perihelions
7 hours ago
The title is underselling the nuance—there's the entire Myanmar civil war hiding behind the word "allegedly". The group in power claims a group trying to overthrow them is operating scam centers (they deny it); this SpaceX intervention cuts off communications on a large scale, presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way.
> "“Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for the military government, charged in a statement Monday night that the top leaders of the Karen National Union, an armed ethnic organization opposed to army rule, were involved in the scam projects at KK Park,” the AP wrote. The Karen National Union is “part of the larger armed resistance movement in Myanmar’s civil war” and “deny any involvement in the scams.”"
safety1st
2 hours ago
I don't think the nuance you believe exists actually exists.
The scam centers at KK Park and Shwe Kokko employ forced laborers numbering in the thousands - they literally kidnap people from neighboring countries, imprison them, confiscate their passports, and force them to conduct scam operations for 17 hours a day, torturing them if they fail to comply.
The KNU is undoubtedly in on this, allowing it to happen within their area of control and almost certainly profiting financially from it.
The stuff going on there is evil of the highest degree. It's evil on a level that many Hacker News users probably did not even realize exists in the world.
Starlink doesn't even offer service in Myanmar! The operators of the scam centers acquired the terminals through their criminal connections.
Yes the Tatmadaw is also evil. It doesn't really matter though. This is a pretty black and white scenario. What's going on is dark beyond belief and any action which curtails it is positive.
dylan604
2 hours ago
> Starlink doesn't even offer service in Myanmar!
If this is the case, what is the justification for allowing them at all? If the receiver's location is not in an authorized service area, why allow it to connect? In fact, I'm surprised that's not automated. I can't access websites due to geofencing, yet Starlink can't figure out the location of the dish accessing their network? I'm not buying that at all.
mschuster91
2 hours ago
> If the receiver's location is not in an authorized service area, why allow it to connect?
Money and other KPIs. Money is an obvious KPI - 2500 terminals at 100 $ a month each, 250k a month in income, nothing to sneeze at. The more important KPI however is satellite utilization.
And it's not like either the legitimate Myanmari government nor the various oppositional factions have any interest, much less ability, in trying to curtail Starlink.
dylan604
2 hours ago
they have interest in curtailing for the opposition while keeping it for themselves
altacc
5 hours ago
The truth is more likely that both the junta and local militias have ties to different scam centres. The Myanmar government never does anything for its people, it's motivated by power and money and they were profiting heavily from scam centres until China's patience broke, due to large numbers of Chinese being trafficked and imprisoned at these scam compounds. The junta needs China's support in order to survive. As the junta lost control of the border regions the local militias stepped in to either profit from scams or close them to please China, depending upon what they thought would benefit them most.
whimsicalism
3 hours ago
i haven’t seen any good evidence tying the Tatmadaw to these large-scale scam operations, while I have seen a fair bit of evidence tying a few of the regional militias.
yorwba
2 hours ago
Many of those regional militias are or were integrated into the Tatmadaw as Border Guard Forces to hold territory against other militias. E.g. the scam centers in Laukkai were run by the local BGF until 2023 when the Tatmadaw lost control to the MNDAA, who then shut them down, presumably as part of a deal with China. The Tatmadaw doesn't control many towns on the eastern border anymore, but they do control Muse near the border with China, where scam centers were operating unimpeded until after that offensive, when the Tatmadaw began to target them with arrests and deportations https://shwepheemyay.org/english-edition/junta-raids-muse-sc... probably to get back on China's good side.
ralfd
6 hours ago
The nominal group in power should be able to deny/allow communication from the space above their country though.
ferbivore
6 hours ago
You think resistance movements should never have telecommunications access?
heisgone
5 hours ago
One's freedom fighter is someone else terrorist.
ferbivore
5 hours ago
One's nominal group in power is someone else's genocidal occupier.
bilbo0s
5 hours ago
Again, this is often the case in civil conflicts (factional fighting). But the subjects of this action are undeniably bad actors. Are the authorities bad actors as well, yes, very likely. But the regional players want the targeted subject's abilities degraded and their options strangled regardless of what the local authority wants. I think the rest of the world is simply lining up behind the regional players. Which was inevitable really.
watwut
5 hours ago
And frequently the so called terrorist is not a terrorist by any reasonable meaning of that world. Like, frequently they are non violent.
bilbo0s
5 hours ago
Frequently they are nonviolent.
