How to Jam a Worldwide Satellite TV Broadcast 326
An anonymous reader submits: "According to an MSNBC article, 'it's simply a matter of aiming a strong signal at the uplink transponder on the satellite and overwhelming the...broadcaster's signals...You need a dish, some power, not too much. You put up a test pattern ... and do a sweep and find the transponder on the satellite you want to jam. It could even be smaller than the standard 6-meter dish. It could be a small dish with a lot of power.' This was apparently how an Iranian satellite television station was knocked off of Loral Skynet's TelStar-12 a few days ago. Loral contacted TLS, a company which specializes in satellite broadcast security, who quickly located the source of the jamming to Cuba."
Re:The tricky thing is.... (Score:2, Insightful)
muhaha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse, send a really powerful signal (read- military radar magnetron hooked up to mondo dish) and you can permanently fry that transponder, and do so with a burst so brief and directed that it's not terribly easy for anyone to figure out whonunnit. It's a great piece of asymetric information warfare - spend a couple of million dollars to knock out a few dozen civilian comsats, each tens or hundreds of millions of dollars worth. Best of all, it's quite possibly not in breach of any international treaty !
Excuse me, I have to go now, my mechanical pirnahas are hungry...
Re:Cuba, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
So I wouldn't call it 'Cubans vs. Iranians.' Just another example of Cuba exporting repression.
Re:The even more tricky thing is: (Score:4, Insightful)
But certainly not arms... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sanctions, yes. Arms? Hell no.
Remember what happened the last time that we gave people in that regions unlimited resources and guns? Let's just go out of our way to make sure that we don't do that again.
Any winner in an armed conflict is rarely going to institute anything but Marshall Law, especially in that region. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss (but with new politics), meaning they have to eliminate all of the old political opponents to make the system work... as quietly as possible.
Giving the opposing side rifles would sound a little like this to me:
"YOU WILL HAVE PUBLIC RULE HERE NOW OR I WILL SHOOT EVERYONE!" (Kalashnikov firing)
Good luck Tehran. Democracy didn't come overnight here, we can't send you guns and expect that you will have anything in charge of you other than a gun-toting government from that.
They have to do it themselves. We have to sit by and watch, there is nothing we should do other than that. The intense hatred of anything US backed would simply do what it has always done in that region... make the people we back look like flunkies for the infidels.
Anyway, much love to the Iranian people. We're rooting for you and your own future. Decided by you.
Re:Cuba, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cuba and Iran (Score:1, Insightful)
I would guess that that signal came from the maniacs at Guantanamo Bay. It's not like they have a particularly good record to begin with: torture, holding prisonners illegally, surrounding themselves with the biggest minefield in the western hemisphere.
Re:The even more tricky thing is: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cuba listening station bull puckey (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it occured to me that the TV stations in question are broadcast from the United States, and that this jamming has happened at the exact same time that there has been major unrest in Iran by people revolting against the theocracy there. The US does not approve of the Iranian theocracy; remember the "axis of evil" speech? That the jamming happened when it did seems to indicate that it was intentional, and was to the benefit of our enemies. That you therefore conclude that it was done by the US says a lot more about you than it does the US.
I would instead direct your attention here, [cubacenter.org] and here. [canf.org] If Iran and Cuba have been working together, this suggests that the Cuban government really was the source of the jamming. If you feel sympathies towards the Cuban government such that you're unwilling to believe that they'd support the Mullahs, I suggest you reconsider them.
Re:But certainly not arms... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is plenty reason to be hopeful too. There are only four democracies in the region Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Israel. They are all flawed, Turkey has a huge military industrial complex corrupting their politics and think of they Kurdish minority as subhuman. Lebanon is democrartic but most parts of the country are still occupied by Syria, a monarchy -- purportedly to protect them from another invasion by Israel which no one really thinks will attack again. Israel which refuse to give most of their Palestinian population the vote. And, Iran which has popular elections, but gives religious leaders a veto. Plus the religious leaders run most charities and schools, and have their own militia.
They all have some hope, the Turkish parliament recently rejected the military's approval of US transit rights. They needed 90% approval of their action from the populace, but it should build their backbone. Unfortunately I don't see the Kurdish situation improving. They really need to be given their own country, I've known Turks that were perfectly reasonable and intelligent human beings that seemed possessed with evil when the topic of Kurds came up. I don't think the desire to join the EU will overcome this hatred.
Lebanon's benefactor Syria got a moderate dictator by peaceful succession a few years ago that will probably leave Lebanon as soon as they get a peace treaty with Israel. Even without a peace treaty this may happen as the main opposition party in Lebanon wants to disinvite Syria and the current dictator there would likely accept that, if only grudginly.
