…the recovered data included user SMS and voice call contents, user internet traffic, and cellular network signaling protocols… the team was able to collect unencrypted satellite data “from sea vessels owned by the US military,” along with traffic from multiple organizations within the Mexican government and military, including personnel records, narcotics activity, and military asset tracking…
Yep. Its part of the hobby. There’s a raspberry pi version. Just look up satnogs. Its a website. There’s also ARPA, meshtastic/meshcore, and a whole lot of other fun little side projects on communication.
Also there are citizen weather setups. They are not as good as the national weather service, but in places that don’t get a lot of coverage (some parts of Wyoming for example) they are great. They don’t use SATs but in theory could use that data as well. This is where my knowledge gets murky as I only know about them in passing. There’s kits online and on tindie (maker website).