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Satellite Access in Time of War
miladus writes "Interesting report in the Washington
Post this morning about how the Pentagon is buying access to commercial satellites to meet its bandwidth needs. Most of the commercial access will be used for backup to the military satellites and for non-military tasks. And the Pentagon has to compete on the market with all the news organizations trying to cover the conflict in Iraq."
I know from working at different military installations that commercial services are used quite often for military purposes. All of the projects I've worked on utilizing satellite comms have always been over commercial satellites with Type-1 encryption.
I say let them have it. Better the Pentagon use it for something constructive than biased talking heads for their fluffed up stories.
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I've always wondered about the amount of actual bandwidth available to news organizations like CNN, the BBC and the rest. It's one of those things that came to mind whenever I'd see something like the grainy videophone footage we got used to in Gulf War 1.0, that looked like it was shot with a QuickCam using the Sony Pantycam(tm) image enhancement.
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Just how safe is this? Their data can be compromised and sold to other countries by greedy and unethical companies. Their protocols and encryption methods can be cracked and discovered. Think of the implications.
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While information to the citizens is important, the safety of the people that are doing the fighting comes first. They need data to do their job and come home in one piece. THAT is the first priority.
What screwy priorities, there should be *no* issue... ' we need the bandwidth, too bad' ' you |biased| news services can have what is left'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
With the budget that the Pentagon has, I'm sure that's no competition...
Actually one of their Predator drones had it unencrypted video feed broadcast in realtime from a Balkan peace keeping mission - I don't recall if it was the satellite retransmission that was leaky or the drone itself but I believe it was the satellite.
My question is this: why are all the reporters who are reporting "via videophone" burdened with such bad reception? A decent ISDN connection should be able to have fairly smooth video and audio, yet the CNN reporter on the USS Lincoln and the CNN reporter in Northern Iraq both had super-grainy video and sketchy audio. Don't these reporters have access to a satellite uplink? And if not, why can't they get enough bandwidth over a decent ISDN connection?
...So, My hard earned money that gets sucked away to taxes is being spent on access to corporately owned satellites that are in a bidding war for either A) Keeping our troops safe or B) Letting Geraldo Rivera run around in the desert and state idiotic comments and a bunch of talking heads bouncing signals saying the same stupid things over and over.
Great.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
They already control the uplinks, why not take the logical next step and use the bandwidth when the journalists aren't?
It's not like the media is going to report anything negative about them... they want to keep their "approved" status.
Sukotto
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For the past week, or so, the Weather Channel's website has not been providing "looped" satellite animations of regional weather in the US. Have they given up some of their bandwidth in advance???
An Inmarsat spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the company puts all of its customers on equal footing.
Media companies such as Fox pay about $1.50 per minute for voice communication via satellite and about $6 per minute to transmit video.
I must admit I'm really surprised by these numbers. $1.50 for voice is not far from what we paid for ordinary cell phones 5 years ago. Will be interesting to see if these kind of services can be extended to the use of ordinary people one day.
Two things,
1) I would guess (having not read the article) that any information that is encrypted tighter than a whale's bum under water, is either comms stuff, or information that is non-critical, things like before and after shots of Saddam's royal palaces, the before shot might be useful but the smoking crater that is the after shot will be very little use, and almost indistinguishable from all the other smoking holes in the ground
2) As to the civilian satellites being targets, despite what the spin doctoring and hawks would have you believe Saddam would have trouble getting ordinance to hit a barn door at 50 metres, never mind picking satellites off.
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If we're jamming every radio communication in Iraq and taking out their telephones, how is it that CNN et al can have live broadcats out of Baghdad? I assume that we can selectively jam communications, or is it something else?
Bandwidth shmandwidth. This is propaganda control!
...take the attitude which is entirely hostile to the free spread of information."
...electronic media... mediums, of the military above Bhagdad... they'd be fired down on. Even if they were journalists ..."
...those uplinks and satellite phones I was talking about. And control access to the airwaves."
BBC correspondent Kate Adie who is now covering the US invasion reports in an interview on Irish radio about pentegon censorship:
"I've seen a complete erosion of any kind of acknowledgment that reporters should be able to report as they witness. The Americans... and I've been talking to the Pentagon
"I was told by a senior officer in the Pentagon, that if uplinks--that is the television signals out of... Bhagdad, for example--were detected by any planes
Some will argue this is a necessary step in protecting the invaders, but this threat came well before the 'war' started. I for one doubt physical safety is anywhere close the true goal here. Political and public opinion safety is more like it.
And perhaps foreshadowing our buying up extra bandwidth for 'backup' Adie later in the interview says:
"...the Americans are: a) Asking journalists who go with them, whether they are... have feelings against the war. And therefore if you have views that are skeptical, then you are not to be acceptable.
Secondly, they are intending to take control of the Americans technical equipment
Guess she had it right.
A description of the interview with links to audio and other sources can be found here