3d ago

Starlink is now accessible across the White House campus, which was already served by fiber cable, after service was “donated”, as some cite security concerns.

economictimes.com Elon Musk's Starlink expands across White House complex

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.

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.

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3d ago

Starlink is now accessible across the White House campus, which was already served by fiber cable, after service was “donated”, as some cite security concerns.

economictimes.com /tech/technology/elon-musks-starlink-expands-across-white-house-complex/articleshow/119140011.cms

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75 comments

Yalls remember the security concerns when that sailor secretly installed a star link on a US warship?

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.
- 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.
  
  Why don't you call the police? Serious question, not sure how it works in the US, but there should be some institution where you can report someone on suspicion of committing a crime. They would then need to investigate.
- 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.
- 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

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

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...
- this was nothing that some Ethernet and some APs couldn't fix. and as for the cellular issues, you're literally the White House. Throw up a femtocell, you already have fiber for backhaul.
  this is such fucking nonsense. Starlink is fixing precisely none of this.
  
  I mean I think it's safe to say these issues never existed in the first place. Nothing but more fables from the liar in Chief.
- Amazing how the but her emails crowd is fine with all the private servers and now private internet access from Trump and co
- I worked it some shitty old bunkers that no one cared about and they had wifi and cell service in every room. But the white house doesn't That's fucking hysterical

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.

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 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".
  
  Mark Klein showed us this was true years ago.
- 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
- 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.
- Run everything through a VPN tunnel instead?
  
  Don't support fascists. Even if you have a VPN.

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.
- depending on how badly Starlink fucks up the deployment, this could actually make the performance worse especially if airtime and spectrum are limited which I would assume would be the case. Elon throwing APs every which way isn't likely to make that any better.
  this is like getting a flat tire on your handcart and buying a G Wagon with no wheels to fix it.

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.

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!

"some areas of the property could not get cell service"
Like the bunkers? Like hell did the white house not have cell service.
- I can believe areas of the White House have no cell service, on purpose. Remember when they found those fake cell towers around DC?
  https://www.wired.com/story/dcs-stingray-dhs-surveillance/
  I bet at some point they installed some cell phone jammers specifically to limit the amount of foreign spying that could be done by fake towers, and they simply "forgot" to tell the incoming Trump administration....
  
  probably more likely they fired the original IT team and replaced them with Muskite interns
- Plenty of federal facilities have garbage reception. I think it's probably due to the bureaucracy involved in telecoms installing their hardware on sensitive property. The White House in particular probably has lots of thick walls/armor attenuating signals, too.
- Also how did they let that excuse get past the technical teams who should be implementing this? They added Star Link to the data center that supports the White House and then have traffic run through hard wires. This does absolutely nothing to improve spots with bad WiFi.

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.
  
  Goldmember got charisma in droves though

Starlink should be abolished.
- With how spacex and Tesla are going I wouldn’t be surprised if it abolishes itself.

The existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was “overtaxed” so they just threw up satellite instead of , I don’t know, improving the Wi-Fi infrastructure? There’s perfectly fine WiFi at sprawling work and college campuses, and stadiums that seat tens of thousands of people. What a joke.
- Network infrastructure is a science and we don't need no damn science in this country!

FFS, can we deal with these fucking traitors already?!?
- Well it looks like more people need to be screwed over, I guess maybe after it affects enough "Me's" it'll probably stay the same. The amount of damage that will be done before the American people stand up will be immense.
  I honestly cannot believe that the average American is in agreement with this and that they think holding signs up will do anything. Sorry but they say violence is never the right course of action, but I think in this case you might need to see if that well regulated militia is ready to defend your freedom.
  And shame on the Democratic party for just rolling over.
- We're only a couple of months into this administration. We're super duper fucked.

President Musk making it feel more like home.
Add 13 children of ambiguous parentage he can ignore, and snug as a bug!

Enjoy the high latency.

Are they then routing all starlink traffic to Russia?

Anyone see the Johnny English with the American billionaire cyber-terrorist Jason Volta as the main antagonist?
That's how I see news coming from Washington developing on a daily basis.
We need you Rowan Atkinson.

Shoulda put a Trojan on that trojan.

It would be a shame if some foreign actor could monitor Starlink internal networks.

Security concerns? No need to eavesdrop on electronics when they have Tulsi to just tell them everything.

I am all for making the White House less secure at this point.

So they routed all traffic in the WH through his sattelites, yay. Do I understand correctly that being an internet provider (and as WH can be singled out) means he can now know what resources everyone there access and force many proxy\VPN options shut? So he can get at least basic understanding if someone access matrix servers or whatever to leak data critical of DOGE, to block things he doesn't like (e.g. live streaming broadcast for select journalists) or just to get one more reason to fire everyone?