IntelSat 12 [formerly Europe*Star 1]
Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels on Friday rejected allegations that they were illegally using a commercial satellite to broadcast overseas.
A spokesman for Intelsat, the world’s largest commercial satellite communications provider, told AFP it was pursuing avenues to terminate what it said was the “illegal” use of one its satellites by the LTTE, which the US designates as a foreign terrorist organisation.
It is not clear whether the Tigers access the satellite service through a proxy or on their own. The rebels declined to discuss their arrangement with the service provider, but insisted they had not done anything illegal.
Wouldn’t you think Intelsat could determine the hookup provider – logging into the system? Should be able to trace the earth station source, as well.
As a recovering direct tv liberator. I can tell you the security on the older satellites is not there at all. I personally know of 3 birds that run full t1 access(one is used for shell gas stations to run credit cards) all you have to know is its location and have the ability to broadcast to it ( the twinhan cards have had broadcast ability for about 5 years now and run about 50 bucks ) as for broadcast television I never tried to access one of those but if it is an older model I would bet it only repeats a signal aimed at it
( you have to remember 15 years ago when many of these older birds were launched the technologies to hit one were completely out of the budget of the average computer guy now it is a simple add on card in windows and a script you can pull down from dozens of sites )
Email to John??
So how would I get a simple email to John Dvorak? I know he has the spam blocker going. I wanted to ask him a question about contacting the DIGG guys and Leo too.
What if — The folks at DIGG created a listing that links GOOD TASKS (DEEDS) stories in a way that folks could vote up and down the DEED and the person responsable? As long as there was some significant controls to prevent folks from “gaming the system”, a person could find out in a month or six months who seems to have done the best for society as a whole, as voted by people reading the stories. The story would need to be a link directly to a persons name, and the person could be anyone.
Kind of like creating a virtual NOBEL PRIZE on the internet with DIGG technology.
I am not sure if this could or should be linked to a financial contribution to this persons cause. Maybe $0.25 per vote (a USA quarter per vote). I know the DIGG folks understand the technology and the statistical issues better than I could, and whether a monitary link would cause problems or not.
#1 – Perfect answer. My interest lies in if the newer birds, with security, are ‘hackable’ using the same script-based technology, or if there’s a hardware based mechanism involved.
One question: Know of anyone hacking the entire D* or E* systems these days (for HD)? They seem to have locked that up well.
Haven’t researched the topic in many moons; but – James – last I heard, the activation cards both D* and E* use appear to be secure. The only dude here in NM that I knew who trafficked in suchlike – is earning a solid 10 cents an hour sewing blue jeans in a state “institution”.
The bird in the article has been up less than 6 years.
Speaking of HD, DirectTV just announced they will soon have 150 channels available for HD transmission. What did they do, buy Voom, the old HD satellite system?
#4 – Fair point. They nailed enough of the real players in satellite hacking to take care of enough of their bottom line.
My understanding is that no one has done the work to create a software-based algorithm that can run as fast as their hardware/card based code. Hell, D*’s current hardware is ViiV compatible… and D* is coming out with an Internet based VOD service in July… which should tell you that they’re now comfortable with satellite/computer connections.
#5 – They’re going to nail that #150 number with a combination of RSN HD channels (Regional Sports Networks) and a combination of existing/soon to be rolled out HD offerings. You know, exciting things like Food Network HD and HGTV-HD.
IMO, D* is on the right track in terms of how they’re doing all of this from a technology perspective. On the other hand, I worry that both E* and cable are bandwidth limited and will have a hard time keeping pace.