this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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White House officials said the installation was an effort to increase internet availability at the complex. They said that some areas of the property could not get cell service and that the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was overtaxed.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 45 minutes ago

Starlink should be abolished.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 57 minutes ago

Are you a white house staffer carrying a heavy stack of top secret documents? Do you desperately need both hands to vape or to text roger stone a progress report? Try DOCDASH!

Just request a docdasher in app and a helpful person like Yvegeny, Dmitri or Boris will show up to the white house on a motorcycle, take your documents from you, not copy and transmit them, and just keep them very safe, like tippy top safe.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Somebody is going to have to explain to me how starlink is going to boost WiFi availability if it is routed from offsite using their current fibre network.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 42 minutes ago

Yeah, this doesn't make sense to me. Starlink needs a dish that has to be outside without trees covering it, so it isn't like they can place new routers around the building that receive Starlink and have wifi capability. They will still have to run a cable from the dish(es?) to new wireless routers. How is that ANY different from just running new wireless routers from their existing fiber?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 55 minutes ago

Who's hand is on the power switch?

[–] [email protected] 81 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

They literally installed spyware in the WH. National security is an utter joke with these traitors.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

This country was destroyed under Reagan. We needed a national security strategy against the capitalists back then and instead invited them into the government.

This is just the fire sale, the vultures picking the well rotted corpse clean. Reagan and Welch destroyed this place, don't give Trump that much credit. He's just an opportunist who saw profit in chaos.

The United States 1776-1980 - Died of thirst waiting for Promised Golden Showers of Prosperity that never came - Useful Idiots

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 hours ago

Are they then routing all starlink traffic to Russia?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

I am all for making the White House less secure at this point.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 hours ago

Enjoy the high latency.

[–] [email protected] 170 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

In any healthy democracy, this would have been seen as a scandal exposing signs of corruption and would have likely resulted in the dissolution of the government and early election.

But the US is not a healthy democracy.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Not to worry, "some cited security concerns." We're all set

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Besides the security concerns, I want to know what they’re using it for, and how much bullshit they’re hiding by avoiding the official network.

It’s certainly not a speed and convenience thing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 hour ago

Yes. That’s the joke. I’m unsure how the burning terminator dying with a thumbs up wasn’t clear enough that there is obviously more to this than just “security concerns”

[–] [email protected] 43 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

The corruption is clear, obvious, and blatant. Everyone knows about it, but there’s not a whole lot they can do. A good chunk of our citizens picked it on purpose.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 hour ago

There is actually so much we and the courts/Congress can do. We're just choosing not to do it, unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Given it's unrepresentative voting system I think how much is enough to be a democracy. T hot take for people that see democracy. Two parties to choose from is just one more than a clear dictatorship. If neither actually represents you then yeah it's not healthy .

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

Agreed, except for one point. It's an oligarchy. Our "dictator" was just selling cars on the White House lawn. Capitalism won to get to it's late stages, happy to let racist hatred and russian influence fester for continued capital self-interest

[–] [email protected] 29 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (2 children)

Musk is literally a James Bond villain. Literally. Like LITERALLY a Bond villain.

Edit: minus the genius and charisma

[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Imagine how galling this must be for Jeff Bezos. He's put so much effort into his Bond villain persona. The guy even now looks like Dr Evil. But he's being out eviled by a pudgy, dorky-looking South African nepo-baby.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 hours ago

He even bought the James Bond license from the Broccoli family!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago

"Minus the genius and charisma"

You're describing an Austin Powers villain.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 hours ago

So they routed all traffic in the WH through his sattelites, yay. Do I understand correctly that being an internet provider (and as WH can be singled out) means he can now know what resources everyone there access and force many proxy\VPN options shut? So he can get at least basic understanding if someone access matrix servers or whatever to leak data critical of DOGE, to block things he doesn't like (e.g. live streaming broadcast for select journalists) or just to get one more reason to fire everyone?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago

sure "donated" until the next president, whenever that happens...

[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The existing Wi-Fi infrastructure was “overtaxed” so they just threw up satellite instead of , I don’t know, improving the Wi-Fi infrastructure? There’s perfectly fine WiFi at sprawling work and college campuses, and stadiums that seat tens of thousands of people. What a joke.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 hours ago

Network infrastructure is a science and we don't need no damn science in this country!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Anyone see the Johnny English with the American billionaire cyber-terrorist Jason Volta as the main antagonist?

That's how I see news coming from Washington developing on a daily basis.

We need you Rowan Atkinson.

[–] [email protected] 101 points 6 hours ago (4 children)

If you live in the DC area, absolutely do NOT sign up for this service.

100% chance that the government, as well as musks companies would be monitoring you directly 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I wholeheartedly agree.

However, it's hard to say that AT&T, Comcast, Cox and the like aren't all doing the same thing.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 5 hours ago

The way I see stuff like this is that you don't have to hand over your information on a silver platter directly to the agents.

Like when a trainload of east germans was allowed to migrate to the west through a separate country, they just had to hand their passports to the Stasi before being let go.

When the Stasi agents came to the train to collect the passports the east germans just threw them on the floor instead of handing them over, that is kinda how this should be viewed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I'm gonna teach you a lesson on improv: "yes, and".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (2 children)

... we should further have a system with carrier pidgeons carrying USB Flash disks for ultra slow but highly private Internet access.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

Didn’t they used to do this in Cuba, to distribute digital media without having good internet access?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

That's called a sneakernet. Although, if you're talking actual pigeons, you may be interested in RFC1149.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Well now the Chinese and Russians just need to get a way into Shartlink and they can also monitor you and your government.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

they're already in, guaranteed

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah, we fired the cyber security people.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago

Salt Typhoon is still ongoing, as well.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 hours ago

It would be a shame if some foreign actor could monitor Starlink internal networks.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

FFS, can we deal with these fucking traitors already?!?

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

Well it looks like more people need to be screwed over, I guess maybe after it affects enough "Me's" it'll probably stay the same. The amount of damage that will be done before the American people stand up will be immense.

I honestly cannot believe that the average American is in agreement with this and that they think holding signs up will do anything. Sorry but they say violence is never the right course of action, but I think in this case you might need to see if that well regulated militia is ready to defend your freedom.

And shame on the Democratic party for just rolling over.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

"some areas of the property could not get cell service"

Like the bunkers? Like hell did the white house not have cell service.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I can believe areas of the White House have no cell service, on purpose. Remember when they found those fake cell towers around DC?

https://www.wired.com/story/dcs-stingray-dhs-surveillance/

I bet at some point they installed some cell phone jammers specifically to limit the amount of foreign spying that could be done by fake towers, and they simply "forgot" to tell the incoming Trump administration....

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 hours ago

probably more likely they fired the original IT team and replaced them with Muskite interns

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 hours ago

Plenty of federal facilities have garbage reception. I think it's probably due to the bureaucracy involved in telecoms installing their hardware on sensitive property. The White House in particular probably has lots of thick walls/armor attenuating signals, too.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 hours ago

President Musk making it feel more like home.
Add 13 children of ambiguous parentage he can ignore, and snug as a bug!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

"Sternlink"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago

The only security this White House cares about is its own power and hiding (for the time being) its complete disregard for anything else.

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