> Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said daily lives depend on satellites that power everyday technologies like mobile phones and banking apps, adding the loss of GPS would cost the UK economy £1.4bn a day.
Oh no! Not our precious banking apps! What a weird thing to call out specifically. It's also kind of strange to talk at such length about how critical satellites have become to people's lives, national economy, emergency services, and people's "daily freedoms", only to conclude with "So now we're using ground-based systems to take out the satellites other countries depend on for all of those things"
In a largely cashless society like the UK, ‘banking apps’ are effectively people’s wallets. Knowing you got paid, being able to pay your rent, being able to pay for goods and services… seem like pretty everyday concerns.
All of which (except the cheque, which we can ignore - nobody in the UK has a chequebook any more) depend on the same communication infrastructure that the app does.
> All of which...depend on the same communication infrastructure that the app does.
That being the internet, which in the vast majority of cases doesn't depend on satellites either. Wifi, fiber, coax, and copper would continue to work just fine.
That's going to be a problem when the UK faces sustained service disruption attacks. Building fragile systems like this during peacetime is usually an ill-informed bet.
At the very least the idea of a population fearing for their future if an app doesn't work is frankly horrifying. In the case of banking apps there are already multiple, simple, well established, and widely supported alternatives to using the app available to them, but that should really be the case for anything actually critical
It's also a favourite stat of the UK space industry that a large percentage of UK GDP is vaguely linked to space in some way, and "some of your financial transactions touch a satellite uplink or require location data" is one of the more tangible non-obvious ones.
Those apps can all be replaced by a website, and most banks already have those websites, which means if all the banking apps on earth stopped working right now the solution wouldn't involve anything more complicated than stabbing your finger at different icon on your phone and typing the name of your bank into a search engine.
> not being funny - if the internet goes out how does a website make this better?
The internet for most people doesn't depend on banking apps, or satellites.
Wifi would still work great. If the internet actually did go out everywhere, how would an app help you?
Thats the point, the reasons the apps dont work would be the same reason the websites dont work. They are not work around, I think apps is just mentioned because 90% of people use them over the website
The UK is an island nation that's reliant on undersea cables. If those cables are cut (which is something that Russia seems to threaten) your only fallback is satellite connectivity - so protecting that connectivity is pretty key to ensuring e.g people can access their money.
I would guess that was how Wes Streeting was briefed (and then completely bungled in public comms).
Monzo (a major UK bank) use AWS and GCP. Hopefully their DCs don't fail in some way when losing access to the outside world but I would hazard a guess something goes wrong.
It's not and it's also not uniquely a British thing either. Most of my friends and myself use our phones as wallets, in the US. The only time I use my physical cards is to pull cash from the ATM, ha.
- In event of all undersea cables being cut (which is a serious threat from Russia), satellite internet is your only option to have traffic leave the UK
- Unfortunately most major banks in the UK have very fragile infra that relies on foreign cloud hosts e.g AWS or Azure, which could well fall over in unexpected ways if the UK was cut off from the world
To be clear I disagree with Wes Streeting on a lot of this but the UK is in a uniquely precarious spot when it comes to how much is reliant on internet access.
GPS relies on very very accurate timing. I would wager that the timing side of GPS is used more than the positioning side - but I have no way of confirming that.
Accurate timing is needed for banks accepting/sending payments (not just £5 for the window cleaner - more billions flowing every day).
That makes the issue worse as the actual app/device likely just relies on querying some NTP pool for accurate time. Then that would mean the actual stratum 1 servers are not working right.
Just read the article and the conclusion was that they're using ground based systems to disrupt other countries satellites that are targeting the UK, not the one's that those countries depend on for their own internal services.
It should be standard practice to use radio jammers and dazzling lasers against every non-allied foreign satellite that passes over our territory, or any of our military bases or warships. Why give them a free look?
Given the “Hybrid” attacks in Europe originating with Russia, the Houthi’s and Iran taking shots at shipping and the likelihood that certain countries are feeding Iran some of the intel… this is pretty understandable.
Russia makes whole regions inaccessible to GPS and it’s ultimately for the same underlying reason: soft kill systems and area denial scale better than kinetic options and are deniable.
It’s disappointing to see the majority of conversation here is moralizing and grandstanding rather than analysis.
That was the McGuffin for the book "Ice Station Zebra" (and the film adaptation). A satellite with pictures of every missile launch site in the US malfunctions and is knocked off its planned orbit that would overfly the Soviet Union, so the race is on to figure out where they would drop the film and prevent them from recovering it.
Laser links for satellites work fine, but if you're up against a 10 year old spy satellite or you're selectively jamming their SAR (radar imaging) or GLONASS positioning rather than their comms...
If you take a look back at history, literally everyone would disagree. A strong England has done unimaginable damage to almost every other society on the planet.
