Starlink restriction and confiscation pattern, 2024–2025

DRAFT — needs an editor rewrite. Groups 11 Access Now STOP records that specifically name Starlink, spanning July 2024 to December 2025, across multiple actors and mechanisms: junta confiscation of devices (Puta-O, Dec 8 2025), TNLA-ordered restrictions and arrests of device owners (Namtu/ Man San, Oct 15 2025; Mogok area, Nov 23 2025), and Thai-border scam-crackdown overlap (Myawaddy/Kyain Seikgyi — this overlaps with 2025-02-thai-border- scam-crackdown-shutdown; flag for an editor whether these should be merged or the Starlink-specific angle kept separate). Checked IODA's historical region signals (bgp, ping-slash24) for Kachin region around the Dec 8, 2025 Puta-O incident: both flat, no disruption visible — expected and unsurprising, not a gap: Starlink is a satellite ISP, not part of the terrestrial routing infrastructure IODA's region-level BGP/active-probing signals measure, so device-level confiscation of Starlink terminals would never be expected to show up there (same structural finding as this site's broader Starlink-tracking research). No technical layer is included for this reason, not because it was unrecoverable. This is a SEPARATE, earlier wave from the 2026 Starlink border disruption event (2026-starlink-border-disruption.yaml), which is sourced from digest entries rather than STOP (STOP's corpus ends Dec 2025). Stale-ongoing review (2026-07): Starlink remains formally illegal under the military government and reporting from Q1 2026 shows continued restriction/use-under-ban in Sagaing and Magway — the general phenomenon clearly persists, but this event's own STOP-sourced record list stops at Dec 2025 and a successor event now exists for the 2026 wave. Kept ongoing per the stale-events pass's "can't confirm either way" rule rather than guessed either direction — see internal research notes for the scope question (close this at its Dec 2025 corpus limit vs. treat as the same continuing pattern as the 2026 event). Scope decision (maintainer research, 2026-07, separate question — merge with 2025-02-thai-border-scam-crackdown-shutdown?): kept SEPARATE. Same reasoning as that event's own note: this event is defined by SpaceX terminal-level restrictions and junta/TNLA device confiscations, distinct from the Thai-government-pressure-driven power/ISP cuts described in the scam-crackdown event, even where both touch Myawaddy/Kyain Seikgyi. Related event: see 2025-02-thai-border-scam-crackdown-shutdown for STOP records in the same border zone driven by the broader anti-scam crackdown rather than Starlink-specific action.