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NASA said to be investigating first allegation of a crime in space
- donatj 7y agoThey're capitalizing NASA wrong throughout. It's irritating.
- j05huaNathaniel 7y agoLaw and Order: NASA
- sorenn111 7y agoSpace law is the same as that of international waters right? Will that hold up for long or does it need revision. interesting!
- akiselev 7y agoFTA: So if a Canadian national were to commit a crime in space, they would be subject to Canadian law, and a Russian citizen to Russian law. Space law also sets out provisions for extradition back on Earth, should a nation decide it wishes to prosecute a citizen of another nation for misconduct in space.
- TomMarius 7y agoSeems even childish. Do the Earth nations really expect to have that kind of leverage against potentially hundreds or thousands of spaceships of some mining corporation?
- mckee1 7y agoYes, just as earth nations currently have leverage against hundreds or thousands of ships of freight corporations.
- reaperducer 7y agoAnd crimes committed on planes going between nations.
- Haga 7y agoThose freightship can't be landed on a major city. Imagine if the iss declared indipendence.. Tea from the sky..
- TomMarius 7y agoI have a feeling they got that leverage because these vessels are still on Earth, and the corporations are still bound by earthly limits. Space is a whole different game.
- gus_massa 7y agoI is weird. I expected something like the laws for international waters, i.e. the flag of the ship determines the jurisdiction. In case someone in the (former) Space Shuttle kills another person on purpose, I expect USA to prosecute him/her in spite the nationality of the murderer. Perhaps there are special rules in the ISS because each module is from a different country??? (What happens if someone shots from the Russian module, the bullet goes to the European module and it kills someone in the American module?)
- yellowapple 7y ago> What happens if someone shots from the Russian module, the bullet goes to the European module and it kills someone in the American module? In this case, at least per the article, it'd just be prosecuted under the suspect's nation's laws. If space law were modeled off international waters law, though, then I'd imagine any case law pertaining to crimes involving multiple ships of different nationalities (e.g. an American ship, a European ship, and a Russian ship are bridged together to exchange supplies, and someone shoots from the Russian ship, bounces the bullet off the European ship, and the bullet hits and kills someone on the American ship) would apply here.
- cat199 7y agoI would not be surprised at all if ISS is governed by a specific treaty involving the member nations, which may or may not supercede or be different than whatever would be 'defacto law' in some other hypothetical situation
- twic 7y agoThis has indeed been covered [1]: > Let us suppose that an astronaut located in the module of State B shoots a weapon and injures another astronaut located in the module of State C: On which territory did the offense actually take place? In order to eliminate all these practical problems, the territoriality principle was again excluded, and instead the active nationality principle was adopted as the basic rule for criminal matters on the ISS. The "active nationality principle", which is part of the space station agreement, the treaty governing the station, states that jurisdiction belongs to the state of which the perpetrator is a citizen. There is also a secondary "passive nationality principle" which applies if the perpetrator's state doesn't prosecute them, and allows the state of the victim, or which owns any property which was damaged, to take jurisidiction. [1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270646335_Criminal_Jurisdiction_in_International_Space_Law_Future_Challenges_in_View_of_the_ISS_IGA https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270646335_Criminal_...
- Cyberdog 7y agoIt has long been lamentable that there is nowhere left in Earth you can go to be free of government control. So it’s quite sad to learn that there are already rules in place for deciding what group of self-important fascists get to persecute you should you break one of their rules even hundreds of miles above a point on the opposite side of the glass as their territory.
- Proven 7y agoIn other words, the Canadians are their State's slaves (you get to keep a bit more of your income but that's just semantics). The same goes for the Americans who - and that applies in this case - must report income and pay taxes on space income earned in any galaxy or universe. Of course this slavery ends like it did for runaway slaves - one they don't return to their plantation, it's game over for slaveowner. This is why only one-way space travel appeals to me.
- garmaine 7y agoNo, the modules are the territory of the country that owns them.
- garmaine 7y agoJeeze HN, why the downvotes? I give you Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967: > A State Party to the Treaty on whose registry an object launched into outer space is carried shall retain jurisdiction and control over such object, and over any personnel thereof, while in outer space or on a celestial body. http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/introouterspacetreaty.html http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties/intr... The American module group, where this alleged crime probably took place (as US astronauts use the laptops in their own area), is governed under the USA's laws.
- ryacko 7y agoInteresting enough, each ISS contributor retains ownership. http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/International_Space_Station/International_Space_Station_legal_framework http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_and_Robotic_Explorat... But the nexus of the crime involves a US person, so the US has the authority to investigate independent of what or where or who allegedly was involved.
- Haga 7y agoMutineers, like the astrolab crew, will be spacewalked and keelhauled
- CraftThatBlock 7y agoWe have cruise ships with thousands of people sailing right now, and the system seems to be working fine.
- DanBC 7y agoYou might want to look at the reports of women being raped who are unable to get justice because it happened at sea.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoIsn't that also true for women landside in the nations those ships are flagged under?
- AlexDragusin 7y agoinserts obligatory lame space crime joke here
- jfoster 7y agoHow is it known that she accessed the bank account if she didn't do anything beyond checking the balance? Similarly, why is it being investigated if that's all she did? If you take out the "from space" element of this, it's pretty uninteresting and probably happens all the time without being investigated.
