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 rele

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.