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FCC fines Swarm $900K for unauthorized satellite launch

223 points by daegloe 8y ago

gesman 8y ago
I'd modify the fine by adding: $1m/per month while your stuff is polluting the space orbit.
carbocation 8y ago
> FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the size of the penalty “is probably not significant enough to deter future behavior, but the negative press coverage is likely to prevent this company and others from attempting to do this again.” To me, this reads like they're abdicating their responsibility. I'm sure their goal is to punish the company without destroying it. But if even the regulator doesn't believe the fine is going to serve as a deterrent, why do we even have a regulator for this arena?
- criddell 8y ago
  > punish the company without destroying it Aside from a massive fine, is there anything else they could have done? Could they have jailed the executives and investors? Could they have revoked their corporate charter?
  - blihp 8y ago
    If the goal was truly to discourage the action, the obvious thing to do would have been to require the company to de-orbit, or otherwise forfeit the use of, the satellites. If the company had sufficient funding the message received would have been 'well, we better not do that again'. If it didn't have sufficient funding, that would have been the message to all the companies that came after. The fine barely represents a speeding ticket and signals to anyone else that there will be effectively no action if they do the same thing in the future.
    - mirashii 8y ago
      Just as an FYI, there doesn't exist a way to deorbit those any faster than they are already decaying, so that's not a real option.
      - blihp 8y ago
        Thanks for the info... I wasn't aware that there was no means of propulsion on those. Oh well, it's not like that option would have been seriously considered if there was.
  - howard941 8y ago
    > Could they have jailed the executives Probably not. https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1068-violation-fcc-regulations-47-usc-502 https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1068-vio... > and investors? Passive investors? No > Could they have revoked their corporate charter? The Commission couldn't, no. Corporate entity revocation (dissolution) is more a thing that happens when the entity fails to pay fees to a state or territory than it is a punishment: It's intentionally trivially easy to create corporate entities.
- sokoloff 8y ago
  I read that as "the financial penalty is not significant enough on a standalone basis to deter future violations, but that perhaps the fine combined with the press coverage may prevent it." If you're a VC or company backer now, how willing are you to put your money behind some company that's liable to be the second intentional violator of these regulations?
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    I think there must be enough VCs out there who are willing to intentionally snub regulations, otherwise companies like Uber, Lyft and Lime would never exist.
  - carbocation 8y ago
    Yes, I read this the same way you did, but I came to a different conclusion. If the regulatory agency will tailor-make your fine to make sure that it's not too stiff, I don't see why any startup would follow the rules the first time around. Compliance has costs. If you ignore compliance and your project doesn't work, then you spared yourself the time and money needed for compliance, and you won't care about the fine. If you ignore compliance and your project does work, then the fine will not kill you, and you'll know it's worth coming into compliance. I don't think I'm more "move fast and break things" than the average HN'er; this just seems like the logical outcome of fines that are intentionally too small. What am I overlooking?
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      I'm also working under the assumption that the fine has some statutory basis and that might be limiting the regulator (perhaps negatively from their point of view, positively from my point of view). I wouldn't want the FCC to have arbitrary and unlimited power.
      - illumin8 8y ago
        The assumption I'm making based on the press (that certain FCC commissioners disagreed with the original fine) is that the current GOP-controlled FCC commissioners like Ajit Pai intentionally reduced the fine because they want to be a "pro-Business" FCC. When your political agenda is intent upon removing any teeth that a regulatory body has so that you can recreate your perfect libertarian state, you see fines like this that are toothless.
- btown 8y ago
  To me, this reads like “yea we know this is BS, the press coverage is actually likely to just communicate that you can get away with this type of thing with just a slap on the wrist, but our hands are tied in how we can penalize this.” To the larger point, though, even an imperfect regulator is important. There will always be different types of businesses - those who intend to skirt the law and those who attempt to follow it whatever it may be - and regulators keep the second set from acting like the first set, reducing the quantity of bad behavior. They certainly wish they had the fangs to deter both, but at least this may deter the latter.
  - carbocation 8y ago
    Yes, I think your interpretation is supported by the next line in the article, too: "O’Rielly said an initial fine negotiated by FCC staff was rejected by some commissioners, which led to reopening settlement talks."
