[24203] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Aug 11 10:47:48 2026
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2026 07:38:25 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
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This is the script of my national network radio report yesterday
regarding the rapidly growing mess of satellites in Earth orbit. As
always there may have been minor wording changes from this script as I
presented the report live on air.
- - -
So back in the 1970s, there was a humorous catch phrase that was
extremely popular for a time, originated by comedian and actor Freddie
Prinze -- "It's not my job, man!" -- meaning "I'm not taking
responsibility for that!" And when it comes to technology today that's
pretty much the reality -- hardly any organization wants to be held
responsible when things go wrong.
This also applies to government organizations related to concerns over
satellites. There are reportedly currently about 17,000 active
satellites in orbit, about 11,000 of those are Low Earth Orbit
Starlink satellites. Across the universe of all the firms who want to
get satellites into orbit for various purposes, there are literally
millions of satellites in the planning pipeline. Obviously -- as with
Starlink -- there can be very important communication and other
services associated with some of these satellite constellations. But
as the numbers go up exponentially and more speculative projects are
planned -- orbital data centers are one controversial concept -- we'll
get to another one shortly -- all manner of terrestrial and space
concerns are quite reasonably coming into play.
We've in the past discussed the Kessler Syndrome -- the idea that so
much space debris gets into orbit that it ultimately creates a dense
debris cloud around the planet that could have dramatic effects.
Astronomers are increasingly concerned about vast constellations of
low earth orbit satellites interfering with critical observations, and
there are rising concerns that as the number of satellites burning up
when reentering the atmosphere grows dramatically, the atmosphere
itself may be affected in unpredictable ways by those satellite
materials.
And here's one that sounds like it's straight out of a 1950s B sci-fi
movie, but it's all too real. A firm wants to "sell sunlight" -- no
I'm not kidding. They recently got the FCC to approve a test satellite
with a big mirror to light up the ground over designated areas,
suggesting it would be useful for construction or search and rescue
operations and the like. The issues that this opens up in terms of
possible effects on people, plants, and animal life are FAR too
numerous to get into here. But we should note that there are concerns
that these satellites -- the firm would apparently like to have
something like 50,000 of them by 2035, could according to some sources
possibly cause actual eye damage to persons who happen to view them
using some commonly available telescopes, an outcome the firm itself
says is "unlikely" by their own calculations.
But for now moving past the issues associated with any specific
satellite project, the real question is who is in charge of making
sure that we don't launch ourselves -- no pun intended -- into a
serious mess in orbit and potentially here on the ground. The FCC says
that their mandate doesn't cover most of the concerns mentioned
earlier. There are international organizations like the U.N. that have
some guidelines, but not many guidelines and really no enforcement
mechanisms.
So again, who's in charge of these aspects? Apparently, really nobody!
In an environment where there are 17,000 active satellites this might
be tolerable, but with millions of satellites planned, and their
potential ability to affect people globally irrespective of which
countries people happen to live in, the situation is changing very
rapidly. So going forward we can be sure that "It's not my job, man"
is going to definitely not be any kind of a laughing matter.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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