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Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

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Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuine question, is it that easy to deploy these tools over a country that big?

Yes in most population centers. Any country that has the ability to stand up a cellular network has the ability to deploy jamming at scale. The components needed to build jammers and EW systems have been heavily commodified for a decade now (hell, your phone's power brick, car, and TV all have dual use components for these kinds of applications), and most regional powers have been working on compound semiconductors a…

I don't think it's as easy as you're suggesting. GPS L1 jamming has been done routinely enough but the satellite bands (X/Ku/Ka) appear to be much more difficult to pull off.

Iran was reported to have mobile units with a fairly short range that constantly roamed around, only hitting 2 of the 3 bands (Ku/Ka). They're also reported to have received mobile Russian military units capable of jamming all 3 (X/Ku/Ka) over a much wider area. (I'm not actually clear the extent to which X band is associated with either Starlink or Starshield. Starshield also reportedly operates to at least some extent in parts of the S band. [0])

So the technology clearly exists but it doesn't seem to be something you can trivially throw together in your basement. That's quite unlike (for example) a cell phone jammer which a hobbyist can cheaply and easily assemble at home. I assume the extreme directional specificity of the antennas plays a large part in that.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2025/10/17/nx-s1-5575254/spacex-starshie...

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... EU already blocks eg. some russian sites (some countries more effectively than others)... plus all the chat control pressures every year. Spain is blocking whole blocks of internet during football matches. UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. But every such country likes pointing fingers at others, "hey, our censorship is not bad, they have more of it!". edit: considering the downvotes, HN is n…

> UK is making you "show your ID card" to jerk off. There are no ID cards in the UK, so you actually have to get a special jerking off loicense.

I remember a popular "greentext" specifically about this...

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember giggling at those "oi you got a loicense for that m8??!" memes. Funny, maybe, but not to be taken seriously. Fast forward less than ten years, and here we are.

One of my favorite Monty Python sketches, the fish license: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lXyup0De7Q

Did Kemal Ataturk really have a full menagerie all named abdul?

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#118
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for someone with a tech background, how hard is it to setup your own tunnel? I'd assume cloud providers are whitelisted due to economic reasons?

Lol. That was _before_ these new restrictions. And don't assume that you could setup a simple wireguard server and be done with it. No, it had to be a proper low fingerprint method (e.g., you had to hide the tls-in-tls timing pattern and do traffic shaping). Now, something like dnstt sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. You may be able to open gmail in 10 minutes if it does, and you explicitly have to block the fonts.

sorry if it came out as patronizing, I was genuinely curious as to the difficulty of bypassing these

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take your hate elsewhere

Which of those words classify as "hate"?

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Iran's internet blackout may become permanent, with access for elites only

#120
post #102

[flagged]

There is some evidence to suggest that certain countries (Russia, China, Iran itself) have an incentive to use the Gaza conflict to cause disunity in the west - and hence keep it in the news cycle and public opinion.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/israel-hamas-i...

Interestingly, during the last internet blackout in Iran, a lot of the pro Scottish independence X accounts went quiet too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_influence_operations_i...

I'm sure many Iranians are deeply concerned about that cause.

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