Comment by ACCount37
1 month ago
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.
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 :)
It has to be free in case of OFAC sanctions otherwise if you are generating revenue from commercial activity in sanctioned regions, you get huge fines.
It's weird how Apple and Google don't get it, while SpaceX does.
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.
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.
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Imagine if Starlink came with special channel to X.com. UK would loose their minds.
You may wish to look what is happening closer to home before engaging in such low level trolling.
Is x.com blocked in the UK?
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The reason national great firewalls shouldn't exist, is that national great firewalls are bad. We don't have to blame potential future badness when we can blame definite present badness.
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The claim you're making has been thoroughly debunked countless times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russian-Ukrain...
Assuming this section is accurate
> 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]
I will walk back the last half after the word “or” in my claim here
> Musk manipulates those connections for whatever he perceives as his own benefit or he wouldn’t be turning off the connections in Ukraine[1]
The first half is still him manipulating those connections for whatever he perceives as his own benefit
Playing a bit the devil's advocate here, but
> This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place
This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.
But wouldn't the position of a strong government be to trust it's people, and allow them to see the whole spectrum of information available in the world, and give them essentially the right to decide what's "right or wrong"? I don't see how being free from any information filtering on behalf of some benevolent leader is USA-centric?
Speaking as an American - clearly the general population is unable to determine what's right or wrong.
The USA centric view I was referring to is the one where lack of freedom is wrong, since it benefits the USA ideology of maximal freedom. Which is not in generally shared by all western countries (in Europe socialism and state ownership is much more present, for instance), and it's not necessary the most accurate view of real USA (there might be more "free" countries, like Switzerland), it's just that it benefits the perceived image of USA.
With this in mind, no, I don't share the view that a strong government should trust the people: people can easily be steered by foreign parties that want to gain soft power (example: Russia and recent anti-EU propaganda in Poland, Romania and Georgia). It's very hard to draw a line between what is "right" and what is "too much", but I don't think that excessive freedom is an obvious route to an healthy society (that is, a society that has peace and people are happy).
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I don’t think it can be disputed that there is a lot of propaganda and misinformation in the internet.
One logical conclusion to this would be to protect people from that via censorship.
Many recent examples of the US doing this as well (Covid, Russia, etc.). Of course, the US delegates this to its cooperations, so it can publicly say its hands are clean.
People do remember the Twitter files though, and the US government has massive spying and monitoring capabilities, so its hands are not actually all that clean.
> colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society
Iran has commanded empires for millennia. Longer than continental Europe.
Iranians getting their hands on Starlink terminals is as “colonial” as revolutionary France helping the American colonists usurp the British.
Obviously I and most westerners are on the side of the angels for this incident but we also hear lots of calls in the West to ban "Russian and Chinese bots", or "pro terrorist views" or whatever. Principled views shouldn't do a 180 based on the subjects involved.
Again, just for the sake of the discussion: Iran banned starlink, people are getting terminals (BTW, I'm happy they managed to). Starlink is still providing the service in the area although they are aware it's illegal and people can be behaded for owning a starlink terminal. But hey, Iran and USA are enemies. The fact that Iran is the only country where Starlink is active even if it's NOT approved is food for thought. There are other countries, where there are regimes that control communications, where Starlink is not active.
It takes an incredible stretch of the imagination to conflate colonialism with freedom, when the two couldn't be more at odds, definitionally.
I'm not conflating them.
Yes, as an American I think that all forms of government that are not liberal democracy basically are illegitimate. We can have relationships of convenience with other governments, but it should be known by such governments somewhere in the back of their minds that we would prefer to see them replaced by a liberal democracy.
The Iranian state has not shown itself to be one that is very convenient for us to temporarily overlook its flaws, and the people it governs frequently show that they would prefer a different form of government (otherwise, why not let them vote in fair elections?). It should be a no brainer that Americans and their government should be on the side of the people, not the theocracy.
But USA can't even be on the side of their own people. I can see the recent ICE shooting, health care issues, clearly corrupt government officials. Why should anybody trust them with another country?
Also the US has massive protests aswell, would it be okay for china to liberate the USA, since china itself is lead by a "democratic party"? They could argue the USA isn't a real liberal democracy.
> why not let them vote in fair elections? Elections can be faked, people can be mislead, oppositions and media can be bought.
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The US democracy is quite weird, though, because it's IMHO quite far from the people: billionaires can influence the outcomes of elections by steering the votes where the most paying candidate (or the most knowledgeable, or someone else with other skills) desires. This is not something that people can influence easily, so I find hard to believe that a government is legitimate just by the label on the packaging.
I won't go down the path of "fair elections", since I don't think it applies to USA.
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> There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle.
Why?
It boils down to what one considers to be relevant for humans: I think that well being is more important than freedom. Historically, freedom was not a predominant part in human societies. On the contrary: slavery, kingdoms, empires, took part in human history more than freedom. Authoritarian government is not wrong per se, as long as people are well. In the same way, freedom of knowledge anything at any time is not necessary good. Actually, the ability to immediately access any content, beneficial or not, is something that humans acquired very recently in their history, and it's absolutely not clear that this is in fact something good in the long term. I think it is, but it's just speculation. Being conservative and NOT giving free communication is, I think, a more sensible default for a government. Also, there are cases where we already know that freedom doesn't help: CSAM, revenge porn, and other nasty stuff. ()
() edit: no, I was partly mistaken with these examples. I provided example of things that are known and widely accepted to be damaging of other liberties, while I meant to provide something more subtle, like fake news.
I'm genuinely a bit confused — it seems like you're arguing that people should be able to have freedom to choose what to do, but not?
People can do whatever they think is right, of course (: so there is no "should". My point was that saying that a government should not impose communication restrictions is not necessary right. So, no, people should be happy: if they are happy without freedom, then let them be. If they are unhappy without freedom, let them make a revolution.