If they were to do something positive with it then it would be nice.
Instead they are hell bent on criticizing and tearing down anyone that does, especially when their finance bros are invested in the legacy competition.
Nobody is pretending to build or defend anything positive in space. Efforts like Starlink are blatantly and publicly a synthetic aperature radar constellation for military use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
Of course it is. That’s why they didn’t really care at first if Russia was using it in Ukraine. I thought the military had their own constellation but maybe not.
And in that respect, it was a deviation from the propaganda of previous eras, which did in fact frame efforts as building and defending positive things in space.
> Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said daily lives depend on satellites that power everyday technologies like mobile phones and banking apps, adding the loss of GPS would cost the UK economy £1.4bn a day.
Oh no! Not our precious banking apps! What a weird thing to call out specifically. It's also kind of strange to talk at such length about how critical satellites have become to people's lives, national economy, emergency services, and people's "daily freedoms", only to conclude with "So now we're using ground-based systems to take out the satellites other countries depend on for all of those things"
In a largely cashless society like the UK, ‘banking apps’ are effectively people’s wallets. Knowing you got paid, being able to pay your rent, being able to pay for goods and services… seem like pretty everyday concerns.
All of that can be handed via your bank's website, ATMs, a credit card, or even (god forbid) writing a cheque.
All of which (except the cheque, which we can ignore - nobody in the UK has a chequebook any more) depend on the same communication infrastructure that the app does.
> All of which...depend on the same communication infrastructure that the app does.
That being the internet, which in the vast majority of cases doesn't depend on satellites either. Wifi, fiber, coax, and copper would continue to work just fine.
Do people write cheques in the UK?
There are several companies in the UK offering cheque cashing services so I presume somebody there is getting them.
Or checks?
No
That's going to be a problem when the UK faces sustained service disruption attacks. Building fragile systems like this during peacetime is usually an ill-informed bet.
At the very least the idea of a population fearing for their future if an app doesn't work is frankly horrifying. In the case of banking apps there are already multiple, simple, well established, and widely supported alternatives to using the app available to them, but that should really be the case for anything actually critical
Surely one of the great dividends of being at peace is not having to live like you're at war?
I didn't realise only people at war used cash
Rather the opposite. Peacetime is the only good opportunity to promote robustness and refuse toleration of vulnerable systems.
If you allow your banks and courts to be hacked freely by an adversary, then you can be manipulated into losing control of the escalation ladder.
Why is it strange? Millions of people use banking apps daily to make transactions essential to their lives and businesses.
It's also a favourite stat of the UK space industry that a large percentage of UK GDP is vaguely linked to space in some way, and "some of your financial transactions touch a satellite uplink or require location data" is one of the more tangible non-obvious ones.
Those apps can all be replaced by a website, and most banks already have those websites, which means if all the banking apps on earth stopped working right now the solution wouldn't involve anything more complicated than stabbing your finger at different icon on your phone and typing the name of your bank into a search engine.
not being funny - if the internet goes out how does a website make this better?
> not being funny - if the internet goes out how does a website make this better?
The internet for most people doesn't depend on banking apps, or satellites. Wifi would still work great. If the internet actually did go out everywhere, how would an app help you?
Thats the point, the reasons the apps dont work would be the same reason the websites dont work. They are not work around, I think apps is just mentioned because 90% of people use them over the website
The UK is an island nation that's reliant on undersea cables. If those cables are cut (which is something that Russia seems to threaten) your only fallback is satellite connectivity - so protecting that connectivity is pretty key to ensuring e.g people can access their money.
I would guess that was how Wes Streeting was briefed (and then completely bungled in public comms).
ideally British banks would have their infrastructure located in Britain and therefore would not rely on undersea cables
Monzo (a major UK bank) use AWS and GCP. Hopefully their DCs don't fail in some way when losing access to the outside world but I would hazard a guess something goes wrong.
https://monzo.com/blog/tolerating-full-cloud-outages-with-mo...
Banking apps don't depend on satellites, either.
That’s beyond about 90% of the population.
It's not and it's also not uniquely a British thing either. Most of my friends and myself use our phones as wallets, in the US. The only time I use my physical cards is to pull cash from the ATM, ha.
In my household, we refer to coins as “parking tokens”.
I should start calling my jar of quarters the "laundry tokens" haha.
Why does a banking app require GPS?
- The UK is an island nation
- In event of all undersea cables being cut (which is a serious threat from Russia), satellite internet is your only option to have traffic leave the UK
- Unfortunately most major banks in the UK have very fragile infra that relies on foreign cloud hosts e.g AWS or Azure, which could well fall over in unexpected ways if the UK was cut off from the world
To be clear I disagree with Wes Streeting on a lot of this but the UK is in a uniquely precarious spot when it comes to how much is reliant on internet access.