- ghaff 7y agoThe information is in the original New York Times story. "Ms. Worden [the 'estranged spouse'] put her intelligence background to work, asking her bank about the locations of computers that had recently accessed her bank account using her login credentials. The bank got back to her with an answer: One was a computer network registered to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration."
- dekhn 7y agoThat's incomplete, though- NASA has terrestrial computers.
- maxerickson 7y agoIt is overwhelmingly likely that she was the only person with access to both a NASA computer and the account credentials.
- ghaff 7y agoI would assume the bank may have provided her with more specific information than it was some NASA network, including the date. Furthermore, the person making the complaint pretty much knew who it was (and that person subsequently admitted it). This isn't about tracking down a random person at NASA.
- mikeash 7y agoIf Comcast can tell you which customer had a given IP address at a given time, I’m sure NASA can figure out that a given IP address was the one used for ISS traffic.
- auslander 7y ago> .. extradition back on Earth She could seek asylum in Russian part of ISS.
- smudgymcscmudge 7y agoIt’s too late for that since she is back on terra firma. The article isn’t clear about whether the accusation was made while she was still in orbit. With apologies to Lt McClain, I would be interested to see this case go far enough for her to pursue a jurisdictional defense. I doubt it is serious enough for that though, but it would be good to get some precedent set before there is a serious crime out there.
- dontbenebby 7y agoIs "you can do all the crime you want in space" the precedent we want as a species?
- auslander 7y agoYes. Have you seen The Expanse documentary?
- maxerickson 7y agoIn the long run, power will anyway matter more than precedent.
- mlyle 7y agoThere's no reasonable jurisdictional defense. If I'm a US citizen, and I visit RandomCountry A (or international waters, or Alpha Centauri) and then access a bank account belonging to a resident in US state X, and return to US state Y... the possible jurisdictions are pretty clear (either state X or Federal jurisdiction.. and maybe state Y depending upon facts). Statute of limitations probably lapses if it's Alpha Centauri, though.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dvdhnt 7y agoMy favorite line from the article: > As space tourism becomes a reality, so might the need to prosecute space crime
- labster 7y agoForget the Space Force -- what we really need is the Galaxy Police!
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoOr, "Team America: Galactic Police"
- awinder 7y agoYes! In the same vein space law, which sounds like a Charlie Day specialty: > Space law also sets out provisions for extradition
- Symmetry 7y agoI thought this was going to be about the allegations ROSCOSMOS made that the hole in the Soyuz capsule were due to sabotage rather than a manufacturing error.
- auslander 7y agoShe was allegedly checking if payment for the drilling arrived from Roscosmos. It was smart to use spouse bank account.
- didibus 7y agoIf I am given credentials to a bank account willingly by someone, but am not officially a person on the account, am I not allowed legally to use the account? I ask that, since it appears there was no hacking involved here, so I assume this is an account she had access to from when they were together.
- maxerickson 7y agoIn the legal sense, authorization to access the account is not mediated by knowledge of the necessary credentials, it is mediated by permission from the account owner.
- wtdata 7y agoIf you are given them while married and then continue to use them after a divorce, no I don't think so. Imagine it was the keys to her personal apartment she had in her name during marriage. It would not be ok for her husband to enter there after they were divorced.
- pbhjpbhj 7y agoIsn't giving credentials for a bank account to someone else against all banks terms?
- DoreenMichele 7y agoI don't know what the correct answer is, but I've known people who gave their ATM card to a relative so the relative could get cash. I think this used to be more common but is potentially risking legal trouble these days. Of course, I'm old enough to remember when cereal box offers would say "Tape four quarters to a piece of cardboard and mail that in with your request as payment for this offer."
- kyledrake 7y agoTo be honest, this really doesn't feel like it needs to be a news story of this magnitude. It feels more like some revenge tactic of said "estranged spouse", but perhaps a better strategy here than to blow up a huge investigation over almost nothing is just to change the damn password.
- reaperducer 7y agoExactly what magnitude is this story? It's not on the front page of the Times, the organization that did the actual reporting work. Even the HN link is to a BBC rewrite of the Times story. Doesn't seem blown up at all. It's on HN because it's a curiosity.
- dmd 7y agoIt is the top headline on Fox right now, which says a lot.
- JaimeThompson 7y agoThere is a rather good chance that the reason it is the lead story on Foxnews right now is so it can increase user engagement in their chat sections. Lots of people who think non-hetersexuals don't deserve equal rights all over the chat. More anger == more ad revenue.
- 75dvtwin 7y ago@JaimeThompson, is there anything in your 'good chance' assessment that has material evidence? I went to the article https://www.foxnews.com/us/nasa-astronaut-identity-theft-bank-account-divorce-wife https://www.foxnews.com/us/nasa-astronaut-identity-theft-ban... But it seems that the comment section is not even open for this story. Where are you getting your evidence from?
- 75dvtwin 7y agoAh, never mind. I see that the comment section is visible to people in US ip addresses only. is that other's experience too?
