12 ms·

Space: A Major Legal Void

59 points by lelf 7y ago

raxxorrax 7y ago
Indeed, slightly different point of view: My government justified surveillance because it was done from space and therefore the local law wasn't applicable. If that sounds like something a smart-mouthed preschooler would throw at your head, I would agree. But while the preschooler wouldn't be able not to put on a wide grin, these people were dead serious.
- reacweb 7y ago
  I think it is a bad mindset. Laws shall not be seen as hindrance, but as beneficial for all.
  - ossworkerrights 7y ago
    Depends on the law. Chinese style surveillance laws are probably a hindrance. Also, space doesn't really belong to any one country. It belongs to all of us, and will probably be dominated by whoever has most guns and is willing to use them.
    - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
      Devil's advocate: And yet, even with strict surveillance and (internet) filtering / propaganda, China's economy is booming and if they manage to continue this growth, their GDP will overtake that of Europe and the US within the forseeable future. Their internet companies already handle a multiple of what their US counterparts do, for example. But the humanitarian cost is high. The US is a bit better, maybe, but is also severely lacking on the humanitarian front (think poverty, homelessness, crime, substance abuse, suppression / lack of democracy, health care, education, debts, etc). The US could be doing so much better for their own people but because they choose to spend so much on the military and have tax laws that prevent the rich people and businesses from contributing, nothing is left for their own people. Mid- to long-term it means the country will be left behind. (disclaimer: I'm no economist nor an American, I'm sure someone else knows all the nuances)
      - raxxorrax 7y ago
        There are 1,3 billion people in China so the overtaking of the GDP would be expected if they reach a certain developmental level. If often hear the economic growth must be due to surveillance and an autocratic regime, a laughable suggestion, although often shared by my unimaginitive government (Europe). The third reich also had a booming economy. War creates massive economic opportunity. Slavery too. But somehow increased governmental control is the key for economic success? Doubtful at least. The success of China is pretty straight forward. They had very cheap workers and hungry foreign consumers. I don't see how you wouldn't get any profit out of that situation. But no, it certainly must be due to complete systemic differences instead of economical ones.
        friendlybus 7y ago
        The Chinese gov did play a big part in keeping the economic boom going. They continually propped up the housing bubble even though it was generating new construction well over demand and could have crashed multiple times. They did a bunch of currency manipulation to keep exports going. Whatever that was keeping shipping costs in and out of China so low worked very well. I don't think you can rule out the government as a factor, there's plenty of cheap workers in the world that want money.
        raxxorrax 7y ago
        True, but I doubt that creating bubbles will create long time economic growth. And that there are indeed are cheaper workers elsewhere has already become a problem for China. Still, you cannot say they didn't grab the opportunities and have indeed build up significant industrial infrastructure. Maybe a strong central government is currently required to keep the peace for so many different people, but the tendency to see Chinas governmental system as some form of panacea for all problems is a bit off in my opinion. Given more time to develop, I believe the authority will decrease and that this process actually gives more room for even more opportunities.
        eru 7y ago
        A reasonable monetary policy will avoid recessions, yes. Currency manipulation is not really a useful concept.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Assuming the law is good and the government will do what is right is a road that too often leads to suffering maybe accompanied with a pretty significant body count. You can probably think of several countries in the world that are having issues with state violence being too often to control people in petty matters. Getting laws right and changing them are both very hard. Throwing around state violence as a means to get people to do/not do something should be a last resort.
- paranoidrobot 7y ago
  A Country's laws have to stop applying at some point - they can't apply to everything 'above' that country at that time. To do so would lead to absurdities like settlements on the moon/mars shifting legal zones many times per day as that country rotates into view. I'd think that a reasonable limit would be the point above a planet where you can maintain a stable orbit for some length of time.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    The targets of the surveillance and the people running the surveillance are both in country. It's ridiculous to say it's fine just because the cameras are outside the border. If Elon Musk launched a laser satellite and started vaporizing Tesla short-sellers, would we say he's not guilty of murder?
- vkreso 7y ago
