Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers

["Mark Grant, M.A. (Oxon)" <mark@unicorn.com>]

On Tue, 2 Jan 1996, Jay Holovacs wrote:

> Commercial satallites have land based corporate owners. Remember the
> success that Alabama had a few years ago pulling the plug on a New York
> based softporn tv satellite distribution system. They simply went after the
> assets of the satellite companies and got quick cooperation.

About ten years ago a group I was involved with were thinking about
putting something into space as a publicity stunt. One company we talked
to claimed they could put 1 kg into orbit on one of their sounding rockets
for about $ 30,000 (that's a 1 kg satellite, not $ 30,000 per kg). How
small can you build a "data haven" satellite ? 

Looking a few years into the future, you could probably stick a
stripped-down Linux laptop with solar cells and a stripped-down satellite
telephone as a Net link on top of a slightly larger rocket and charge for
on-orbit storage using ecash... Using remailers it should be pretty-much
untraceable. 

	Mark