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  The size of this penalty alone isn't likely to be a deterrent. The fact that the next penalty doesn't have to be $900k is the deterrent. It's a lot harder to say "we thought it was OK" now.
  - dr_orpheus 8y ago
    I believe this will definitely be true. I'm sure that Swarm will have a very difficult time obtaining their next license for whatever they launch. It is already very difficult for a commercial company to get an FCC license. Especially when you are a small company with limited resources like Swarm. I worked for a different smallsat company, including working on the FCC application and it was a nightmare dealing with them. We submitted our initial application for a license, got comments back from the FCC and then we provided them with more data in response to their questions. Then after 2 years of the FCC just sitting on our license application we got a 3 sentence letter saying out application had been denied with no explanation of why.
    - wbl 8y ago
      Meanwhile a bunch of people put up satellites as a hobby, and having been doing it since the 4th satellite ever.
      - dr_orpheus 8y ago
        The hobbyist satellites still have to get licenses to communicate like everyone else. They are usually "dropped off" in low orbits, which are below the ISS and will decay in a few months so there isn't a concern with orbital debris.
        wbl 8y ago
        Yes they get the license like everyone else. That undermines your complaint about how onerous it is. And OSCAR has lifetimes of more then a few months.
        8y ago
blauditore 8y ago
I'm not well-informed on the topic, but why does the FCC regulate who's allowed to launch satellites? Shouldn't there be an international authority for this?
- riskable 8y ago
  I too was confused by this but it actually makes sense: They did all their testing from the US (and it's a US-based company). Which means they used part of the radio spectrum which is regulated by the FCC which gives the them regulatory authority. NASA (and other space agencies) are OK with their satellites. The FCC is not OK with their use of controlled spectrum in the US.
- Cogito 8y ago
  It's hard to co-ordinate that kind of thing, so we might see it in the future but I wouldn't hold my breath. The FCC regulates the radio spectrum usage in the US, which means if you want to talk to your satellite you need to get permission from them. They use that to try and make sure everyone in space gets along and don't crash into each other. If the company only ever used base stations not falling under FCC jurisdiction they might have been ok, but my guess is that as long as they were operating in the US they'd probably run into issues trying to get around the FCC.
  - ceejayoz 8y ago
    As a US company, even launching an inert block of metal would've still made the US liable for any mishaps they caused (say, by running into another satellite or hitting someone on the ground with it) under the Outer Space Treaty and the Space Liability Convention. Evade the FCC and someone with enforcement powers is still gonna be grumpy.
- petre 8y ago
  No. The FCC regulates telecomunications between the sats and ground stations in the US. For space there are UN agencies that are responsible and there are several international treaties, agreements and conventions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law
sschueller 8y ago
This isn't large enough. The fine should include the cost to remove the satellites from orbit.
- wcoenen 8y ago
  If you're OK with waiting a while, the "removal cost" is zero. Those satellites are in 490km orbits which should decay in 50 years or so.
  - sschueller 8y ago
    In the mean time they can hit the ISS and damage other satellites.
riskable 8y ago
So if Swarm wasn't a US-based company they wouldn't have gotten this fine? They launched the satellites from India and tested them from Georgia (the state in the US or the country? The article isn't clear). Seems to me that future companies that want to do this sort of testing just need to do it in other countries or from off-shore platforms. Then apply for your FCC license so you can charge US customers without having to worry about getting sanctioned (and losing your ability to process credit cards and bank in the US). When I started reading the article and read about all these international launches my first thought was, "why does the FCC have a say in any of this?" Now I'm thinking, "perhaps we need a better international framework for this sort of thing."
- austenallred 8y ago
  Correct, of course. The FCC can’t control what an Indian company does, but this was clearly a US-based company launching out of India because US regulators said “no.”
- plopz 8y ago
  I believe the Outer Space Treaty is the framework to handle the international part of all this, which India has ratified.
- danielvf 8y ago
  To answer your question, yes, the satellites were talked to from a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.
- Mvandenbergh 8y ago
  The international framework is that each country can authorise satellites by companies based there, this is regulated by the ITU. In the US, the FCC is the relevant regulator, other countries have their own regulators. In the UK it is Ofcom which unlike the FCC does not charge fees but it does require third party liability insurance which the FCC does not. If Swarm had been based in India, it would have needed to seek authorisation there. Swarm requested FCC authorisation which was denied on the basis of collision safety. They then received permission to launch a set of larger satellites with better radar visibility. Imagine the surprise of the FCC when they discovered that Swarm had lied to their launch provider (claiming that they had authorisation) and launched the original satellites anyway! In the past this has never been an issue because satellites were so expensive that no-one in their right mind would try to launch one without authorisation. As a result, launch providers may not have been rigorous in actually checking the authorisations for their secondary payloads. The whole model is still rooted in a world where only a few countries could launch satellites and only a small number of very large companies within them could afford to build and launch them. Within a cosy world like that, regulatory compliance is important but it is also assumed that everyone else is complying and actually checking that is rare. Certainly this case is going to change that.
