Acceso gratuito a Starlink en Irán, clave para que manifestantes difundan su mensaje – Chicago Tribune

By DAVID RISING

BANGKOK (AP) — The ability of Iranian protesters to broadcast to the world the details of bloody nationwide protests has received a big boost as SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service reduced its prices to allow more people to meet the Tehran government’s stronger intent. Avoid that information is a filter outside your borders, dijeron activistsas el miércoles.

The estadounidense aerospace business environment led by Elon Musk produced the complete steel of telecommunications and Internet access for the 85 million Iranians, which occurred on January 8, while protests grew due to the same economy of the Islamic Republic and the collapse. of its currency.

SpaceX has not officially announced its decision and did not respond to a request for comment, but activists told The Associated Press that Starlink was available free of charge to anyone in Iran who is familiar with the receivers.

“Starlink was crucial,” said Mehdi Yahyanejad, an Iranian group that made a lot of money. Net Freedom Pioneers helped bring smuggling units into Iran, releasing a video that shocked the country regarding body wires at a medical center near Tehran.

“They show various tradesmen around the world, who have light because of Starlink,” he said in an interview from Los Angeles. “Create these videos from the center that change the understanding of everything that is successful, because you will come with your own eyes.”

Since the December 28 protests were announced, the death toll has risen to more than 2,500 people, mostly protesters but also security personnel, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists Reporting Agency.

Starlink is banned in Iran by telecommunications regulations, as the country does not allow the devices to be imported, sold or used. Activists believe they can be accused of helping the United States or Israel use this communications system and be accused of espionage, which allows them to seek the death penalty.

Iranian authorities use Starlink devices

The first Starlink units smuggled into Iran in 2022 during protests over the country’s mandatory bicycle law, as Musk learned that ex-President Joe Biden’s government exiled the Iran sanctions service.

So, it is expected that more than 50,000 contraband units were brought in, and people have gone to great lengths for the coverups, using virtual private networks in the system for IP covert directions, as well as other precautions, said Ahmad Ahmadian, managing director of Holistic Resilience, a Los Angeles-based organization that is responsible for lifting some of the first Starlink units in Iran.

Starlink is a global Internet network that uses 10,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. Subscribers should inquire about equipment that includes an antenna, which requires a satellite line of sight, because they must be unloaded in the open, where they could be detected by authorities. Many Iranians disguise it as solar panels, Ahmadian said.

Because efforts to secure communications during the 12-day war with Israel in June proved not to be very effective, Iranian security services have now taken “the most extreme tactics” to block Starlink’s radio signals and GPS systems, Ahmadian said. in a telephone interview. When Holistic Resilience transmitted to SpaceX, Ahmadian said, the company launched a firmware update that helped evade the new countermeasures.

Security services also use tipsters to find out if you can use Starlink, taking over internet and social media traffic using the signals they used, and usually informing you that they have connected apartments with satellite dishes.

“He always had a game of cat and coon,” said Ahmadian, who lived in Iran in 2012 after being imprisoned by a student activist. “The gobierno uses all the herramientas that are available”.

However, the signal indicates that the government’s interference intentions have only been effective in certain urban areas, indicating that security services are taking care of resources to block Starlink more broadly.

Free Starlink could increase information flow from Iran

Last month, Iran allowed people to call international phones through their mobile phones, but phones from outside the country to Iran were blocked.

Compared to the protests of 2019, when the government was able to effectively support over the course of a week more information that it would be possible to avoid communications in the rest of the world using less strict means, Ahmadian said that the proliferation of Starlink was impossible to avoid. Confirmed that water flow may increase now that the service is free.

“Esta vez Realmente Lo Cerraron, includado la lines fijas no funcionaban,” he said. “But for this, the information available and also distributed is the community of Starlink users in the country.”

Musk learned that Starlink was free to use during various natural disasters, and Ukraine was dependent on the service for the full-scale invasion of Russia in 2022. Initially, it was funded by SpaceX and later, through a US government contract.

Musk has expressed concerns about the power of the system in the hands of one person, refusing to expand Starlink’s coverage of Ukraine to help fight Ukraine hovering in Russian-occupied Crimea.

As an advocate for Starlink in Iran, Ahmadian said the Crimea decision was a wake-up call for him, but it is not possible to see a single reason why Musk might be inclined to act similarly in Iran.

“Mirando al Elon politico, creo that tendría most interés… in a free Iran as a new market,” he said.

Julia Voo, who directs the Cyberpoderology and Future Conflict program at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, said there is a risk depending on a single company like the Saviors because it “creates a single point of fall,” but in reality there is no comparable alternative.

China is exploring forms of exploitation and destruction of Starlink satellites, and we have said that when the most effective should be Starlink to penetrate “government-ordered ground planes, the most effective is to observe.”

“Only will more efforts be made to expand controls on distinct forms of communication, for those in Iran and all parties, observing,” he said.

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Associated Press journalists Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.

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This story was translated into English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.