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

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.

  • @Avatar_of_SelfEnglish
    2•6 days ago

    Effectively they did through obfuscation. The Command Chief renamed it to look like their wireless printers. She did that because so many more junior people (relative to the Chief’s Mess) complained that the officers tried to check (with their phones) for some wifi Internet. They couldn’t find it because they thought it was a printer. The Command Chief is obviously trusted since she’s the most senior enlisted but she’s also the one that lead the entire scheme. When asked directly by the Commander, she denied it existed, so after not finding it, they just assumed it was a rumor. So, they had a ship-wide call and told everyone that there was no rogue Internet access point on the ship.

    It took months because when a tech from a port they were at was installing a Starshield transceiver they physically saw the Starlink transceiver.