Elon Musk-controlled satellite internet provider Starlink has told Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel it will not comply with a court order to block social media platform X in the country until its local accounts are unfrozen.
Anatel confirmed the information to Reuters on Monday after its head Carlos Baigorri told Globo TV it had received a note from Starlink, which has more than 200,000 customers in Brazil, and passed it onto Brazil’s top court.
Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes last week ordered all telecom providers in the country to shut down X, which is also owned by billionaire Musk, for lacking a legal representative in Brazil.
The move also led to the freezing of Starlink’s bank accounts in Brazil. Starlink is a unit of Musk-led rocket company SpaceX. The billionaire responded to the account block by calling Moraes a “dictator.”
Why does the weird one think that he should have more power than a government?
Daddy didn’t say no enough?
Or he said no too much?
Not to his step daughter/baby mama
His life experiences? Having that much money and power really fucks with someone’s perceptions of the world.
Because he quite literally does in a lot of cases. When is he ever punished?
I’m scared of the day Amazon realises they actually do have more power than the government.
They absolutely do not. It is genuinely shocking how many people in this thread fail utterly at comprehending the scale of the power wielded by the government.
It’s called the government cloud. Where do you think it runs. Amazon could bring a LOT of TLA agencies to their knees pretty quickly if they so chose
Neat.
The state has a monopoly on violence and infinite resources. Amazon is an upjumped bookstore.
You really are clueless.
Why don’t you go ask crowdstrike how easy it is to bring down enormous amounts of seemingly unconnected infrastructure .
Slightly different, but same concept:
Certainly not on AWS ours does not. And even in the US I think the TLAs you might get are the likes of the DMV, not the FBI, or anything else even remotely connected to law enforcement or the military.
Literally on AWS ours does. Since 2014:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/
That’s why it’s in West Virginia
It seems I severely underestimated just how cooked the US are.
They key is to weld that power but not get caught doing it, then along came Elon…
Amazon may have more power than some tiny countries, but not the US govt as your comment would imply
Because obviously the benevolent billionaire will do so much more good to the world than an evil government specifically elected by the will of the people. (/s)
Money and racism
He absolutely shouldn’t, but isn’t this just a dick swinging contest by both Brazil and Musk?
I haven’t been following it but banning an entire website because they don’t have a ‘legal representative’ in your country sounds bizarre.
Twitter did have an office in Brazil (with legal representation) but after refusing to implement court ordered bans, the court fined them. Elon Musk threw a temper tantrum and shut down the Brazil office and eliminated his legal representation in Brazil.
Note that Musk will implement bans when requested by authoritarians, just for some reason he draws the line when it’s a court order in a democratic country.
Anyway the situation where Twitter doesn’t have legal representation is a situation Elon Musk created. Basically “I fired my lawyers so there’s nothing you can do against me now! Checkmate!” So Brazil says “fine, I guess we’re banning Twitter then…”
So Space Karen thinks the the law doesn’t apply to him and it’s going to cost him a lot of money. Again.
It is when the law says that for a company to operate in Brazil it has to have an appointed legal representative, and you close down your offices and refuse to re-appoint one when the judge demands you to.
Musk entered a “No pants no service” restaurant, took his pants off, was told to put them back on and refused, and is now surprised he gets no service.
I don’t know what you thought I said to begin your comment with ‘it is’, because if you’re agreeing it’s a dick swinging contest, then the rest of your comment seems strange.
Anyway, fair enough - like I said, I have not been following it.
Shut down the offices and evacuated employees when threatened with arrest. There’s a whole lot more to this story…
That’s what Musk tells, the reality the legal representative alone could be arrested because Musk don’t want to pay the fines, the employees just lost their jobs because Musk don’t want to spend 0.00001% of his wealth.
I mean, yes, when you are the legal representative for a company, that is what might happen when the company breaks the local laws and refuses to comply with court orders. That’s kinda the whole point.
I think that’s a bit reductive.
It’s fair enough to expect a large company to have a rep to attend court if they want to do business in your country.
If they refuse then it becomes a “rule of law” situation - even if it’s a dumb law, you can’t have a multinational disregard the court’s instructions.
It was banned because they refused to comply with anti-hate speech policies. According to musk, moderating his platform would be “political persecution” against those poor nazis.
I’m on side with Elon and Radio Caroline in this issue.
He’s not broadcasting from inside Brazil’s borders, so the regulators can get stuffed.
The ground antennas that enable the service totally broadcast from inside Brazil.
They can disable them, they can jam them too.
I think the next logical step for Brazil is to revoke a license to operate in that spectrum, rendering all user terminals illegal.
Looks like being in an international area doesn’t actually make you immune to consequences. If Brazil doesn’t want something broadcasting then the only way to keep them from shutting it down is to broadcast from inside a national area. If push comes to shove they can ban Starlink too, confiscate any receivers they can find, and even shoot down the satellites.
The satellites may be carrying starshields on them which are national security modules with the DoD. Shooting down the wrong satellite would be attacking US national defense infrastructure.Nevermind starshields are whole DoD satellites.
I think when I read this, I replaced starshield with starlink
I guess enjoy immediate war from the US?
The US is not going to go to war over SpaceX’s private Internet satellites.
Lets assume they’re not carrying DOD data (they are), do you really think the US will sit back and let some third world-
Destroy US Commercial property
Start a Kessler Storm
Without consequence? US destroyed Iran’s navy over a single shipping vessel…
The DoD is not depending on starlink in South America. And dropping a few satellites is not going to create a Kessler effect. And Operation Praying Mantis was because they attacked a US Navy Frigate.
Are you done being dramatic?
I’m not sure you understand how Starlink works, it’s not geostationary like you’re implying.
I’m aware of that.