In this particular case however, they are decidedly violent and dangerous. So why not cut them off?
watwut
37 minutes ago
Then make that argument instead of arguing by slogan.
antonymoose
5 hours ago
However, in this specific situation, they are definitely terrorists.
gruez
5 hours ago
"armed resistance movement" sounds pretty close to terrorists to me
pyrale
4 hours ago
Unless, of course, they're freedom fighters.
philistine
4 hours ago
I'm going to hard disagree here. You're part of this whole sliding of the word terrorism from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.
Using violence to overthrow the Myanmar government is not automatically terrorism at all. Groups throughout history have used organized violence without resorting to inflicting fear to achieve their goals.
gruez
17 minutes ago
>from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.
What's the difference between the two, besides the latter lacking a just cause? If that's the only difference, then that just proves my and OP's point that "one man's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist"
toss1
4 hours ago
That is definitely an "It Depends"
It depends a lot on who they are shooting
If they are shooting irrelevant and innocent civilians (with the goal of introducing broader fear in the population to somehow change their minds), then definitely terrorists.
If they are shooting only govt/regime military/police/enforcers or officials, much more like an opposing power.
jeromegv
4 hours ago
Was the US revolution against the British empire terrorism?
catlikesshrimp
4 hours ago
Nowadays talking about independence would be considered "Terrorism" This word is a new "Catch all" for everything you don't like (immigrants, antifa, any protest...)
FridayoLeary
3 hours ago
Yes, although the term hadn't yet been invented:)
SoftTalker
3 hours ago
Only if you redefine "terrorism" to include any armed resistance/revolution.
dylan604
2 hours ago
What word, terrorism? In my head the term was much older, but looking it up shows it's a late 18th century French word. TIL, lucky 10k I guess. Then I realized I was confusing it with assassin.
burnerthrow008
3 hours ago
Exactly! And that's why we all agree that Nelson Mandela, the WWII French resistance and Native Americans are clearly terrorists!
/s
sbarre
6 hours ago
You think the issue is that black and white?
swarnie
6 hours ago
That's not what OP is saying.
An entity truly in control should be able to deny access to insurrectionists because of you know, being in control.
IAmBroom
5 hours ago
They are in control of the military, and presumably the capital city area and a majority of the country's resources.
That says nothing about their power to control the satellites overhead.
bilbo0s
4 hours ago
I think the commenter only meant that there is such a thing as RF engineering. But that to be effective, RF engineering would require the local authorities to have some level of control over the region they want to shut down.
Thus, the authorities must not have that control.
I agree with the commenter from a technical perspective. It's extremely easy to cut off SpaceX terminals in some area if you control that area.
I just don't think that's relevant. It's not the local authorities the rest of the world is lining up behind, it's the regional players around Myanmar. The regional players can countenance the local authorities only slightly more than the warlords and gang leaders. What the local authorities want is almost completely irrelevant to the regional players.
jacquesm
5 hours ago
Clearly, they are not in control of SpaceX.
miroljub
3 hours ago
Yes they are, if they are able to force SpaceX to do as they want.
jayd16
4 hours ago
It's wild to me how many of these comments are appealing to local law without any thought to what is just.
If the local law was to deny all women or some ethnic group access to communication, the world should do it without question?
Workaccount2
4 hours ago
>If the local law was to deny all women
Palestine gets widespread support
Rover222
4 hours ago
Queers for Palestine is so hard to wrap my head around.
arczyx
4 hours ago
it's not hard to understand. people simply not liking queers doesn't mean they deserve to be bombed. also there are queers in Palestine and they are getting bombed too by Israel
FuriouslyAdrift
3 hours ago
'not liking' you mean actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis.
https://www.queermajority.com/essays-all/queers-for-palestin...
arczyx
2 hours ago
> actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis
There's only one man being killed in the article you linked, and his killing is way more complex that the article made it to be.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/27/g-s1-17637/hebron-west-bank-i...
