[oceanplexian]

Surprised the US hasn’t set up some kind of DTC-via-loitering drone technology to allow stock, unmodified cell phones to bypass the internet restrictions.

With air superiority they could do it indefinitely. It could be backhauled via Starlink, each one acts as a Stingray-style cell tower and you launch a couple of them over every major city. Would be slow for tens of thousands or millions of users, but quite technically possible. The same technology would also be practical for disaster relief anywhere else in the world.

[gruez]

Doesn't GSM require mutual authentication via ki that's stored on the sim card and only known to the operator? Getting stingrays to work is easy mode because all it has to do is relay the traffic while capturing the IMEI/IMSI in the process, but if you want to act as a real cell tower that's much harder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_card#Authentication_key_(K...

[echoangle]

I don’t know how many people in Iran have devices with eSIM support but with that you could probably do it. You would need internet access once to activate it but after that you could use the mobile network (and also provide a WiFi hotspot to other people to activate the eSIM).

[woleium]

You could airdrop simms to seed the process

[kgwxd]

What motive would they have to do that?

[Sabinus]

Giving Iranian civil society the ability to show the world what the government repression is like, and to organise resistance.