Starlink is a mobile internet platform by SpaceX. They currently have somewhere around 6,300 satellites up in low earth orbit, in complex shells covering most of the globe. These satellites aren’t permanent, they’re so low that they do experience some mild atmospheric drag, which causes them to eventually fall into the atmosphere and burn up. However SpaceX frequently launches more.

Over the last year or so SpaceX have been developing direct-to-cell capability, using 4G/LTE. This means you will be able to send and receive calls, texts and data over Starlink, direct from your mobile phone. This is only possible because of the low altitude of Starlink - conventional satellites are much higher up, and while they can send signals to your phone (eg GPS) they’re too far away for your phone to reach back.

However, the flip side of this is that Starlink is effectively operating mobile phone masts up in space, globally. A network carrier on land already has the ability to triangulate your position using cell towers - they ping your phone from multiple towers, with this they can determine distance, and with 3 or more they can triangulate with increasing precision. This is kind of acceptable, because it’s only the country you’re in (or near to) that will be able to identify and locate you. However with SpaceX you have an American business that’s effectively able to identify (through unique identifiers such as IMEI) and locate you via your phone almost anywhere in the world using their satellite constellation.