Pretty sure that's not enough evidence for 'actively hunting down and murdering on a consistent basis'.
On the other hand, Israel had probably killed tens if not hundreds or thousands of queers in Gaza as of now. That surely count for 'murdering on a consistent basis'.
linhns
a few seconds ago
There ain’t that many queer in Gaza, genius.
tqi
an hour ago
> Israel had probably killed tens if not hundreds or thousands of queers in Gaza as of now
When you pull easily google-able numbers out of thin air, you undermine the credibility of your overall point: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/10/7/two-years-of-israel...
Jtsummers
9 minutes ago
That doesn't undermine their statement at all. They wrote hundreds or thousands, perhaps you misread it as hundreds of thousands? 67,000 killed per your link, assuming only 1% were LGBTQ, means around 670 LGBTQ people killed, which falls well within the standard definition of "hundreds". Even if they only make up 0.5% of the population, it's still hundreds. And to hit "tens" they only need to be about 0.1% of the Gazan population.
meekaaku
3 hours ago
On a broader scale, the marriage of far left and islam are not from some love of shared values. Its from the love of shared enemy, capitalism and western civilization.
foxglacier
4 minutes ago
I think the biggest reason is that leftists favor weak groups. Muslims are poor and relatively powerless globally so leftists see them as oppressed and deserving sympathy. Combine that with Jews being the polar opposite and it's clear why leftists would favor Palestinians in that war. But yes, anti-Westernism is probably a factor too.
jayd16
an hour ago
Feels more like a psy-op than anything else. Some on the left can't resist protesting war crimes despite understanding the nuance and that is used to call them the "enemy of western civilization."
mrguyorama
2 hours ago
It isn't at all, this is the dumbest "gotcha" ever.
You can absolutely support someone who doesn't support you back. Queers for Palestine isn't saying "Free Palestine so I can move there and live my life", it's saying "Palestinians should be free even if they don't like me, because freedom is imperative"
The ACLU did the same fucking thing with literal nazi marches decades ago and nobody made this kind of dumb claim, and a shocking number of people who make this "gotcha" about queers for Palestine get upset that the ACLU now says they shouldn't support the right of Nazis.
I support the freedom of religion for people who practice religions that say I am the devil or need to be saved or I should be oppressed. I do NOT support those religions enacting such oppression, or modifying my government for stupid things they believe in, but that doesn't mean they should not have the right to practice their own beliefs that don't affect other people.
I want Palestinians to have a country that does not oppress women and outlaw birth control (That's why most of Palestine is children by the way; oppression), and murder random people in the town square, but that still requires they get "freedom" of some kind. I would argue that freedom also requires the Palestinians are made free from Hamas, but there is an awkward chance that Palestinians right now would choose Hamas given a free choice. I don't have a solution for that.
Regardless, the solution to any of that is still not fairly indiscriminate bombing with high accepted collateral casualties.
arczyx
4 hours ago
Do you have an objective source about what law in Palestine denying access to all women?
jonah
4 hours ago
In that case, they're probably the lesser of two evils. Women can't campaign for more rights if they're dead...
evilkorn
2 hours ago
That is sort of the way I see it. It's a leap to ask for gay or women's rights before the county has the right to not be bombed.
charcircuit
4 hours ago
Yes, if they are operating within that region, then they should be following local laws. Allowing companies to break laws they don't agree with is a bad precedent to set.
maccard
4 hours ago
Whether or not you like it, that's how international relations works.
The US famously has gripes with Cuba, Iran, HK, Afghanistan and others, that affect those countries unfairly. If another country decides to side with Iran, they'll find themselves on the US sanction list. So is it more just to deny the people of your country access to trade and interaction with the US?
infthi
4 hours ago
The precedent seems to be that anyone can broadcast anything without caring what territories can receive your broadcast (see Voice of America broadcasts during the Cold War or GPS jamming in the Baltic nowadays). This seems to be extendable to broadcasting from space. The nominal group in power may ban/jam _receiving_ equipment on their territory though.
fnfs2000
3 hours ago
US law prohibits Starlink from transmitting into countries that don't permit it, with exceptions as directed by the US Government. If this was not the case, Starlink would have made its product available globally instead of having to seek permission from every country they want to service (called "landing rights")
nradov
4 hours ago
There is no single group which has power over all of Myanmar. It is a failed state.