AznHisoka 8y ago
At first I thought this was SwarmApp by Foursquare, and they wanted to track the location of every human on earth.
jacquesm 8y ago
I can see a Sealand 2.0 spring up around the launching of rockets from international waters. It also looks as if the bulk of the regulatory reason here is the use of the radio spectrum and not the actual launch.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  Sealand was an abject failure, wasn't it? The UK basically rolled their eyes the same way they'd ignore a kid declaring their backyard tree fort to be sovereign territory. If they'd started launching rockets, that might've been different.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    I think if HavenCo had been a success the eye rolling would have rapidly stopped and we'd have seen whether or not copyright will be enforced with guns if it comes to it.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Or just cut their network access. You can figurative be an island on the high seas but a business needs to ultimately interact with others in various ways and those interactions are vulnerable.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  but who would be the customer? certainly not in any country that is signed on to the treaty or has financial interest in any country the US has influence in.
- bb611 8y ago
  The issue isn't geography of the launch, it's company registration for regulation.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    just register it in sealand 2.0 which grants all satellites launch permissions.
ryanmccullagh 8y ago
It's not related to Swarm, by FourSquare, right?
- ryanmccullagh 8y ago
  Was this really so horrible?
mabbo 8y ago
It feels to me as though the mantra of "move fast and break things" wasn't meant to apply to laws. Purposely ignoring laws, regulations, or seeing vague ones that didn't expect your crazy idea, and then hoping you can work it all out later after you've made lots of money- this is becoming more and more common in tech startups. And I personally don't like it. Uber and AirBnB are the classic examples (and it's worked out wonderfully for them). In Toronto, Car2Go told customers to just park anywhere- don't worry about getting parking tickets, we'll handle it. (They didn't). Swarm was told that their satellites could not be launched, so they just did it anyways hoping no one would notice. (Someone did). RobinHood announced checking accounts without checking if there were laws around such things. (There are). Governments would be better to be ready for disruptive ideas and have flexibility in regulations to try them out. And we should all be voting and supporting candidates who want to see such changes happen. But until they do, it seems wrong to purposely break laws in order to make money.
- drugme 8y ago
  It feels to me as though the mantra of "move fast and break things" wasn't meant to apply to laws. Actually the related mantra of "Hey as long as it's just a fine you can reasonably pay -- or you don't think you'll get caught -- then sure, go ahead an break the law!" has been around the Valley for quite a while. In fact, we might say it's become something of a chant.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Unfortunately, laws are unlikely to change without a bit of violation. Alcohol prohibition in the US didn't end because everyone stayed good and sober.
  - dmix 8y ago
    Indeed, Uber and AirBnB were evolutions of the marketplace. They aren’t going away (and shouldn’t go away) just because the laws were designed in a previous century for a different type of business. The solution is for gov fix the laws to reflect society. Unfortunately modern governments are designed around protecting established market cartels and political special interest groups over evolving with the times. I don’t see this as relevant to Swarm either. They aren’t an evolution AFAIK, besides maybe the rise of private rocket launches.
vasilipupkin 8y ago
negative press coverage? I can't believe people still don't get that there is almost never such a thing as negative publicity, especially for a new ventur ( with exceptions, within reason, of course )
- matt4077 8y ago
  > with exceptions, within reason Well, how about applying those, then? I also think you’re misunderstanding the sentiment. It’s not so much about negative coverage serving as additional punishment in this case, but about the coverage putting future would-be offenders on notice, and effectively preventing any profession of ignorance to serve as a mitigating factor.
dr_orpheus 8y ago
Fun fact, Swam now has a job open for "Regulatory Engineer". I wonder why they would need that... https://jobs.lever.co/swarm-technologies/437b187b-26f9-4da7-ae6e-b0be64ce0bbc https://jobs.lever.co/swarm-technologies/437b187b-26f9-4da7-...
- elliekelly 8y ago
