After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship

Enlarge / The USS Manchester. Just the spot for a Starlink dish. (credit: Department of Defense)

It’s no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions.

For instance, a former US Ambassador to Kenya in 2015 got in trouble after working out of an embassy compound bathroom—the only place where he could use his personal computer (!) to access an unsecured network (!!) that let him log in to Gmail (!!!), where he did much of his official business—rules and security policies be damned.

Still, the ambassador had nothing on senior enlisted crew members of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, who didn’t like the Navy’s restriction of onboard Internet access. In 2023, they decided that the best way to deal with the problem was to secretly bolt a Starlink terminal to the “O-5 level weatherdeck” of a US warship.