Cthulhu_
4 hours ago
Depends if your country claims to be free or not, or what your own morals and values are - if you believe in "might makes right", then sure, the ones in power get to suppress freedom of information to the rest of the country. If you believe in a free democracy, then information and communication should be free (think freedom of speech, press, information, etc).
sidibe
25 minutes ago
The nominal group in power in Myanmar depends on where you are standing and changes with time. The official government has no authority in most of the country.
yieldcrv
39 minutes ago
The cool thing about multi national corporations is that you're more powerful than nation states in your respective domain, a demigod
vintermann
5 hours ago
Why?
itchyjunk
5 hours ago
Law of the land. Must follow it to operate in that jurisdiction
Ray20
5 hours ago
Or what?
We're not talking about Russia or China. They don't have the capability to destroy satellite constellations.
Cthulhu_
4 hours ago
But they can fly a plane that detects Starlink signals (...I presume, I don't actually know how it works) and target the areas that have them.
But that's an escalation, it's better to talk about it first with the party in question, if they don't answer there can be further legal recourse. International law and -lawsuits are a thing.
But this comment thread sounds like reason and legal systems aren't working, and suppression and military action are the only recourse left. I mean to a point I agree, but at the same time we (as humanity) are not (or should not be) savages.
Ray20
3 hours ago
> fly a plane that detects Starlink signals
Starlink are quite directional. They are easily detected even from a standard vehicle.
> International law and -lawsuits are a thing
No, it's not a thing. International laws operate on exactly the same principle "Or what?".
> but at the same time we (as humanity) are not (or should not be) savages.
Part of not being a savage is the ability to not give a f.ck about what the savages have written on their papers, which we call laws. Or to give a f.ck depending on what is most convenient for us, the non-savages, from the standpoint of the "or what?" principle.
close04
2 hours ago
Didn’t Musk ask Brazil the same “or what” question and had to back down? Musk and Starlink do legitimate business in Myanmar, why put it all at risk just to protect those 2500 subscriptions?
Why is everyone with a keyboard so adamant to “fight” when compliance was obviously the better business decision?
inemesitaffia
2 hours ago
You think Starlink should switch off in Sudan? Iran? Cuba?
There's no legit business in Myanmar or any of those other locations
ta1243
4 hours ago
Might makes right?
That kind of arrogance is what leads to 9/11, the most successful destruction of a western country since ww2.
Ray20
3 hours ago
Didn't this happen because of the abandonment of this principle?
9/11 would not have happened if there were no radical Muslims in the world, and US had the Might to make such world.
gpm
2 hours ago
The US had the might to make such a world as demonstrated by... their loss to the Taliban in Afghanistan?
Killing an individual is easy. Killing an ideology next to impossible, and trying tends to make the proponents more violently against you.
hollerith
2 hours ago
>US had the Might to make such world.
It is clear to me that the US never had the capacity to do that.
pixl97
5 hours ago
Because that's how a sovereign nation works. Have a problem with it? Talk to the gun.
croes
6 hours ago
Would SpaceX comply if it was an order from a Brazilian court?
elzbardico
6 hours ago
They can. They can have laws and try to enforce them. International Law and Companies should not be in the business of doing jackbooted thugs work for them.
The same apply for other stuff like chat cryptography. No, we shouldn't fuck everyone's right to privacy because your fat policemen are unable to conduct an investigation on meatspace and prefer to just have a digital panopticon.
obs: I upvoted you because while I consider your position absolutely abhorrent, I believe you're entitled to it and we should not downvote comments just because we don't agree with them.
perihelions
6 hours ago
But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't give the time of day to the requests of a junta commiting crimes against humanity, systemic extermination[0] of ethnic minorities.
buran77
6 hours ago
> But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't...