Both sides in Israel's civil war want peace and accept each others terms pretty much except for some details like compensation for siezed property and water allocation. There are plenty of foreign donors willing to pay for all but symbolic portions of the bill. What really holds them back is that 70-90% on each side completely distrusts the other side. They have perfectly valid reasons seen close to the ground, but from any other vantage point these two semitic tribes have more common interests than anyone else in the middle east, and as soon as the old warriors like Sharon die (from natural causes) the very young population on both sides of the conflict will have every reason to make up.
Finally, Iran probably has the best hope of all. If you read their constitution you see it's pretty decent, it even guarantees representation for tiny minorities, Zoroastrians and Jews each get a seat each in parliment and three seats go to Christians, the biggest problem is the guardian council which can reject any law with a simple majority. But, half guardian council which interprets the constitutionality of laws, who usually reject laws from the currently liberal parliment, is appointed by the judiciary. They serve 6 year terms instead of the four that the parliment's members serve, and while right now it's packed with very conservative clerics that keep rejecting reformist laws, this will change because the generation that has just started voting was born after the revolution and have only known the excesses of the Iranian government and don't accept it just because it's better than the dictator that ruled thirty years ago. Really, the only thing that could screew things up is if we start mucking with their internal politics and the liberals get associated with the foreign interlopers. All that's needed is few years to rotate out older appointments and everything changes for the better. Even "The Leader" is elected from candidates selected by experts appointed by the guardians, but if the majority grows just a little bigger for reform the leader doesn't need to change because he won't dare do anything to get in the way of reform for fear of complete overthrow, sorta lik
Re:Cuba and Iran (Score:4, Insightful)
I would guess that that signal came from the maniacs at Guantanamo Bay. It's not like they have a particularly good record to begin with: torture, holding prisonners illegally, surrounding themselves with the biggest minefield in the western hemisphere.
Please RTFA. The satellite transmissions are pro-student, anti-iranian-government programs based in the USA. The US is publically and privately lauding these transmissions and voicing their support for the student movement.
You conspiracy theorists are really funny, but this really takes the cake. So the US decided to take out the anti-iranian broadcasts based on its own soil, and it did so by taking jammers to a remote prison camp.
If you had RTFA you would have also learned that the technology to do this is very simple - well within reach of the Cuban government.
No, my original point still holds. The few remaining extremely totalitarian states are holding each others hands - it is the only support they can find.
Tor
Re:Cuba / Guantanamo Bay listening stations (Score:2, Insightful)
That's like saying that OK city bombing was done by the US military rather then Tim McVeigh because the military has better access to bombs. According to the article, jamming a sat isn't that hard. I'm sure someone in cuba is smart enough to do it, and if not, I'm certan that there are people in iran who could, and it would not be hard to ship those people to Cuba to do it.
Re:Cuba / Guantanamo Bay listening stations (Score:5, Insightful)
three sources associated with the broadcast services confirmed that Loral Skynet, the operator of the Telstar-12 satellite used by the broadcasters, had determined the jamming was probably emanating from "the vicinity of Havana, Cuba."
One of the sources said that Loral, working with transmitter location expert TLS Inc. of Chantilly, Va., had further fixed the location as "20 miles outside of Havana." Cuba's main electronic eavesdropping base, at Bejucal, is about 20 miles outside of the Cuban capital. The base, built for Cuba by the Russians in the early 1990's, monitors and intercepts satellite communications.
5, Interesting, eh? More like 0, Stupid. The broadcasts are done by regime-critical expatriots in the US. Why would the US jam anti-iraninan broadcasts based on its own soil?
Tor
Re:Jamming from Cuba, the how and why (Score:1, Insightful)
Nice troll, asshat. I don't know any liberals (I tend toward the right myself, but I've always opposed this war) who liked Saddam -- they just didn't want to see Iraqi civilians and US troops dying for the wrong reasons. Jesus Christ you're a fucking moron.
Phil-14's reactionary bull puckey - History lesson (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that you decided to resort to a personal attack and innuendoes says far more about you than anything else you had to say. Instead of behaving like a reactionary, McCarthyist zealot and making claims about all sorts of conclusions that I supposedly reached, try reading a little closer.
I said it seems more likely that a signal would have come from Guantanamo. Considering the massive signals operation there, that's perfectly reasonable.
Someone else mentioned in the thread that it's possible that it was an accidental jam if it was the USA because mistakes like that have been known to happen. A more cynical view would be that it was intentionally done to manufacture an incident like the Gulf of Tonkin hoax that was eventually used to justify the Johnson administration's massive expansion of the war in Vietnam. The final possibility that is mentioned in the article is the Russian-built Cuban station. It seems strange that the Russians would have two stations that were only seven miles apart (before the closure of Lourdes), but that is also entirely possible.
The fact is that neither you nor I have any concrete proof of who was responsible for the jamming. Everything else is speculation.
