this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 165 points 10 months ago (3 children)

This is what you get for not castrating them 25 years ago.

Make internet a utility already, fuck.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I really thought you were going somewhere else before I got to the second sentence.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah that was a short but wild ride lol

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Who? The intelligence people, the Chinese spies or the internet people?

[–] [email protected] 63 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Castrations for everybody! You get a castration and you get a castration!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

c/shitcrusaderkingssay

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

This was probably the biggest intelligence coup of this century. Our intelligence agencies have extremely capable hacking capabilities. I’m sure they not only know the provider, they know the exact building down to the individual IP addresses of the PCs that data was transmitted to. If they get that, they will be able to trace all of the other activities that originated from that Chinese agency.

On top of that when the US was done it still shot it down and now has the hardware to analyze.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I'm a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn't?

Then I remembered Starlink exists.

[–] [email protected] 170 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Don't think they were colluding with the provider. They probably just put a burner sim card into a 4g module and sent data over a VPN to China whenever it had signal.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 10 months ago

It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The blurb says primarily for navigation.

So it was using the starlink signals like gps signal and therefore they needed to correlate with the carrier to get a rough time sync.

I wonder what timing data is freely available on the starlink acquisition signal.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Why would they need data then? With GPS can get a 1metre accurate chip for like 20 bucks and it's way smaller. And no need for any carrier or subscription.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Mapping out network topology? Who knows.

Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It’s a satellite provider. Cell networks don’t work at that altitude. Starlink was my first guess too but, after some more thought, it could be Hughesnet. They probably have wider coverage.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Yeah, their coverage is hughe

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Y U G E N E T

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

So are their pings

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Hugh Mungous

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Probably Hughesnet or Viasat.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago

That just sounds like efficient design if you ask me.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 10 months ago

I guess now we know why it stopped to hover over Starbucks for so long.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I thought the official announcement from the pentagon was it never sent any data?

[–] [email protected] 39 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

You're correct, it didn't send any data, it sent data.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

Ah yes of course, my apologies for the misunderstanding. I hate when a butt plug is the voice of reason, thank you for your service though.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Right, because they figured out which provider was using and had them cut it off...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

That’s not even similar to what the announcement was.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago

But the free market will regulate. /s

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

Wait, you mean US corporations will take money to do questionable things? Surprised Pikachu face.

Maybe the US government shouldn't have set the precedent that that was EXPECTED AND ENCOURAGED

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ok, now tell us what the hell you shot down way up north during that time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Didn't that turn out to be a weather balloon launched by an amateur meteorology club?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

No that ended up being swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket which reflected light from Venus. Pretty common mistake.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Please don't interrupt a conspiracy theory

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The one over the Great Lakes may have been an advertisement from a car dealership.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well..how many nationwide internet suppliers could there be?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Three.

Thanks, deregulation.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Actually there is only one. The rest buy their services and say they are nationwide but are regional centric. Long lines weren't really deregulated either.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

AT&T of course.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

I'll have a good laugh if it turns out the baloon was not chinese after all, it has just contained some iot device with previously unknown call home function to collect diagnostic data.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

We should let them do this provided they only use Comcast and Sprint.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Someone tell China how to install Google earth app

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Officials familiar with assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.

Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communication sent via the American internet service provider.

"As we had made it clear before, the airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into U.S. because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability," Liu said in a statement to NBC News.

The previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S.

In an exclusive interview with NBC News this month, VanHerck explained that he worked together with the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, to reduce the release of emergency action messages to ensure the Chinese balloon could not collect them.

“Protecting EAM and nuclear command and control communications is of critical importance to the United States,” a senior defense official told NBC News.


The original article contains 821 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Wow really they used infustructure in the United States to communicate with something in The United States instead of putting a super expensive and moving satellite dish on the thing???

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The PCC must be feeling all smart about their spy balloon design choices. Just wait until they need to talk to Comcast customer support...

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

Was Dishy mounted on top?