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U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate (www.nbcnews.com)

submitted 7 months ago by return2ozma to c/technology

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[–] paultimate14 90 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I was having a hard time imagining which company this could be. Not that I'm a fan of Verizon or Comcast, but I think they know what side their bread is buttered on. Which one wouldn't?

Then I remembered Starlink exists.

[–] Linkerbaan 170 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Don't think they were colluding with the provider. They probably just put a burner sim card into a 4g module and sent data over a VPN to China whenever it had signal.

[–] paraphrand 38 points 7 months ago

It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.

[–] postmateDumbass 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The blurb says primarily for navigation.

So it was using the starlink signals like gps signal and therefore they needed to correlate with the carrier to get a rough time sync.

I wonder what timing data is freely available on the starlink acquisition signal.

[–] Linkerbaan 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Why would they need data then? With GPS can get a 1metre accurate chip for like 20 bucks and it's way smaller. And no need for any carrier or subscription.

[–] postmateDumbass 1 points 7 months ago

Mapping out network topology? Who knows.

Whatever the collected data was, it could have been sent to their satellites for long haul back home.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It’s a satellite provider. Cell networks don’t work at that altitude. Starlink was my first guess too but, after some more thought, it could be Hughesnet. They probably have wider coverage.

[–] Nurse_Robot 29 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Yeah, their coverage is hughe

[–] snausagesinablanket 10 points 7 months ago

Y U G E N E T

[–] crsu 7 points 7 months ago

So are their pings

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Hugh Mungous

[–] Evilcoleslaw 9 points 7 months ago

Probably Hughesnet or Viasat.