  I feel bad for whoever ends up in this position. The FCC has required Swarm to designate someone to be responsible for regulatory compliance. That means someone with knowledge and experience with FCC regulatory compliance. Not an engineer who happens to be tasked with work an attorney should be doing. Whoever takes this role isn't going to be compensated nearly enough for the personal risk they're about to undertake and is being set up to fail. They need a lawyer, and they need to listen to the lawyer, not an engineer.
  - dr_orpheus 8y ago
    Yeah, definitely not a job I want. I am an engineer who has worked on an application for FCC license for a different smallsat company. It was already a terrible experience dealing with the FCC. I can't imagine trying to do it when the FCC is already pissed off at your company.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- bduerst 8y ago
  Preferred Qualifications: - Experience preparing and submitting FCC applications for satellite and/or earth station licenses. Yikes.
androidgirl 8y ago
900k is almost chump change in the world of aerospace, sats, and space tech. This isn't a deterrant, it can be framed as the cost of doing business. The fine is far too small.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
reaperducer 8y ago
$900,000? I wonder how this was calculated. It doesn't sound like much of a deterrent. The next rouge satellite launching company can just work that into startup costs.
- i_cant_speel 8y ago
  From the article: > FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the size of the penalty “is probably not significant enough to deter future behavior, but the negative press coverage is likely to prevent this company and others from attempting to do this again.”
- matt4077 8y ago
  It sounds like a pretty hefty fine for a small startup. It’s also a fine, not a tax. Meaning this does not establish a price that you can consciously factor in when breaking the law. The next one would surly be treated much harder, considering it would be hard to claim ignorance. And fines would also rise proportional with the size of the offender, not to menation repeat offenders.
  - dnadler 8y ago
    That sounds reasonable, but do you have anything to back up any of what you said? It's just as likely that $900k is the statutory limit for this infraction.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  I would imagine if they were repeat offenders the FCC would just tell them to go f-off on future launches and there goes their whole business plan.
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I would imagine if they were repeat offenders the FCC would just tell them to go f-off on future launches and there goes their whole business plan. But the FCC already told them to go f-off, and they launched anyway. "Swarm launched the satellites in India last January after the FCC rejected its application to deploy and operate them, citing concerns about the company’s tracking ability."
smkellat 8y ago
Was there an option to use an anti-satellite weapon to blow these things out of the sky? These rules have been pretty firm since the 1970s so pleading ignorance just looks bad.
- bagels 8y ago
  The complaint by fcc was these objects were too small to be tracked (which was not true in the first place). How would turning them in to many more smaller pieces of debris in orbit help?
harrisonjackson 8y ago
This article reads as sponsored content. The outcome was a $900k advertising bill with the FCC telling everyone that Swarm has got tech up and working and that they're moving forward with the approval of the FCC... "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT WORKOUT SUPPLEMENT NEARLY LANDED THE ROCK IN JAIL"
cbolat 8y ago
Swarm Technologies Inc Advisors: Julius Genachowski Former Chairman, FCC (2009-2013) good advice Mr Genachowski..
jedc 8y ago
"Earlier this month, SpaceX launched three more satellites for Swarm on a Falcon 9 rocket after winning FCC approval." This feels like a pretty important point - Swarm got slapped for their mistakes with that launch, but they're already back on track if the FCC already granted permission (what must have been months ago) for their most recent satellites. I wonder if it was just down to confusion on Swarm's part on how the rules applied.
- dr_orpheus 8y ago
  I am pretty sure that Swarm knew that they were breaking the rules. They submitted an FCC license, were notified that the license was rejected, and decided to launch anyways. I think part of the reason that they were able to still get licenses approved is that they agreed to more oversight from the FCC. Also, after launching the satellites Swarm was able to show the FCC that they were able to track the satellites, which was the original reason that FCC denied the license. So it seems like the FCC had to say "we were wrong, but you still broke the law so here is a fine and then we will continue on with life."
eggy 8y ago
I go back and forth on government regulation in the domains of the FCC. On the one hand, you have the BBC, which seems to produce interesting TV when compared to all the fluff on US TV, however, it also banned airing certain things back in the day. The BBC does well here where it can be chosen, but the Brits didn't have much choice. I remember visiting my cousins in Ireland and England in 1984, and my cousin in England only had three or four channels. Some could argue that FCC regulation led to what we have today (not Netflix and other variants) on broadcast television. I found this podcast interesting on the subject of the FCC: https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/sad-history-fcc-thomas-hazlett https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/sad-hi...
gioscarab 8y ago
I can't wait to see the first private pirate/rogue satellite launch :)

