Under Iran's internet blackout, SpaceX's Starlink is a lifeline — if it can stay online

As Iran’s national internet blackout stretches to its second week, the satellite internet service Starlink has become a crucial lifeline for many citizens to connect with the outside world - and one that the government appears to be trying to shut down. That’s pushing some Iranians to get creative with how they use the service. In a video posted to Instagram and verified by NBC News, a man riding in the passenger seat of a car on an Iranian highway Tuesday said he had a Starlink device in the vehicle. He scrolls through his Instagram feed and visits speedtest.net , a popular site for testing internet connection speeds. “You are seeing it yourself,” he says of Starlink’s capabilities in the video, which NBC News translated from Farsi to English. As Iran’s crackdown on communication continues, a game of cat and mouse has ensued, with Iran’s government deploying new ways to halt or slow down Starlink connections, and activists and Starlink’s parent company, Elon Musk’s Space X, working to circumvent them. People opposed to the regime have been protesting in the streets across Iran for the last three weeks. The country’s leadership cut off internet and phone access last week as protests and unrest gripped many parts of the country. It’s a tactic that the Human Rights Watch says has helped the regime “conceal widespread atrocities.” According to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, at least 2,500 people have been killed in the mass protests across the country. (The agency relies on supporters inside Iran for information it then compiles and releases to the public. Iranian authorities have not provided an official death toll.) Iran has also lobbied the United Nations' arm devoted to regulating communications technology, the International Telecommunication Union, to force SpaceX to stop operating in Iran. So far, the U.N. has not done so. The near-total ban on outside communication has left Starlink, widely regarded as the most cost-effective and high-speed commercially available option for satellite internet access, as the only choice for many Iranians. In a video that was circulated on social media, body bags are seen lined up at the Tehran Province Forensic Medicine Diagnostic and Laboratory Center in the city of Kahrizak. At one point, the man filming tells the person he is talking to on the phone, “If you get a hold of a Starlink anywhere in Iran, let me know.” But its usage does not come without its own risks. “We know, according to the law, using Starlink is a big crime,” said Amir Rashidi, a refugee from Iran and the director of the Miaan Group, a nonprofit digital rights group focused on the Middle East. “Still, I don’t know if this might be another level of censorship.” In addition to the ongoing total ban on international internet traffic, the government also initially blocked international phone calls and access to local networks that had stayed operational during previous blackouts, said Doug Madory, the director of internet analysis at Kentik, a company that...

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