- chiefalchemist 7y agoIn space no one can hear you...plea? That aside, what laws govern space station citizens?
- tambre 7y ago> space station citizens What do you mean? People are governed by the laws of their respective countries per signed treaties, as explained in the article.
- reaperducer 7y agoFrom the real article: "The five space agencies involved in the space station — from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada — have long-established procedures to handle any jurisdictional questions that arise when astronauts of various nations are orbiting Earth together." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/nasa-astronaut-anne-mcclain.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/us/nasa-astronaut-anne-mc...
- wipseabusbus 7y agoDue to me meeting Anne from her flying Kiowa helicopters with my dad, I may soon be able to say that I personally know a space criminal.
- yellowapple 7y agoWhat a time to be alive.
- Tempest1981 7y agoSo once the Space Force "launches" next week, would this be under their jurisdiction? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Force
- coretx 7y agoThis "Space Force" is a violation of the UN treaty on outerspace. Better known as the treaty banning the militarization of space. We should ask the french if we can borrow a guilotine and chop Trump his head off for the sake of humanity and future space activities at large.
- dmix 7y agoA whole lot of what the intelligence agencies do and even military (see: Delta Force) would be illegal in any other context. Yet they do them without much international controversy... that's not a particularly new observation. It's always going to be how the power is used in space, not merely that it's formalized bureaucratically as a terrestrial/space defensive system with offensive R&D. Most of it was already being done and researched anyways. If anything it could slow down the development of capabilities by diverting tons of limited resources to bureaucratic and administrative stuff to justify the day-to-day jobs of a bunch of high paid people in the new agency's upper and middle management... especially for an agency without much demand for their work. Of course it could also accelerate us to some future conflict, ie. by the agency trying to justify it's own existence by needless demonstrations of power better served by other agencies or diplomacy, or a conflict generated largely in response to the Space Force's own existence whose power scares the other guys to move quickly before they lose out ala the Cold War and Germany's fear of Russia growing up which helped spark WW2.
- macawfish 7y agoI was just watching this Star Trek The Next Generation episode last night where they were investigating Captain Picard. So in my imagination this is just like that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 7y agoReminds me of: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06cnd-astronaut.html https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/us/06cnd-astronaut.html Is there something in being an astronaut that triggers such behavior?
- cryptozeus 7y agoImagine being thousands of miles away for earth floating in the space at 10000 m/h speed , witnessing endless darkness of space, witnessing biggest mystery of life...and still being worried about financial situation back on earth. Human mind is funny.
- xamuel 7y agoStanley Kubrick already poked fun at this in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). Midway to Jupiter, astronaut Frank Poole reclines and utters robotic-sounding commands to the much-more-human-sounding onboard flight computer HAL while HAL displays a video of Frank's parents blowing out candles on a birthday cake, singing Happy Birthday to Frank, and telling Frank they're working on fixing problems with his payroll. A few hours later, Frank's lifeless corpse would find itself drifting through space.
- jjw1414 7y agoBefore I clicked on the story, my first thought went back to the Apollo 15 "Postal Covers Incident". Each of the three crew members received $7K from a stamp dealer to bring stamp collector memorabilia to the lunar surface and then return them to be sold by the dealer. No criminal charges were filed, but I wonder if the incident might be more properly considered the "first allegation of a crime in space". From the the Wikipedia article: "There was a Justice Department investigation into the covers. Its Criminal Division decided in 1974 that no prosecution was warranted, but the Civil Division the following year assumed the covers would be retained by the government. Kraft wrote, "it was questionable that any law had been broken and [the Justice Department] realized that dragging astronauts into court would not be a popular pastime." I was surprised that it was not mentioned in the BBC story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15_postal_covers_incident#Distribution_and_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15_postal_covers_incide...
- chc4 7y agoThere's also the "Skylab Controversy" - when a group of astronauts aboard the Skylab went on strike and turned off their radios to protest too long of working hours. I assume that since most astronauts are Air Force personal, they committed insubordination, although were never tried for anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab_controversy
- jjw1414 7y agoInteresting take and I agree. I always thought of it as a labor-relations issue rather than a crime. However, the article states, "a single day on Skylab was worth about $22.4 million in 2017 dollars, and thus any work stoppage was considered inappropriate due to the expense". Makes the Apollo 15 scandal seem like peanuts.
- ctchocula 7y agoIt's interesting to consider how the balance of power tilts between strikers and management in a situation like that. On one hand, the astronauts cost NASA much more money and opportunity cost from lost experiment time than perhaps an ordinary strike. On the other hand, the astronauts only have limited supplies and the strike will eventually break itself.
- herpderperator 7y agoWhile not related to the issue at hand, I thought this line was particularly funny: > Ms McClain has since returned to Earth. Sounds like something out of a novel!
- HocusLocus 7y agoSo what?? Why is this news? Everyone's same sex marriage tabloid tongues lolling out?
- DanielleMolloy 7y agoThis is pure click bait.
- pseingatl 7y agoLaw in space: marslegalcode.org
- killjoywashere 7y agoI suspect NASA will turn this over to some other investigative body and serve in a consultative role. I don't think NASA wants to a police role.