The CNN Los Angeles bureau reported in June that the backers of the U.S.-based Iranian dissident satellite television stations are Shah-ists, showing the portraits of the Shah plastered all over the studios. We now know that a 1953 coup orchestrated by the CIA, helped overthrow the short-lived, democratically elected Mossadegh government and snuffed out budding democracy in Iran. The U.S. then installed the Shah and trained his notoriously brutal SAVAK internal security forces. The Shah went on to become one of the most savage dictators of the 20th century until the Iranian revolution in 1979.
To get back in bed with the Shah's supporters today is directly counter to the stated goal of fostering a democratic, free society in Iran which might have thrived if not for the U.S.-backed coup 50 years ago.
To Phil-14: The last time I checked I have the right to free speech. It seems you would prefer that we live in a Stalinist, Communist regime that would put an end to anyone who didn't agree with your narrow point of view.
The MSNBC report may be 100% correct. An open mind will at least acknowledge that there are other possibilities.
Re:But certainly not arms... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm very glad he exploded. I get the same feeling when America is called a democracy. Undoubtedly true in a sense, but it's not like a simple majority can do anything, and I can't say I enjoy voting for the candidates vetted by the Republicrats. The plutocrat's stranglehold just seems to get stronger as they get more challanged. But if we had more Americans like your roommate we would have some hope.
When I grew up we all thought the world would be devastated by an all out nuclear war, my guess at your age suggests the Russian tank commanders finally refused to fire at the democratic protesters before you were concerned with politics. We do ultimately have control over our governments, people hold those guns and eventually always have the courage to disobey their orders. Iran already has a just constitution in place, but their "Guardians" are much like the Supreme Court that decided Plesy vs. Fergison. While they are undoubtedly an inherently conservative group they are less so than our court because they serve for six years and not for life. It won't take 62 years like Judge Harlan's courageous single man minority opinion that "In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law." The current backlash against liberalism in Iran is generational, and that of the outgoing generation.
You missed a few crucial details... (Score:2, Insightful)
Thus, it has to be the Cuban government itself. Their motive can be explained by the fact that they are in a cash-crunch right now, with a debt of $12G, exceeding GDP. A default is inevitable even if they want to pay it back.
Their recent executions and jailings HINT at the remote possibility that constructive engagement might not bring true reform, making a respectable source of new credit (subsidy) that much harder to find. To continue to prop up the regime without hard cash, their style is to make barter agreements with oil states: doctors, in exchange for oil. Iraq is gone, so they need to expand their agreements with Venezuela and Iran. Venezuela reportedly is willing, but I suspect Iran will not need as many specialists. What other non-monetary resource could be bartered? Hmmm.
The simplest explanation is that the Cuban government is sponsoring the jamming as a service in return for more oil from the Iranian government. Now, who wants to give their gas tank for them to jam the CCC satellite? :)
hahahaha (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm. You accuse me of wanting to restrict your speech. This is an ad-hominem attack; at no point did I say you should be arrested and jailed for what you believe. The bit about the TV stations being supporters of the Shah... it's unproven, and it sounds like you're trying to change the subject. First it was, "only the evil Americans would jam the TV station," and now it's "you know, we really shouldn't be cooperating with that TV station."
CNN are the people who admitted to censoring various news broadcasts out of Iraq in the days when Saddam was still in charge there, so he wouldn't kick them out. I wouldn't be suprised if they'd do the same for other middle eastern dictators they needed to "keep access to."
I don't know if you've been following the news, but also, this week, student protests against the regime, by people who want democracy, and not the Shah back in power, were brutally suppressed by the government and what the press has been calling "pro-government vigilantes," which are not vigilantes but in reality Syrians and other Arabs hired by the government as enforcers, because they don't even trust their own people in the security apparatus anymore.
Given that set of events, the same week, and the fact that the signals came from Havana, I think we can rule Guantanamo out for now.
I wouldn't be suprised if future jamming came from the Cuban side of the border between Cuba proper and Guantanamo; it would be a nice way of utilizing all the useful idiots in the west.
It's suprising that everyone's so suprised to find that the Cuban and Iranian governments have been cooperating already for years. What's one more instance of cooperation in this case?
I would suggest that in your rush to blame everything on the United States, and not even believe that one dictatorial regime (Cuba) would support another (Iran) you actually share characteristics with some of the anticommunists of the 50's, who in their rush to combat communism wound up in bed with people like the Shah, or Ferdinand Marcos.
I mean, look at your use of the term "McCarthyite." It's functional use is for any conservative that argues back against a progressive. It's a stick the liberals have been using against the conservatives for the past forty years. By pontificating on behalf of the Cuban and Iranian regimes (and the "it must have been the US doing the jamming" counts as that, I think) you run the risk of making all the same mistakes, and winding up with the same fate: forty years from now the word "Progressive" may be similarly devoid of meaning, except as a stick to beat people with.