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.

> "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.”"

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?

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.

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.

Lora? Shortwave radio? Or nothing at all?

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?

I guess with motivated actors anything is possible.

> 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.

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.

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

> 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

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