  According to the UN convention on the law of the sea article 92.[0] Ships in international waters are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state under whose flag they are sailing. It is basically the same situation in regards with the legal subjectivity of an object since usually in international waters local laws do not apply. There is also the case of the ISS and the intergovermental agreement behind it where in article 5. it is clearly stated that: "each partner shall retain jurisdiction and control over the elements it registers and over personnel in or on the Space Station who are its nationals" And finally the most iportant is the outer space treaty, signed by most of the states in the world, article 8.: "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"[2] What is your government if I may ask? [0] https://maxius.nl/verdrag-van-de-verenigde-naties-inzake-het-recht-van-de-zee-montego-bay-10-12-1982/artikel92 https://maxius.nl/verdrag-van-de-verenigde-naties-inzake-het... [1] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/International_Space_Station/International_Space_Station_legal_framework https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    The government of Germany. The BND had surveillance operations that ran counter to the constitution (again). One of their excuse was the mentioned position. It became known as their space theory (freely translated from "Weltraumtheorie") in that context. A plain example why you need to grab these institutions by the balls with tight restrictions or they run amok. They had the idea for their "space theory" from the NSA, allegedly, but I never heard of anything like this. Perhaps their American colleagues thought it to be too embarrassing to bring forward. I would have difficulties to find examples from recent years when the constitutions was undermined that effectively. How should I convince anyone that it isn't a complete joke?
- friendlybus 7y ago
  Dead serious indeed. They shuffled data between countries to get around the domestic espionage act in the US. They aren't waiting for our permission to reach the surveillance nirvana somebody somewhere is dreaming of.
api 7y ago
Let's see you try to enforce your laws Terran!
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Hah. In reality though, enforcement on individuals will, for the foreseeable future, be done through waiting for them to come back down. Enforcement on countries and companies will continue to be done with threat of nuclear strike.
TomMarius 7y ago
How do you actually enforce law in space?
- zipwitch 7y ago
  Lensmen.
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  I would think they would be enforced similarly to maritime law.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    I think that can't work in space after someone builds a habitat.
- 9c8675a8 7y ago
  You can't -- and it'll never happen once we get far enough out. This is a good thing.
kartikkumar 7y ago
There's a massive, evolving body of work on space law and a lot more than meets the eye. This article doesn't really canvas the extent to which the community to working towards tackling the long-term issue of space sustainability. Every IAC, there's a space moot court run by the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) [0]. This is an excellent opportunity for space law young professionals to engage in pressing issues like Space Traffic Management (STM). The issue with space debris is much like the climate change challenge: it's serious and nuanced. A few years ago, I co-authored a paper on the applicability of the IADC's 25-year guideline ,mentioned in the article, for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites [1] (happy to send anyone a copy of the full manuscript if interested). I've also done some work on the technical side of Active Debris Removal (ADR), and published a paper on figuring out how to target solutions to the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) for multi-target missions using low-thrust transfer trajectories [2] (likewise, happy to share the full paper if interested). I'm sharing this is to highlight that the problem of space debris is not trivial. I find that it's often trivialized in articles intended for a general audience, when the devil really is in the details. For instance, the article misses the important topic of addressing object ownership. There are no salvage laws in place for space assets. What's more, the fundamental definition of what is considered "junk" is in the eye of the beholder. Russian rocket bodies are often cited, however what's missed is the fact that Russia continues indefinitely to retain full ownership of these objects: hence, you can't touch them even if you could safely and economically remove them, without Russia giving explicit consent. This speaks to how intractable space law actually is: it's a massively complex geo-political maze. The article also fails to mention that despite space being big, we witnessed the effects of a collision back in 2009 [3]. I had the pleasure of grabbing a drink with TS Kelso, the genius behind CelesTrak, last week during the conference. Fact is that we're hampered on all side (technical, economic, legal, political) to deal with the space debris problem. There's an idea being floated to develop a Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), recently announced at the World Economic Forum [4]. I'm currently working on an idea with one of the participants in the consortium (Prof. Moriba Jah at UT Austin). He's got this quote that he loves to use to describe the right approach to Space Situational Awareness (SSA): "to know it, you must measure it; to understand it, you must predict it!" To that end, we're looking at connecting our global space supply chain database [5] to the knowledge of the space debris population, to better assess risk and enable lawmakers to understand what needs to be regulated (disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders at satsearch). In short, this article only skims over a highly complex topic with many dimensions. [0] https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-colloquium-on-the-law-of-outer-space/ https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-colloq... [1] https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/27687/ https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/2... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117716307190?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311771... [3] https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368.pdf https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368... [4] https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-amount-debris.html https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-amou... [5] https://satsearch.co https://satsearch.co