Should everyone else be allowed to do anything they want in a country as long as it's from a distance because "your laws don't apply to me"? Is it fine when Russian, Chinese, or NK hackers are operating against the US?
If a country is good enough to sell to and provide a service there, it's good enough to obey its laws.
Cthulhu_
4 hours ago
It's not fine I think, and I'm honestly surprised that years of continued cyberattacks haven't led to an escalation outside of the internet yet. Can't be economic sanctions because the US already doesn't deal with NK for example. I am not aware of the victims of state sponsored cyberattacks doing any cyber-counter-attacks either, but that's likely down to a lack of reporting.
That is, cyberattacks are seen as a victimless or economic only thing, not unlike economic sanctions.
Ray20
5 hours ago
> because "your laws don't apply to me"?
That's exactly how it works, via ability to apply laws. If there is no abiliyt to apply the law, then yeah, everyone allowed to do anything they want.
Cthulhu_
4 hours ago
Allowed, no, but there's also no direct consequences. Indirect consequences though, like counterattacks, sanctions, export restrictions, etc are a thing. But a country like NK doesn't care about relationships with the US or Europe, since they benefit more from their relationship with China and Russia, their close neighbours (physically and culturally).
Anyway, it's like free speech, I can say anything I want on the internet because what are you going to do, huh? But it'll also mean that if I were to contact you for a job later on you'd be like "nu uh you insulted my mother". Plus I'd get banned from HN.
IlikeKitties
6 hours ago
> Should everyone else be allowed to do anything they want in a country as long as it's from a distance because "your laws don't apply to me"? Is it fine when Russian, Chinese, or NK hackers are operating against the US?
Yes absolutely, see the ridiculous censorship the British government is trying to establish against us companies.
Companies should be forced to comply with local law when they have a physical office there or there is a government to government contract that regulates how commerce should be done between those countries. Now, Myanmar or the british or whoever can block, deny payment services or make it illegal to use such services for their locals but it is ludicrous to accept the laws of foreign countries just because.
Cthulhu_
3 hours ago
It gets more complicated with international relationships though. If two countries have any kind of relationship, e.g. trade, then a conflict between a company and a government can escalate and bleed out to other relationships.
In this case, the Myanmar government could tell the US that "hey buddy, SpaceX isn't playing ball, make them or we'll kick out your embassy, tourists, and trade relationships". I don't know if they have any of that, but take that as an example.
close04
6 hours ago
> Companies should be forced to comply with local law when they have a physical office there
What happens when they send signals in that country, like Starlink is explicitly doing? What if companies in Mexico or Canada started blasting signals on frequencies used in the US for critical communication, would that fall under "they should comply with US law"? What if Russia does the same with boats on the border?
IlikeKitties
6 hours ago
First, consider separating state actors from companies. Countries actively sabotaging critical infrastructure is an act of war like russia is doing with GPS Signals. It's not a matter of legal or illegal but a matter of are you willing and able to either sanction or bomb the country into changing their behavior.
As for what companies are doing: If i'm legally allowed to send a signal inside mexico that interferes with US Signals, sucks to be an US Person relying on that signal but me as a company wouldn't give a shit. Doubly so for space based assets.
This is where inter country contracts come into play. If your country and my country have a contract that designates some signals for public use and others not, than local law can be changed to comply with those contracts. Everything else is just a matter of tragedy of the commons or questionable encroachments into another countries sovereignity.
nradov
3 hours ago
As a point of law, when Russia interferes with GPS signals in some third country (like Ukraine or whatever) that wouldn't be considered an act of war against the USA. An act of war would be something like a direct kinetic or cyber attack against our Navstar satellites.
close04
5 hours ago
> First, consider separating state actors from companies
Can you? Ok, "definitely private company who doesn't operate at the behest of the state". That's a loophole you can fly a country through.
> Countries actively sabotaging critical infrastructure is an act of war
> If i'm legally allowed to send a signal inside mexico that interferes with US Signals, sucks to be an US Person relying on that signal but me as a company wouldn't give a shit.
So is it "an act of war" or a "don't give a shit" situation?
