A group of Navy sailors secretly used Starlink to check sports scores, social media and watch movies. They hid it from rank-and-file.

A U.S. Navy chief who wanted the internet so she and other enlisted officers could scroll social media, check sports scores and watch movies while deployed had an unauthorized Starlink satellite dish installed on a warship and lied to her commanding officer to keep it secret, according to investigators.

Internet access is restricted while a ship is underway to maintain bandwidth for military operations and to protect against cybersecurity threats.

The Navy quietly relieved Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, in August or September 2023, and released information on parts of the investigation this week.

  • @[email protected]English
    120•8 days ago

    First off, not an officer, a high ranking enlisted(E-8) personal was the culprit.

    Second, she was a Information systems technician. She literally dealt with making sure communication was safe and secure.

    I know congress has to be involved to knock her down below E-7 but they need to get on that.

    • @[email protected]English
      42•8 days ago

      So she was an NCO and the writter was clueless. Ok.

      And for that kind of opsec fuckup there really shouldn’t there be discharge/prison time ?

        • @[email protected]English
          4•7 days ago

          What this NCO did was not dumb; it was calculated and intentional violations of multiple rules and regulations they (and the others involved) knew very well. Then they tried to cover it up when people started asking questions.

          Absolutely no sympathy for them in my book. These are supposed to be the leaders other enlisted look to emulate.

        • @[email protected]English
          7•7 days ago

          Exactly. You only imprison people for malicious actions. If they’re just dumb, demote and reassign elsewhere.

    • @[email protected]English
      21•8 days ago

      First off, not an officer, a high ranking enlisted(E-8) personal was the culprit.

      Typically, anything E-4 or higher is considered a Non-Commisioned Officer.

      EDIT further clarification: from my experience in the Canadian Army, what “Officers” means depends on context. Most often (and what [email protected] probably meant) it means just Commissioned Officers. Other times, it’s anyone in leadership, including NCOs.

      • @[email protected]English
        17•8 days ago

        I totally understand where you’re coming from. It’s absolutely not uncommon to casually refer to high-rank NCOs as Officers (in Canada at least)

        [Source: Family in CAF and RCMP]

        • @[email protected]English
          3•7 days ago

          Very uncommon to refer to NCOs or SNCOs as officers in branches of the US military that I have experience with. Interesting about Canada though, I wonder what other countries do