223 points by daegloe 8y ago

I'd modify the fine by adding: $1m/per month while your stuff is polluting the space orbit.

> FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the size of the penalty “is probably not significant enough to deter future behavior, but the negative press coverage is likely to prevent this company and others from attempting to do this again.” To me, this reads like they're abdicating their responsibility. I'm sure their goal is to punish the company without destroying it. But if even the regulator doesn't believe the fine is going to serve as a deterrent, why do we even have a regulator for this arena?

criddell 8y ago
> punish the company without destroying it Aside from a massive fine, is there anything else they could have done? Could they have jailed the executives and investors? Could they have revoked their corporate charter?
- blihp 8y ago
  If the goal was truly to discourage the action, the obvious thing to do would have been to require the company to de-orbit, or otherwise forfeit the use of, the satellites. If the company had sufficient funding the message received would have been 'well, we better not do that again'. If it didn't have sufficient funding, that would have been the message to all the companies that came after. The fine barely represents a speeding ticket and signals to anyone else that there will be effectively no action if they do the same thing in the future.
  - mirashii 8y ago
    Just as an FYI, there doesn't exist a way to deorbit those any faster than they are already decaying, so that's not a real option.
    - blihp 8y ago
      Thanks for the info... I wasn't aware that there was no means of propulsion on those. Oh well, it's not like that option would have been seriously considered if there was.
- howard941 8y ago
  > Could they have jailed the executives Probably not. https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1068-violation-fcc-regulations-47-usc-502 https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1068-vio... > and investors? Passive investors? No > Could they have revoked their corporate charter? The Commission couldn't, no. Corporate entity revocation (dissolution) is more a thing that happens when the entity fails to pay fees to a state or territory than it is a punishment: It's intentionally trivially easy to create corporate entities.
sokoloff 8y ago
I read that as "the financial penalty is not significant enough on a standalone basis to deter future violations, but that perhaps the fine combined with the press coverage may prevent it." If you're a VC or company backer now, how willing are you to put your money behind some company that's liable to be the second intentional violator of these regulations?
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  I think there must be enough VCs out there who are willing to intentionally snub regulations, otherwise companies like Uber, Lyft and Lime would never exist.
- carbocation 8y ago
  Yes, I read this the same way you did, but I came to a different conclusion. If the regulatory agency will tailor-make your fine to make sure that it's not too stiff, I don't see why any startup would follow the rules the first time around. Compliance has costs. If you ignore compliance and your project doesn't work, then you spared yourself the time and money needed for compliance, and you won't care about the fine. If you ignore compliance and your project does work, then the fine will not kill you, and you'll know it's worth coming into compliance. I don't think I'm more "move fast and break things" than the average HN'er; this just seems like the logical outcome of fines that are intentionally too small. What am I overlooking?
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    I'm also working under the assumption that the fine has some statutory basis and that might be limiting the regulator (perhaps negatively from their point of view, positively from my point of view). I wouldn't want the FCC to have arbitrary and unlimited power.
    - illumin8 8y ago
      The assumption I'm making based on the press (that certain FCC commissioners disagreed with the original fine) is that the current GOP-controlled FCC commissioners like Ajit Pai intentionally reduced the fine because they want to be a "pro-Business" FCC. When your political agenda is intent upon removing any teeth that a regulatory body has so that you can recreate your perfect libertarian state, you see fines like this that are toothless.
btown 8y ago
To me, this reads like “yea we know this is BS, the press coverage is actually likely to just communicate that you can get away with this type of thing with just a slap on the wrist, but our hands are tied in how we can penalize this.” To the larger point, though, even an imperfect regulator is important. There will always be different types of businesses - those who intend to skirt the law and those who attempt to follow it whatever it may be - and regulators keep the second set from acting like the first set, reducing the quantity of bad behavior. They certainly wish they had the fangs to deter both, but at least this may deter the latter.
- carbocation 8y ago
  Yes, I think your interpretation is supported by the next line in the article, too: "O’Rielly said an initial fine negotiated by FCC staff was rejected by some commissioners, which led to reopening settlement talks."
ceejayoz 8y ago
The size of this penalty alone isn't likely to be a deterrent. The fact that the next penalty doesn't have to be $900k is the deterrent. It's a lot harder to say "we thought it was OK" now.
- dr_orpheus 8y ago
  I believe this will definitely be true. I'm sure that Swarm will have a very difficult time obtaining their next license for whatever they launch. It is already very difficult for a commercial company to get an FCC license. Especially when you are a small company with limited resources like Swarm. I worked for a different smallsat company, including working on the FCC application and it was a nightmare dealing with them. We submitted our initial application for a license, got comments back from the FCC and then we provided them with more data in response to their questions. Then after 2 years of the FCC just sitting on our license application we got a 3 sentence letter saying out application had been denied with no explanation of why.
  - wbl 8y ago
    Meanwhile a bunch of people put up satellites as a hobby, and having been doing it since the 4th satellite ever.
    - dr_orpheus 8y ago
      The hobbyist satellites still have to get licenses to communicate like everyone else. They are usually "dropped off" in low orbits, which are below the ISS and will decay in a few months so there isn't a concern with orbital debris.
      - wbl 8y ago
        Yes they get the license like everyone else. That undermines your complaint about how onerous it is. And OSCAR has lifetimes of more then a few months.
        8y ago

