White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.
They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.
Starlink has absolutely nothing to do with either of those things…
I do not believe for a second that communications within the Whitehouse are inadequate, or if they were, could not be solved in a secure manner. Slapping a Starlink in a few places sounds like an invitation to backdoor all communications. Not only that, it is an invitation to sidestep obligations to preserve government records.
Security concerns? No need to eavesdrop on electronics when they have Tulsi to just tell them everything.
Ah yes, because what the white house needs is an inferior ISP to plug the gaps that could easily be filled by proper wireless access point configuration and distribution.
This is definitely not going to come back to haunt us later.
Are you a white house staffer carrying a heavy stack of top secret documents? Do you desperately need both hands to vape or to text roger stone a progress report? Try DOCDASH!
Just request a docdasher in app and a helpful person like Yvegeny, Dmitri or Boris will show up to the white house on a motorcycle, take your documents from you, not copy and transmit them, and just keep them very safe, like tippy top safe.
Starlink should be abolished.
With how spacex and Tesla are going I wouldn’t be surprised if it abolishes itself.
They literally installed spyware in the WH. National security is an utter joke with these traitors.
This country was destroyed under Reagan. We needed a national security strategy against the capitalists back then and instead invited them into the government.
This is just the fire sale, the vultures picking the well rotted corpse clean. Reagan and Welch destroyed this place, don’t give Trump that much credit. He’s just an opportunist who saw profit in chaos.
The United States 1776-1980 - Died of thirst waiting for Promised Golden Showers of Prosperity that never came - Useful Idiots
Somebody is going to have to explain to me how starlink is going to boost WiFi availability if it is routed from offsite using their current fibre network.
Yeah, this doesn’t make sense to me. Starlink needs a dish that has to be outside without trees covering it, so it isn’t like they can place new routers around the building that receive Starlink and have wifi capability. They will still have to run a cable from the dish(es?) to new wireless routers. How is that ANY different from just running new wireless routers from their existing fiber?
It’s literally not any different. Starlink is just a less-reliable broadband internet connection, it has nothing to do with WiFi
Because now you don’t have to run wires from the existing network to the new WiFi, you just plop them both in the new location!
But then if you want the access points to act like one WiFi network so walking around doesn’t reset all your connections, all you have to do is run cables to the new WiFi access points from the original signal, unplug them from Star Link, then wire starlink into the main uplink as a fail over or something! Easy!
In any healthy democracy, this would have been seen as a scandal exposing signs of corruption and would have likely resulted in the dissolution of the government and early election.
But the US is not a healthy democracy.
Not to worry, “some cited security concerns.” We’re all set
Besides the security concerns, I want to know what they’re using it for, and how much bullshit they’re hiding by avoiding the official network.
It’s certainly not a speed and convenience thing.
Yes. That’s the joke. I’m unsure how the burning terminator dying with a thumbs up wasn’t clear enough that there is obviously more to this than just “security concerns”
The corruption is clear, obvious, and blatant. Everyone knows about it, but there’s not a whole lot they can do. A good chunk of our citizens picked it on purpose.
There is actually so much we and the courts/Congress can do. We’re just choosing not to do it, unfortunately.
Given it’s unrepresentative voting system I think how much is enough to be a democracy. T hot take for people that see democracy. Two parties to choose from is just one more than a clear dictatorship. If neither actually represents you then yeah it’s not healthy .
Agreed, except for one point. It’s an oligarchy. Our “dictator” was just selling cars on the White House lawn. Capitalism won to get to it’s late stages, happy to let racist hatred and russian influence fester for continued capital self-interest
Are they then routing all starlink traffic to Russia?
I am all for making the White House less secure at this point.
Musk is literally a James Bond villain. Literally. Like LITERALLY a Bond villain.
Edit: minus the genius and charisma
Imagine how galling this must be for Jeff Bezos. He’s put so much effort into his Bond villain persona. The guy even now looks like Dr Evil. But he’s being out eviled by a pudgy, dorky-looking South African nepo-baby.
He even bought the James Bond license from the Broccoli family!
“Minus the genius and charisma”
You’re describing an Austin Powers villain.
Enjoy the high latency.
Who’s hand is on the power switch?
If you live in the DC area, absolutely do NOT sign up for this service.
100% chance that the government, as well as musks companies would be monitoring you directly 24/7.
I recently bought a van and am planning on road tripping while working. I had assumed that I would get starlink so I could work pretty much anywhere.
That is dead and I guess I’ll have to make sure I’m within range of a cell tower on working days.
I wholeheartedly agree.
However, it’s hard to say that AT&T, Comcast, Cox and the like aren’t all doing the same thing.
The way I see stuff like this is that you don’t have to hand over your information on a silver platter directly to the agents.
Like when a trainload of east germans was allowed to migrate to the west through a separate country, they just had to hand their passports to the Stasi before being let go.
When the Stasi agents came to the train to collect the passports the east germans just threw them on the floor instead of handing them over, that is kinda how this should be viewed.
I’m gonna teach you a lesson on improv: “yes, and”.
… we should further have a system with carrier pidgeons carrying USB Flash disks for ultra slow but highly private Internet access.
Didn’t they used to do this in Cuba, to distribute digital media without having good internet access?
That’s called a sneakernet. Although, if you’re talking actual pigeons, you may be interested in RFC1149.
Well now the Chinese and Russians just need to get a way into Shartlink and they can also monitor you and your government.
they’re already in, guaranteed
Yeah, we fired the cyber security people.
Salt Typhoon is still ongoing, as well.
They disbanded the board looking into that on literally day 1.
In its first full day, the Trump administration axed all advisory committee members within the Department of Homeland Security, including the people that make up the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB). The CSRB was actively working on investigating Salt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group responsible for breaches of at least nine telecommunications networks in the past several months.
Run everything through a VPN tunnel instead?
Don’t support fascists. Even if you have a VPN.