59 points by lelf 7y ago

Indeed, slightly different point of view: My government justified surveillance because it was done from space and therefore the local law wasn't applicable. If that sounds like something a smart-mouthed preschooler would throw at your head, I would agree. But while the preschooler wouldn't be able not to put on a wide grin, these people were dead serious.

reacweb 7y ago
I think it is a bad mindset. Laws shall not be seen as hindrance, but as beneficial for all.
- ossworkerrights 7y ago
  Depends on the law. Chinese style surveillance laws are probably a hindrance. Also, space doesn't really belong to any one country. It belongs to all of us, and will probably be dominated by whoever has most guns and is willing to use them.
  - Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Devil's advocate: And yet, even with strict surveillance and (internet) filtering / propaganda, China's economy is booming and if they manage to continue this growth, their GDP will overtake that of Europe and the US within the forseeable future. Their internet companies already handle a multiple of what their US counterparts do, for example. But the humanitarian cost is high. The US is a bit better, maybe, but is also severely lacking on the humanitarian front (think poverty, homelessness, crime, substance abuse, suppression / lack of democracy, health care, education, debts, etc). The US could be doing so much better for their own people but because they choose to spend so much on the military and have tax laws that prevent the rich people and businesses from contributing, nothing is left for their own people. Mid- to long-term it means the country will be left behind. (disclaimer: I'm no economist nor an American, I'm sure someone else knows all the nuances)
    - raxxorrax 7y ago
      There are 1,3 billion people in China so the overtaking of the GDP would be expected if they reach a certain developmental level. If often hear the economic growth must be due to surveillance and an autocratic regime, a laughable suggestion, although often shared by my unimaginitive government (Europe). The third reich also had a booming economy. War creates massive economic opportunity. Slavery too. But somehow increased governmental control is the key for economic success? Doubtful at least. The success of China is pretty straight forward. They had very cheap workers and hungry foreign consumers. I don't see how you wouldn't get any profit out of that situation. But no, it certainly must be due to complete systemic differences instead of economical ones.
      - friendlybus 7y ago
        The Chinese gov did play a big part in keeping the economic boom going. They continually propped up the housing bubble even though it was generating new construction well over demand and could have crashed multiple times. They did a bunch of currency manipulation to keep exports going. Whatever that was keeping shipping costs in and out of China so low worked very well. I don't think you can rule out the government as a factor, there's plenty of cheap workers in the world that want money.
        raxxorrax 7y ago
        True, but I doubt that creating bubbles will create long time economic growth. And that there are indeed are cheaper workers elsewhere has already become a problem for China. Still, you cannot say they didn't grab the opportunities and have indeed build up significant industrial infrastructure. Maybe a strong central government is currently required to keep the peace for so many different people, but the tendency to see Chinas governmental system as some form of panacea for all problems is a bit off in my opinion. Given more time to develop, I believe the authority will decrease and that this process actually gives more room for even more opportunities.
        eru 7y ago
        A reasonable monetary policy will avoid recessions, yes. Currency manipulation is not really a useful concept.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  Assuming the law is good and the government will do what is right is a road that too often leads to suffering maybe accompanied with a pretty significant body count. You can probably think of several countries in the world that are having issues with state violence being too often to control people in petty matters. Getting laws right and changing them are both very hard. Throwing around state violence as a means to get people to do/not do something should be a last resort.
paranoidrobot 7y ago
A Country's laws have to stop applying at some point - they can't apply to everything 'above' that country at that time. To do so would lead to absurdities like settlements on the moon/mars shifting legal zones many times per day as that country rotates into view. I'd think that a reasonable limit would be the point above a planet where you can maintain a stable orbit for some length of time.
- DennisP 7y ago
  The targets of the surveillance and the people running the surveillance are both in country. It's ridiculous to say it's fine just because the cameras are outside the border. If Elon Musk launched a laser satellite and started vaporizing Tesla short-sellers, would we say he's not guilty of murder?
vkreso 7y ago
According to the UN convention on the law of the sea article 92.[0] Ships in international waters are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state under whose flag they are sailing. It is basically the same situation in regards with the legal subjectivity of an object since usually in international waters local laws do not apply. There is also the case of the ISS and the intergovermental agreement behind it where in article 5. it is clearly stated that: "each partner shall retain jurisdiction and control over the elements it registers and over personnel in or on the Space Station who are its nationals" And finally the most iportant is the outer space treaty, signed by most of the states in the world, article 8.: "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"[2] What is your government if I may ask? [0] https://maxius.nl/verdrag-van-de-verenigde-naties-inzake-het-recht-van-de-zee-montego-bay-10-12-1982/artikel92 https://maxius.nl/verdrag-van-de-verenigde-naties-inzake-het... [1] https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/International_Space_Station/International_Space_Station_legal_framework https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Ex... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_Space_Treaty
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  The government of Germany. The BND had surveillance operations that ran counter to the constitution (again). One of their excuse was the mentioned position. It became known as their space theory (freely translated from "Weltraumtheorie") in that context. A plain example why you need to grab these institutions by the balls with tight restrictions or they run amok. They had the idea for their "space theory" from the NSA, allegedly, but I never heard of anything like this. Perhaps their American colleagues thought it to be too embarrassing to bring forward. I would have difficulties to find examples from recent years when the constitutions was undermined that effectively. How should I convince anyone that it isn't a complete joke?
friendlybus 7y ago
Dead serious indeed. They shuffled data between countries to get around the domestic espionage act in the US. They aren't waiting for our permission to reach the surveillance nirvana somebody somewhere is dreaming of.

