
Meanwhile Starlink’s direct to cell capability is only growing. If your phone has 4G, Starlink knows where it is.
This is all news to me, could someone please elaborate/share some resources?
I don’t know anything about Starlink but I guess I should if it knows anything about me.
Starlink is a mobile internet platform by SpaceX. They currently have somewhere around 6,300 satellites up in low earth orbit, in complex shells covering most of the globe. These satellites aren’t permanent, they’re so low that they do experience some mild atmospheric drag, which causes them to eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up. However SpaceX frequently launches more.
Over the last year or so SpaceX have been developing direct-to-cell capability, using 4G/LTE. This means you will be able to send and receive calls, texts and data over Starlink, direct from your mobile phone. This is only possible because of the low altitude of Starlink - conventional satellites are much higher up, and while they can send signals to your phone (eg GPS) they’re too far away for your phone to reach back.
However, the flip side of this is that Starlink is effectively operating mobile phone masts up in space, globally. A network carrier on land already has the ability to triangulate your position using cell towers - they ping your phone from multiple towers, with this they can determine distance, and with 3 or more they can triangulate with increasing precision. This is kind of acceptable, because it’s only the country you’re in (or near to) that will be able to identify and locate you. However with SpaceX you have an American business that’s effectively able to identify (through unique identifiers such as IMEI) and locate you via your phone almost anywhere in the world using their satellite constellation.
The only thing that is surprising to me is that musk didn’t call it Skynet.
Scary person.
I think he leaves that kind of plagiarism to his old friend Peter Thiel, who seems to have an obsession with Lord of the Rings villains.
What do you mean by “villains”?
The only Tolkien inspired names I could find are Arda, Palantir, Valar, Mithril, Rivendell, and Lembas, none of which are names of villains.
Two Palantiri have been used by villains but that’s about it.
LOTR nerds are the best nerds.
“The wise speak only of what they know.” – Gandalf
…as the ozone layer gets destroyed.
https://qz.com/spacex-starlink-satellites-ozone-layer-1851544567
Lmao they release aluminum oxides when they burn up, it’s basically antipersperant in the upper atmosphere.
Ironically though, it will make us all sweat more.
If your phone has 4G, Starlink knows where it is.
What do you mean by that?
If your phone can talk with a cell tower, the tower can work out how far away you are. With 3 or more towers they can determine your location by triangulation. When your phone talks with a cell tower, it identifies itself, including by providing your device’s unique IMEI.
Starlink is effectively a bunch of moving towers in space. If 3 or more Starlink satellites can talk to your phone, then they can also determine your position. It’s basically the same principle as GPS, except at a much lower altitude and over 4G/LTE bands, and the satellite receives signal back from your phone whereas with GPS it’s one way from the satellite to your device.
Do you have a source for that, I doubte they have the range…
If they didn’t have the range for that you wouldn’t be able to connect with them to send calls, text, or data. Those are all two way communication and requires the satellite to be within range of your device.
Now, there’s something to be said for the current level of coverage of direct-to-cell capable satellites. If they don’t have many up there then it will be harder to triangulate - however they also move quite quickly through their orbits, so if they make multiple measurements they can get a good idea with just one satellite, and again the accuracy will only go up when more satellites are in range.
One article I read last July said they only had 103 satellites with that capability up, with plans to launch a further 300 this year (out of a total constellation of 6,200). However I’ve read other sources from last year about much higher numbers. I suspect the 103 refers to a newer version of direct-to-cell capable satellites that will form the commercial implementation.
As for the range of the signal from the satellite, it absolutely can reach your device. GPS is an awful lot higher, and with satellites in general you don’t have to worry about people being nearby to the radiation source (like you do with phones or even towers). There isn’t a risk of location or identification with a one way signal from a satellite, though, however if your device were to do something in response to the signal that could be an issue (eg [ab]using the emergency alert system or some sort of novel exploit).
Suffice it all to say, we’re entering an age where there is the potential for a lot of shit to happen, stuff that hasn’t really even been explored in SciFi or spy movies. In the late 90s we had Enemy of the State, which touched on satellites being used for stuff, but as far as I’m aware no fiction has explored using the satellites for two-way communication with our devices. People think of satellites being 600,000km away, not merely ~500km.
That is not a source, show me the source of starlink running a mobile phone network.
I’ve already put a lot more effort in the discussion than you have. Is it too much for you to just search for it yourself?
Thank you for the source!
You put in a lot of effort when you didn’t need to, I asked for a source in my second comment, you just wrote a huge post with no source.
It isn’t my job to prove your claims, though I fo appologize for my rude tone in my past comment.
I can see that the service isn’t live yet, it just says “starting 2024” and “starting 2025”, to me this reads like classic Musk “launching next year” hype.
Setting up a mobile phone network operating in existing mobile phones bands, broadcast from sattelites, has extreme legal challenges, especially since they don’t even list any partner from an EU country.
Untill I see see the system being indepentantly verified as working I will keep pressing X to doubt.
A search Friday on X showed hundreds of Brazilian users inquiring about VPNs that could potentially enable them to continue using the platform by making it appear they were logging on from outside the country.
This is your chance to break free.
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On the bright side, more people using VPNs.
He’s taking all vpn off Google and apple too. This is a terrible, dangerous and dumb decision despite how much I dislike Twitter and musk.