IlikeKitties
4 hours ago
> Can you? Ok, "definitely private company who doesn't operate at the behest of the state". That's a loophole you can fly a country through.
Yeah, no one is making money sabotaging GPS Signals. The reality is that there are numerous agreements that regulate the use of frequencies. If a country tolerates misuse that actively interferes with another countries critical infrastructure that's pretty blatant. And again, you as the country being interfered with can do everything from tariffs, sanctions to destroying boats to make the other country interested in enforcing their laws and stop you from interfering.
> So is it "an act of war" or a "don't give a shit" situation?
This isn't as hard as you try to make it. If country a allows commercial use of a frequency band, any company in that country wouldn't have to give a shit about using it. If you as a country deliberately chose a frequency band for commerical use that just so happens to interfer with your neighbours police signals, enjoy the sanctions, diplomacy or war that follows.
But trying to make companies in country a follow the laws in country b is not going to happen by fiat just because. Imagine Saudi Arabias anti atheism laws being enforced in the USA because they might be able to receive your website. Ridicolous.
IshKebab
6 hours ago
Starlink isn't sold to Myanmar.
simiones
6 hours ago
Sold in, not sold to. The GP meant: if you consider it legitimate to sell your product in Myanmar, you should obey the laws of Myanmar. If you consider the government is illegitimate, don't do business there.
IshKebab
6 hours ago
Starlink isn't sold in Myanmar either. SpaceX does not do business in Myanmar.
buran77
5 hours ago
Starlink has the precise terminal location and gets paid for the subscription for that terminal. They know where it is and who pays for it. From the article they say that they were selling a service there and stopped in order to comply with local laws:
> SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers.'”
burnerthrow008
3 hours ago
I think the point (which you seem to have missed) is: How do you distinguish between a terminal under the control of a scam center versus, say, a journalist who has traveled to the vicinity of the call center to interview people and make a report (The Economist recently had an excellent series of articles about these call centers).
Neither terminal was bought in Myanmar. Both have been transported to and used in the vicinity of the scam center. The difference is purely the intent of the person controlling the terminal. But you can't infer that intent from only the location where it was purchased and the precise location where it is being used.
> > SpaceX proactively identified and disabled over 2,500 Starlink Kits in the vicinity of suspected ‘scam centers.'”
Sure, because it's currently in the news and it's any easy way to say "we fixed the problem". Maybe some Economist journalist just lost internet access. Oh well. Guess they'll have to find their way out of Myanmar without internet. Sucks to be them, right?
close04
2 hours ago
> How do you distinguish between a terminal under the control of a scam center versus, say, a journalist who has traveled to the vicinity of the call center to interview people and make a report.
You are told by the local law enforcement and legal system? Starlink's obligation is only to assist local authorities as per their law. Maybe the local authorities are corrupt but that doesn't give Starlink a free pass from obeying their law.
> Neither terminal was bought in Myanmar.
Does it matter? Starlink does business there, in Myanmar. They offer an internet service. They were asked by the authorities to disable some terminals, and because they want to keep offering the service to other paying customers, they complied. There's no legal grey area here, not even a moral conundrum for Musk. He follows the law of the land, gets to still do business and make more money.
Point being, as long as Starlink wants to keep offering a service and make money in Myanmar the company has to obey local laws. The statement below [0] that started the thread was a kneejerk reaction, keyboard warrior style. Musk "didn't give the time of day" to Brazilian authorities and he was squeezed into compliance. Why fight when there's an easy way to keep making money?
> But the US (who has jurisdiction over Starlink) isn't bound by Mynamar laws, and (IMHO) shouldn't give the time of day to the requests of a junta
perihelions
6 hours ago
What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide, as Mynamar's is? Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?
This thread baffles me, that people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians, to tunnel-vision instead on some trivial and insignificant technicalities about satellite law.
andsoitis
6 hours ago
> What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide, as Mynamar's is? Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?
Yes. The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change. But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.
Several international companies have divested or exited due to political risk, sanctions, or human rights concerns.
> people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians
To consider, the following countries, amongst others, retain embassies in Myanmar: Australia, Brazil, China, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, UK, USA.
