A group of Navy sailors secretly used Starlink to check sports scores, social media and watch movies. They hid it from rank-and-file.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/13231676

A U.S. Navy chief who wanted the internet so she and other enlisted officers could scroll social media, check sports scores and watch movies while deployed had an unauthorized Starlink satellite dish installed on a warship and lied to her commanding officer to keep it secret, according to investigators.

Internet access is restricted while a ship is underway to maintain bandwidth for military operations and to protect against cybersecurity threats.

The Navy quietly relieved Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, in August or September 2023, and released information on parts of the investigation this week.

  • talEnglish
    15·
    2 months ago

    I’m not sure how far I’d trust people to keep connected devices isolated to one of the official or pirate network.

    I mean, the Navy can look into providing Starlink or a recreational net or a media server or something on the ship. I think that that’s legit. But I think it’s also fair that that’s gotta go through channels and have their information security people pound on it.

    This is a warship. In the event of a conflict, China or whoever is going to be trying to kill the people on that ship and destroy the ship, no holds barred. Like, there are gonna be real resources put on exploiting any holes that can be found. She can’t just gamble with that.

    We have, in the past, enjoyed major wins by compromising military naval communications in war. I’d rather not be on the receiving end of that.

    And yeah, I totally get that that sucks if you’re stuck on an isolated ship, but that’s part of the job.

    I’m okay, as an American citizen, with paying more to try to offset that. Like, in WW2, the Navy got the best meat cuts it could and stuff for subs to try make up for the fact that the submariners had rough living conditions. Maybe they can do something similar now. It said that one thing they wanted was sports scores…maybe the Navy can contract to get a dump of those broadcast, as I doubt that that’s much data. But what she did wasn’t the way to go about trying to provide a quality-of-life improvement for the ship.