blauditore 8y ago

I'm not well-informed on the topic, but why does the FCC regulate who's allowed to launch satellites? Shouldn't there be an international authority for this?

riskable 8y ago
I too was confused by this but it actually makes sense: They did all their testing from the US (and it's a US-based company). Which means they used part of the radio spectrum which is regulated by the FCC which gives the them regulatory authority. NASA (and other space agencies) are OK with their satellites. The FCC is not OK with their use of controlled spectrum in the US.
Cogito 8y ago
It's hard to co-ordinate that kind of thing, so we might see it in the future but I wouldn't hold my breath. The FCC regulates the radio spectrum usage in the US, which means if you want to talk to your satellite you need to get permission from them. They use that to try and make sure everyone in space gets along and don't crash into each other. If the company only ever used base stations not falling under FCC jurisdiction they might have been ok, but my guess is that as long as they were operating in the US they'd probably run into issues trying to get around the FCC.
- ceejayoz 8y ago
  As a US company, even launching an inert block of metal would've still made the US liable for any mishaps they caused (say, by running into another satellite or hitting someone on the ground with it) under the Outer Space Treaty and the Space Liability Convention. Evade the FCC and someone with enforcement powers is still gonna be grumpy.
petre 8y ago
No. The FCC regulates telecomunications between the sats and ground stations in the US. For space there are UN agencies that are responsible and there are several international treaties, agreements and conventions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law

sschueller 8y ago

This isn't large enough. The fine should include the cost to remove the satellites from orbit.

wcoenen 8y ago
If you're OK with waiting a while, the "removal cost" is zero. Those satellites are in 490km orbits which should decay in 50 years or so.
- sschueller 8y ago
  In the mean time they can hit the ISS and damage other satellites.

riskable 8y ago

So if Swarm wasn't a US-based company they wouldn't have gotten this fine? They launched the satellites from India and tested them from Georgia (the state in the US or the country? The article isn't clear). Seems to me that future companies that want to do this sort of testing just need to do it in other countries or from off-shore platforms. Then apply for your FCC license so you can charge US customers without having to worry about getting sanctioned (and losing your ability to process credit cards and bank in the US). When I started reading the article and read about all these international launches my first thought was, "why does the FCC have a say in any of this?" Now I'm thinking, "perhaps we need a better international framework for this sort of thing."

austenallred 8y ago
Correct, of course. The FCC can’t control what an Indian company does, but this was clearly a US-based company launching out of India because US regulators said “no.”
plopz 8y ago
I believe the Outer Space Treaty is the framework to handle the international part of all this, which India has ratified.
danielvf 8y ago
To answer your question, yes, the satellites were talked to from a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia.
Mvandenbergh 8y ago
The international framework is that each country can authorise satellites by companies based there, this is regulated by the ITU. In the US, the FCC is the relevant regulator, other countries have their own regulators. In the UK it is Ofcom which unlike the FCC does not charge fees but it does require third party liability insurance which the FCC does not. If Swarm had been based in India, it would have needed to seek authorisation there. Swarm requested FCC authorisation which was denied on the basis of collision safety. They then received permission to launch a set of larger satellites with better radar visibility. Imagine the surprise of the FCC when they discovered that Swarm had lied to their launch provider (claiming that they had authorisation) and launched the original satellites anyway! In the past this has never been an issue because satellites were so expensive that no-one in their right mind would try to launch one without authorisation. As a result, launch providers may not have been rigorous in actually checking the authorisations for their secondary payloads. The whole model is still rooted in a world where only a few countries could launch satellites and only a small number of very large companies within them could afford to build and launch them. Within a cosy world like that, regulatory compliance is important but it is also assumed that everyone else is complying and actually checking that is rare. Certainly this case is going to change that.

