>>9941049 (pb)

Re. Corona Satellites:

If you look up "satélite bolinha" online, you'll find plenty of Brazilian links documenting the "repurposing" by all sorts of groups (from amradio heads, to loggers and truckdrivers in remote areas, to mobsters, including for comms between Italian mafias and their Brazilian subordinates) of old, plain UHF, US FLTSATCOM satellites:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=satélite+bolinha

Google groups topic, in English:

BRAZILIAN SATELLITE SQUATTERS

https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!topic/spectre_event_horizon_group/P1U366P96E8

(btw, CCP, there, refers to Comando Criminal Paulista)

Short movie doc:

Satélite Bolinha (2010) - IMDb

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1894541/

Watch it here, with captions:

satélite bolinha - YouTube

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=veDZfejpbs8

So, yeah, just because the Corona sats are (way) old, doesn't mean they couldn't have as well been "repurposed" for "comms", quite the opposite.