2y ago

U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate

www.nbcnews.com

Technology @lemmy.world

Lee Duna @lemmy.nz

2y ago

U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate

www.nbcnews.com /news/investigations/us-intelligence-officials-determined-chinese-spy-balloon-used-us-inter-rcna131150

News @lemmy.world

MicroWave @lemmy.world

2y ago

U.S. intelligence officials determined the Chinese spy balloon used a U.S. internet provider to communicate

www.nbcnews.com /news/investigations/us-intelligence-officials-determined-chinese-spy-balloon-used-us-inter-rcna131150

34 comments

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.
- It could have even been one of those multi SIM router things that has network redundancy.
  
  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.
- 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.
  
  Probably Hughesnet or Viasat.
That just sounds like efficient design if you ask me.
I guess now we know why it stopped to hover over Starbucks for so long.
I thought the official announcement from the pentagon was it never sent any data?
- Ah yes of course, my apologies for the misunderstanding. I hate when a butt plug is the voice of reason, thank you for your service though.
- Right, because they figured out which provider was using and had them cut it off...
  
  That’s not even similar to what the announcement was.
But the free market will regulate. /s
Wait, you mean US corporations will take money to do questionable things? Surprised Pikachu face.
Maybe the US government shouldn't have set the precedent that that was EXPECTED AND ENCOURAGED
Ok, now tell us what the hell you shot down way up north during that time.
- Didn't that turn out to be a weather balloon launched by an amateur meteorology club?
  
  No that ended up being swamp gas from a weather balloon trapped in a thermal pocket which reflected light from Venus. Pretty common mistake.
  
  Please don't interrupt a conspiracy theory
  
  The one over the Great Lakes may have been an advertisement from a car dealership.
I'll have a good laugh if it turns out the baloon was not chinese after all, it has just contained some iot device with previously unknown call home function to collect diagnostic data.
Well..how many nationwide internet suppliers could there be?
- Three.
  Thanks, deregulation.
  
  Actually there is only one. The rest buy their services and say they are nationwide but are regional centric. Long lines weren't really deregulated either.
Can't wait for the final report in 10 years that confirms it was a weather balloon and some dumbass CO was too excited and wanted to see an AIM-9x get used on a static 10mph moving target.
Pentagon really running out of fun ideas to waste tax dollars.
Could have at least used the 20mm guns included in the F22 instead of $500,000
- Could have at least used the *20mm guns
  No, you really can't.
  The Canadians tried with an F-18. They shot the absolute shit out of a balloon with its Vulcan, but because they aren't under pressure like your typical party balloon, it didn't really do much.
We should let them do this provided they only use Comcast and Sprint.
- frontier
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Officials familiar with assessment said it found that the connection allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions, or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time.
Such a court order would have allowed U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance on the balloon as it flew over the U.S and as it sent and received messages to and from China, the officials said, including communication sent via the American internet service provider.
"As we had made it clear before, the airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into U.S. because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability," Liu said in a statement to NBC News.
The previously unreported U.S. effort to monitor the balloon's communications could be one reason Biden administration officials have insisted that they got more intelligence out of the device than it got as it flew over the U.S.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News this month, VanHerck explained that he worked together with the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees U.S. nuclear weapons, to reduce the release of emergency action messages to ensure the Chinese balloon could not collect them.
“Protecting EAM and nuclear command and control communications is of critical importance to the United States,” a senior defense official told NBC News.
The original article contains 821 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Wow really they used infustructure in the United States to communicate with something in The United States instead of putting a super expensive and moving satellite dish on the thing???
The PCC must be feeling all smart about their spy balloon design choices. Just wait until they need to talk to Comcast customer support...
Was Dishy mounted on top?

34 comments