AznHisoka 8y ago

At first I thought this was SwarmApp by Foursquare, and they wanted to track the location of every human on earth.

jacquesm 8y ago

I can see a Sealand 2.0 spring up around the launching of rockets from international waters. It also looks as if the bulk of the regulatory reason here is the use of the radio spectrum and not the actual launch.

ceejayoz 8y ago
Sealand was an abject failure, wasn't it? The UK basically rolled their eyes the same way they'd ignore a kid declaring their backyard tree fort to be sovereign territory. If they'd started launching rockets, that might've been different.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  I think if HavenCo had been a success the eye rolling would have rapidly stopped and we'd have seen whether or not copyright will be enforced with guns if it comes to it.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Or just cut their network access. You can figurative be an island on the high seas but a business needs to ultimately interact with others in various ways and those interactions are vulnerable.
Shivetya 8y ago
but who would be the customer? certainly not in any country that is signed on to the treaty or has financial interest in any country the US has influence in.
bb611 8y ago
The issue isn't geography of the launch, it's company registration for regulation.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  just register it in sealand 2.0 which grants all satellites launch permissions.

ryanmccullagh 8y ago

It's not related to Swarm, by FourSquare, right?

ryanmccullagh 8y ago
Was this really so horrible?

mabbo 8y ago

It feels to me as though the mantra of "move fast and break things" wasn't meant to apply to laws. Purposely ignoring laws, regulations, or seeing vague ones that didn't expect your crazy idea, and then hoping you can work it all out later after you've made lots of money- this is becoming more and more common in tech startups. And I personally don't like it. Uber and AirBnB are the classic examples (and it's worked out wonderfully for them). In Toronto, Car2Go told customers to just park anywhere- don't worry about getting parking tickets, we'll handle it. (They didn't). Swarm was told that their satellites could not be launched, so they just did it anyways hoping no one would notice. (Someone did). RobinHood announced checking accounts without checking if there were laws around such things. (There are). Governments would be better to be ready for disruptive ideas and have flexibility in regulations to try them out. And we should all be voting and supporting candidates who want to see such changes happen. But until they do, it seems wrong to purposely break laws in order to make money.

drugme 8y ago
It feels to me as though the mantra of "move fast and break things" wasn't meant to apply to laws. Actually the related mantra of "Hey as long as it's just a fine you can reasonably pay -- or you don't think you'll get caught -- then sure, go ahead an break the law!" has been around the Valley for quite a while. In fact, we might say it's become something of a chant.
jstanley 8y ago
Unfortunately, laws are unlikely to change without a bit of violation. Alcohol prohibition in the US didn't end because everyone stayed good and sober.
- dmix 8y ago
  Indeed, Uber and AirBnB were evolutions of the marketplace. They aren’t going away (and shouldn’t go away) just because the laws were designed in a previous century for a different type of business. The solution is for gov fix the laws to reflect society. Unfortunately modern governments are designed around protecting established market cartels and political special interest groups over evolving with the times. I don’t see this as relevant to Swarm either. They aren’t an evolution AFAIK, besides maybe the rise of private rocket launches.

vasilipupkin 8y ago

negative press coverage? I can't believe people still don't get that there is almost never such a thing as negative publicity, especially for a new ventur ( with exceptions, within reason, of course )

matt4077 8y ago
> with exceptions, within reason Well, how about applying those, then? I also think you’re misunderstanding the sentiment. It’s not so much about negative coverage serving as additional punishment in this case, but about the coverage putting future would-be offenders on notice, and effectively preventing any profession of ignorance to serve as a mitigating factor.

dr_orpheus 8y ago

Fun fact, Swam now has a job open for "Regulatory Engineer". I wonder why they would need that... https://jobs.lever.co/swarm-technologies/437b187b-26f9-4da7-ae6e-b0be64ce0bbc https://jobs.lever.co/swarm-technologies/437b187b-26f9-4da7-...