Should embassy staff break the country's laws?
watwut
5 hours ago
> The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change.
Oh, that is the novel idea. For people being genocided to not be there and for those who are against genocide to let themselves be killed in the first step.
> But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.
Breaking the laws is frequently necessary in the genocide situation, because the laws were designed to create and facilitate the genocide. Genocides do not just happen out of nothing.
andsoitis
5 hours ago
>> The answer is not to act lawlessly, but instead to not be in that country at all or be there and apply pressure for change.
> Oh, that is the novel idea. For people being genocided to not be there and for those who are against genocide to let themselves be killed in the first step.
>> But breaking the laws in ad hoc ways is not the way.
>Breaking the laws is frequently necessary in the genocide situation, because the laws were designed to create and facilitate the genocide. Genocides do not just happen out of nothing.
My response was to this question: "Should international companies respect its sovereign laws?"
Nothing about the people of Myanmar.
My answer is different if you're a Myanmar person. But you still face the moral question of which laws you should disregard vs. which to follow.
jacquesm
5 hours ago
Agreed. I think I have an explanation (a partial one, at best). The tech world is so adept at abstraction that we have made it one of our primary tools in the box. Everything gets abstracted away until we have a nice, clean, uniform representation of the underlying item. Whether that item is people, vehicles, road accident data or private communications doesn't really matter any more once it is abstracted. Then it's just another record.
Ethics and other moral angles no longer apply, after all, how could those apply to bits, that's for 'real' engineers. It's also at the core of the HN "'no politics', please." tenet.
I see a similar deficiency in the legal profession, they too tend to just focus on the words and the letters and don't actually care all that much about the people.
logicchains
6 hours ago
Because a good chunk of people on this site have so little moral development that to them "whatever the law says is moral".
buran77
6 hours ago
> What if a "legitimate" government is committing genocide
That's an interesting question, I'll say. I can't say yes or no but I can say that the answer should be consistent. You either support genocidal regimes, or you don't.
So you have Starlink operating in Israel and in Myanmar.
> that people are somehow capable of ignoring the elephant in the room of the massacring of civilians, to tunnel-vision instead on some trivial and insignificant technicalities about satellite law.
Imagine the bafflement when some people stick to their tunnel vision while writing about other people's tunnel vision on the same exact topic.
kube-system
5 hours ago
Starlink's base stations follow the laws of every country they are on the ground in.
jacknews
5 hours ago
I think you'll find this is not 'at the request' of any government but part of a much wider policy being implemented.
Eg, Cambodia just had $15B in crypto confiscated (ostensibly illegal proceeds of the 'Prince' group, but IMHO they are just a front for the state), and is facing a financial blacklisting.
China were pressuring the area to crack down on this stuff early this year, but it's quite possible the trigger for the west to get more involved was the Cambodia/Thai conflict, which was a simple personal feud over this business, provoked by the Cambodian leader, but which risked spreading into a much wider conflict.
vessenes
5 hours ago
Hard no. Communications is a human right. I’d say routing communications as a private company is a privilege that can be extended or denied, but this perspective is poison IMO.
elif
6 hours ago
Really? Even Darth vader?
Who defines "should"?
nickdothutton
6 hours ago
Sovereign is he who decides the exception.
churchill
6 hours ago
Schmitt is so quotable, haha.
nickdothutton
4 hours ago
Could equally have quoted G.Mosca, that power must sometimes circumvent norms or use extra-legal means to preserve the system.
esafak
5 hours ago
Churchill would not have approved quoting a Nazi to buttress an argument.
churchill
5 hours ago
I can denounce Nazis while admitting an objective point made by Schmitt. Churchill himself was a ghoul who considered Indians, Africans, etc. inferior and while he denounced the Nazis' tactics, he had no problem using similar ones to suppress colonized natives.
In other words, Churchill might have hated the Nazis (because they threatened his beloved England), but he believed in the state of exception they promoted. He believed he wasn't obligated to obey basic decency when dealing with non-European natives because, like Schmitt would say, "sovereign is he who determines the exception."
alt227
6 hours ago
> Who defines "should"?