GPS relies on very very accurate timing. I would wager that the timing side of GPS is used more than the positioning side - but I have no way of confirming that.
Accurate timing is needed for banks accepting/sending payments (not just £5 for the window cleaner - more billions flowing every day).
That makes the issue worse as the actual app/device likely just relies on querying some NTP pool for accurate time. Then that would mean the actual stratum 1 servers are not working right.
I wouldn't be surprised if financial institutions use GPS for time keeping.
It's more accurate than getting it from a NTP pool.
Security - checking your not accessing it in UK one minute and australia the next minute
Some bank apps can block this access or request more validation
Data collection and targeted advertising
To track you
It doesn't. They're making shit up.
Just read the article and the conclusion was that they're using ground based systems to disrupt other countries satellites that are targeting the UK, not the one's that those countries depend on for their own internal services.
The UK's largest export is banking (i.e. money laundering).
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/cutting-edge-timing-techn...
Not a strange thing at all. London sees itself as the competitor for the finance capital of the world. Why would you think it's strange?
It should be standard practice to use radio jammers and dazzling lasers against every non-allied foreign satellite that passes over our territory, or any of our military bases or warships. Why give them a free look?
Because that is one of the methods used to verify that everyone is complying with treaties, such as nuclear non-proliferation treaties.
In terms of international game theory, this is entirely expected. No action would be the anomaly.
I thought after 60,000 feet MSL a country's airspace ends.
So, who's the UK actually attacking?
This is not an attack. The satellites aren't being damaged.
Someone tell that to DDOS
one step closer to star wars
Given the “Hybrid” attacks in Europe originating with Russia, the Houthi’s and Iran taking shots at shipping and the likelihood that certain countries are feeding Iran some of the intel… this is pretty understandable.
Russia makes whole regions inaccessible to GPS and it’s ultimately for the same underlying reason: soft kill systems and area denial scale better than kinetic options and are deniable.
It’s disappointing to see the majority of conversation here is moralizing and grandstanding rather than analysis.
this should end well
or a whole new technology invented other than radio waves for data transmission
are any satellites using laser downlink yet or is line-of-sight too temperamental with weather and planes?
Let’s launch hard drives back and forth between earth and LEO. Like sneakernet in space.
U.S. spy satellites were returning film payloads to Earth as late as 1986:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KH-9_Hexagon
That was the McGuffin for the book "Ice Station Zebra" (and the film adaptation). A satellite with pictures of every missile launch site in the US malfunctions and is knocked off its planned orbit that would overfly the Soviet Union, so the race is on to figure out where they would drop the film and prevent them from recovering it.
never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes reentering the atmosphere
Been there, done that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)
They'd drop their film back down to earth.
If they're heavy enough, it doubles as a space fountain.
railgun microSD
but seriously, the first spy satellites used to drop film rolls and they had a crazy way for the military to track and catch them via planes
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)
I'm laughing at how many bots wanted to share their trivia with you after this post
Laser links for satellites work fine, but if you're up against a 10 year old spy satellite or you're selectively jamming their SAR (radar imaging) or GLONASS positioning rather than their comms...
Neutrinos
Gravitational waves
I mean isn't space X testing satellites with sat to sat lasers?
In that case you don't need to ground lasers, you just beam the data where you have unjammed communications with the cost of higher latency.
More than testing. That is their primary on-orbit link method for Starlink satellites as of 2.5 years ago: https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-laser-system-is-beaming...
The British seem reduced to their historic state of piracy to restore the empire:
“disrupting, degrading and denying hostile threats in space”
Not even pretending to be building and defending anything positive in space.
Its OK for the UK to be strong
And also, all lives matter.
But the meaning of a statement is not solely determined by the words in it.
If you take a look back at history, literally everyone would disagree. A strong England has done unimaginable damage to almost every other society on the planet.
Any strong empire, nation or person in power has.
With great power yadda yadda
England is not the UK.
Lots of people in former British colonies like and trust the UK.
Really, what kind of damage? Granted their cuisine isn’t the best, but it’s hardly damaging.
I don't think we'd rather be speaking French right now.
Let me clarify.
Its OK for the UK for the UK to be strong.
If they were to do something positive with it then it would be nice.
Instead they are hell bent on criticizing and tearing down anyone that does, especially when their finance bros are invested in the legacy competition.
Nobody is pretending to build or defend anything positive in space. Efforts like Starlink are blatantly and publicly a synthetic aperature radar constellation for military use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starshield
Of course it is. That’s why they didn’t really care at first if Russia was using it in Ukraine. I thought the military had their own constellation but maybe not.
And in that respect, it was a deviation from the propaganda of previous eras, which did in fact frame efforts as building and defending positive things in space.
What a bizarre take.