elliekelly 8y ago
I feel bad for whoever ends up in this position. The FCC has required Swarm to designate someone to be responsible for regulatory compliance. That means someone with knowledge and experience with FCC regulatory compliance. Not an engineer who happens to be tasked with work an attorney should be doing. Whoever takes this role isn't going to be compensated nearly enough for the personal risk they're about to undertake and is being set up to fail. They need a lawyer, and they need to listen to the lawyer, not an engineer.
- dr_orpheus 8y ago
  Yeah, definitely not a job I want. I am an engineer who has worked on an application for FCC license for a different smallsat company. It was already a terrible experience dealing with the FCC. I can't imagine trying to do it when the FCC is already pissed off at your company.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
bduerst 8y ago
Preferred Qualifications: - Experience preparing and submitting FCC applications for satellite and/or earth station licenses. Yikes.

androidgirl 8y ago

900k is almost chump change in the world of aerospace, sats, and space tech. This isn't a deterrant, it can be framed as the cost of doing business. The fine is far too small.

deleted 8y ago

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reaperducer 8y ago

$900,000? I wonder how this was calculated. It doesn't sound like much of a deterrent. The next rouge satellite launching company can just work that into startup costs.

i_cant_speel 8y ago
From the article: > FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the size of the penalty “is probably not significant enough to deter future behavior, but the negative press coverage is likely to prevent this company and others from attempting to do this again.”
matt4077 8y ago
It sounds like a pretty hefty fine for a small startup. It’s also a fine, not a tax. Meaning this does not establish a price that you can consciously factor in when breaking the law. The next one would surly be treated much harder, considering it would be hard to claim ignorance. And fines would also rise proportional with the size of the offender, not to menation repeat offenders.
- dnadler 8y ago
  That sounds reasonable, but do you have anything to back up any of what you said? It's just as likely that $900k is the statutory limit for this infraction.
UncleEntity 8y ago
I would imagine if they were repeat offenders the FCC would just tell them to go f-off on future launches and there goes their whole business plan.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I would imagine if they were repeat offenders the FCC would just tell them to go f-off on future launches and there goes their whole business plan. But the FCC already told them to go f-off, and they launched anyway. "Swarm launched the satellites in India last January after the FCC rejected its application to deploy and operate them, citing concerns about the company’s tracking ability."

smkellat 8y ago

Was there an option to use an anti-satellite weapon to blow these things out of the sky? These rules have been pretty firm since the 1970s so pleading ignorance just looks bad.

bagels 8y ago
The complaint by fcc was these objects were too small to be tracked (which was not true in the first place). How would turning them in to many more smaller pieces of debris in orbit help?

harrisonjackson 8y ago

This article reads as sponsored content. The outcome was a $900k advertising bill with the FCC telling everyone that Swarm has got tech up and working and that they're moving forward with the approval of the FCC... "YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT WORKOUT SUPPLEMENT NEARLY LANDED THE ROCK IN JAIL"

cbolat 8y ago

Swarm Technologies Inc Advisors: Julius Genachowski Former Chairman, FCC (2009-2013) good advice Mr Genachowski..

jedc 8y ago

"Earlier this month, SpaceX launched three more satellites for Swarm on a Falcon 9 rocket after winning FCC approval." This feels like a pretty important point - Swarm got slapped for their mistakes with that launch, but they're already back on track if the FCC already granted permission (what must have been months ago) for their most recent satellites. I wonder if it was just down to confusion on Swarm's part on how the rules applied.

dr_orpheus 8y ago
I am pretty sure that Swarm knew that they were breaking the rules. They submitted an FCC license, were notified that the license was rejected, and decided to launch anyways. I think part of the reason that they were able to still get licenses approved is that they agreed to more oversight from the FCC. Also, after launching the satellites Swarm was able to show the FCC that they were able to track the satellites, which was the original reason that FCC denied the license. So it seems like the FCC had to say "we were wrong, but you still broke the law so here is a fine and then we will continue on with life."

eggy 8y ago

I go back and forth on government regulation in the domains of the FCC. On the one hand, you have the BBC, which seems to produce interesting TV when compared to all the fluff on US TV, however, it also banned airing certain things back in the day. The BBC does well here where it can be chosen, but the Brits didn't have much choice. I remember visiting my cousins in Ireland and England in 1984, and my cousin in England only had three or four channels. Some could argue that FCC regulation led to what we have today (not Netflix and other variants) on broadcast television. I found this podcast interesting on the subject of the FCC: https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/sad-history-fcc-thomas-hazlett https://www.libertarianism.org/podcasts/free-thoughts/sad-hi...

gioscarab 8y ago

I can't wait to see the first private pirate/rogue satellite launch :)