The group in power of the country
maxerickson
6 hours ago
No, it's the group in power in outer space.
alt227
6 hours ago
I agree with the parent comment, each country should control the communications in its own airspace. Surely this is how it works? Starlink cant just start selling internet in countries it has no jurisdiction or communications license in?
Cthulhu_
3 hours ago
If the country can't control it, what power do they have? GPS and sattelite TV can also be received anywhere, as long as you can somehow get a receiver for it there's little that can be done about it except maybe jamming. (I don't actually know if systems like GPS can be turned off on a per country basis)
That said, Starlink can be turned off on a per country basis, so the government can ask (or demand) that to be done. If they refuse, there may be consequences that can be escalated to a political level.
sjsdaiuasgdia
3 hours ago
For GPS, jamming does happen: https://gpsjam.org/
maxerickson
5 hours ago
Control vs want. If you don't have power in outer space, you simply don't control what happens. You can hope that whoever has power respects your desires.
IAmBroom
5 hours ago
Why not? Isn't the entire point of the internet to make access to communication of information equal?
We're playing around with the word "should" here, but from a moral standpoint, I disagree with any opinion that a sovereign power should(morally) be able to control communication at all - short of immediate threats to public safety (yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theater).
alt227
2 hours ago
Theres a difference between people in different countries talking freely, and people selling internet connections to residents in another country where they have no company registration.
Mountain_Skies
5 hours ago
9/11 was perpetrated by people who couldn't have knocked out Starlink or anything else in space but still found a way to harm their enemies. Simply not being a superpower doesn't make one entirely harmless. Starlink has assets, soft and hard, all over the globe, in easy to destroy places. No one even needs to claim responsibility for the damage. It just needs to be understood that it was the result of ignoring the threat of retaliation by those being imposed upon. Whether or not that imposition is moral in a particular set of eyes doesn't change the reality of what happens when those imposed upon decide to lash out.
elif
5 hours ago
So Israel should control Palestinian communications because they are in control and dubiously claim legal ownership of settlements?
Communication is a tool of freedom and these comments seem so willing to give it away.
miroljub
3 hours ago
It won't be the first time that Starlink takes a side in a military conflict somewhere in the world. Somewhere they do it openly and boast proudly about it, somewhere they just keep it quiet.
wraptile
4 hours ago
It's a very well proven fact that the scam centers are operated by Chinese given that before covid they were all Chinese casinos that transitioned to online scams because no Chinese could leave China to spend their money there.
Cthulhu_
4 hours ago
If it's a very well proven fact, can you link to some objective sources to your strongly worded claims? Given that clearly this is a very politically sensitive subject, I'm not going to trust a commenter on the internet on their own.
wraptile
4 hours ago
Wikipedia is a good start:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KK_Park
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shwe_Kokko
Statement by US Treasury: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0237
If you ever been to Myanmar you'd know that Burmese simply have no capability of operating something like this, especially now.
jacknews
6 hours ago
They may well deny it, but there's plenty of international documentation showing it is indeed a thing, and presumably starlink have even more evidence.
iknowstuff
7 hours ago
A scam is a scam right
boringg
5 hours ago
Right - shutdown the scam centers. Why is this so hard? If one group is using the scam center to power their resistance ... that resistance is built on a really bad foundation.
I get that if you are shutting down comms for an an org thats different - but if its a known scam center not a tough decision here.
moralestapia
4 hours ago
>presumably aiding one side or the other in some unclear way
"I'm strongly opposed to one side or the other gaining a possible advantage or disadvantage in some unclear way"
LOL
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
4 hours ago
It's important to know that anything Elon or Tesla or SpaceX says about freedom of speech or libertarianism, is subject to either the US government or President Trump or Elon's personal beliefs about freedom of speech.
Which so far have been "I support complete freedom of speech. (for myself, and censorship for others)"
They aren't going to sell a product that could be used against them. Our allies are reasonably asking if the high-tech F-35 fighters have kill switches too
whimsicalism
3 hours ago
Any topic related to Elon Musk seems to get flooded with low-entropy uninteresting comments.