api 7y ago

Let's see you try to enforce your laws Terran!

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Hah. In reality though, enforcement on individuals will, for the foreseeable future, be done through waiting for them to come back down. Enforcement on countries and companies will continue to be done with threat of nuclear strike.

TomMarius 7y ago

How do you actually enforce law in space?

zipwitch 7y ago
Lensmen.
stronglikedan 7y ago
I would think they would be enforced similarly to maritime law.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  I think that can't work in space after someone builds a habitat.
9c8675a8 7y ago
You can't -- and it'll never happen once we get far enough out. This is a good thing.

kartikkumar 7y ago

There's a massive, evolving body of work on space law and a lot more than meets the eye. This article doesn't really canvas the extent to which the community to working towards tackling the long-term issue of space sustainability. Every IAC, there's a space moot court run by the International Institute of Space Law (IISL) [0]. This is an excellent opportunity for space law young professionals to engage in pressing issues like Space Traffic Management (STM). The issue with space debris is much like the climate change challenge: it's serious and nuanced. A few years ago, I co-authored a paper on the applicability of the IADC's 25-year guideline ,mentioned in the article, for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites [1] (happy to send anyone a copy of the full manuscript if interested). I've also done some work on the technical side of Active Debris Removal (ADR), and published a paper on figuring out how to target solutions to the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) for multi-target missions using low-thrust transfer trajectories [2] (likewise, happy to share the full paper if interested). I'm sharing this is to highlight that the problem of space debris is not trivial. I find that it's often trivialized in articles intended for a general audience, when the devil really is in the details. For instance, the article misses the important topic of addressing object ownership. There are no salvage laws in place for space assets. What's more, the fundamental definition of what is considered "junk" is in the eye of the beholder. Russian rocket bodies are often cited, however what's missed is the fact that Russia continues indefinitely to retain full ownership of these objects: hence, you can't touch them even if you could safely and economically remove them, without Russia giving explicit consent. This speaks to how intractable space law actually is: it's a massively complex geo-political maze. The article also fails to mention that despite space being big, we witnessed the effects of a collision back in 2009 [3]. I had the pleasure of grabbing a drink with TS Kelso, the genius behind CelesTrak, last week during the conference. Fact is that we're hampered on all side (technical, economic, legal, political) to deal with the space debris problem. There's an idea being floated to develop a Space Sustainability Rating (SSR), recently announced at the World Economic Forum [4]. I'm currently working on an idea with one of the participants in the consortium (Prof. Moriba Jah at UT Austin). He's got this quote that he loves to use to describe the right approach to Space Situational Awareness (SSA): "to know it, you must measure it; to understand it, you must predict it!" To that end, we're looking at connecting our global space supply chain database [5] to the knowledge of the space debris population, to better assess risk and enable lawmakers to understand what needs to be regulated (disclaimer: I'm one of the co-founders at satsearch). In short, this article only skims over a highly complex topic with many dimensions. [0] https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-colloquium-on-the-law-of-outer-space/ https://iislweb.org/iac-2019-technical-programme-iisl-colloq... [1] https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/27687/ https://iafastro.directory/iac/archive/browse/IAC-15/A6/IP/2... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0273117716307190?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S027311771... [3] https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368.pdf https://www.celestrak.com/publications/AAS/09-368/AAS-09-368... [4] https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-amount-debris.html https://phys.org/news/2019-05-space-sustainability-aims-amou... [5] https://satsearch.co https://satsearch.co