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.”
Ok, but then you can get into the diplomatic capacity. An American company is subverting the sovereign capacity of Brazil. Now, this is South America so it could go either way here, but this is an area where it’s reasonable to request the host country to stop this behavior or face strained relations.
And for the “they can put them up faster than we can take them down”, that’s absolutely true if we only take them down rather than stopping them from putting them up.
There you go: he is outside Brazilian law, but Brazil can call on the US to rein him in.
Brazil does not have the capacity to stop Starlink from putting up satellites.
But also what happens in Brazil and Brazilian airspace is recognized to be within Brazilian authority. Calling their bluff they won’t shoot it down may be correct but it’s also exactly the shit that gets Americans our bad reputation