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Comment by anfilt | Hacker News Reader

How does the FCC have jurisdiction? Maybe the radio broadcast in US territory. However, it was not even an American rocket?

I am sorry, but not sure how the FCC has any jurisdiction here. However, I can see the issue with them being small and hard to and track, but still not sure how FCC is even the right entity to handle this.

However, the US is also is weird for instance taxes are based of citizenship not were you live geographically. For instance if you have lived in Japan for 10 years you still would have to pay taxed back to the US.

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> How does the FCC have jurisdiction?

Because of its regulatory authority over commercial sstellites; the operator of these satellites applied to the FCC for approval and was denied because they did not meet safety (detectability by certain instruments) requirements.

> but still not sure how FCC is even the right entity to handle this.

It's the “right entity” because of the responsibility assigned to it by Congress. Whether Congresd should have given that responsibility to some other agency is, perhaps, a valid question, but fairly distant from the immediate case.

> It's the “right entity” because of the responsibility assigned to it by Congress.

I was not aware the US Congress has jurisdiction over the entire planet.

I'll bite. They don't, but they very much do have jurisdiction over the operation of domestic corporations engaged in interstate commerce, which this clearly is.

Correct, and that is an US-internal dispute between whoever is responsible (FCC seems to think it is) and that particular company. But this HN discussion is not about that at all. Most of the comments here about jurisdiction in space. FCC has no jurisdiction on that, although they surely seem to think they do, and it's bewildering to see all the US-centric comments who also think that.

Is what Swarm did bad? Yes, if we were to take FCC at face value (why should we?). Should the FCC be allowed to reprimand this american company? Probably, assuming FCC is telling the truth. Should the FCC act like the universal arbiter of space? No, it should not, and the sociopolitical attitude displayed here is much worse and harmful than the space pollution from Swarm.

Where is anybody saying the FCC is the universal arbiter of space? As I said, the FCC is only involved because it's a US company. If it was a Russian company, it would involve the Russian government, etc.

Nowhere is the FCC acting as the "universal arbiter of space". And no reason has been given for not taking the FCC at face value on this.

And I disagree with the "sociopolitical attitude being bad". I fully believe that this "endanger other's things and don't care about it" attitude given by Swarm is the more dangerous one.

Events have clearly overtaken our regulatory frameworks. Political events are seeming to move towards nation state isolationism recently but reality is showing we need more supranational cooperation and regulations.

>The FCC is responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the chance of accidents in space.

Perhaps also important is that Swarm is an American company.

And the FCC is a group chartered with regulating interstate communications, not with being orbital traffic cops.

And the secret service was originally tasked with protecting the monetary system. Organizations can expand their duties based on criteria other than their initial charter.

The FCC is charged with regulating communications of all distances, not just those crossing state lines. One of their primary missions is ensuring fair access to the wireless spectrum and keeping someone from jamming it and preventing others from communicating legally. Satellites must communicate to be effective, and satellites form a significant portion of our communications backbone. A rogue satellite operating over spectrum it isn't licensed for prevents other from using that spectrum, and a rogue satellite colliding with another satellite could cause debris and disable a bunch of other communications platforms.

The FCC isn't being orbital traffic cops, it is doing its job. While the FCC has done a bunch of distasteful stuff regarding net neutrality recently, the folks taking actin agains Swarm are clearly in the right.

Perhaps swarm set up a foreign subsidiary to do the launch, and then got permission from a foreign regulating body.

Its possible, but the fact that they applied for a US license that was denied makes any actions taken by a foreign headquartered company look fishy. At the very least, the US based portion of the company is still responsible for following the law in the US and the foreign country would be held responsible for approving the launch of a dangerous satellite if there is ever a collision. Considering that the founder and the employees live and work in California there probably isn't a foreign headquarters and probably isn't approval from a foreign country.

The outer space treaty requires countries to take responsibility for/regulate their citizens and corporations actions in outer space. Regardless of location that such activities take place.

This is why rocket lab has a FAA launch license, despite operating out of new zealand.

Also, Senator Ted Cruz has been calling for revisiting this requirement in the outer space treaty. I’m not sure if anyone knows why yet - presumably he is getting some preasure from somewhere to modify it. I know it had some people scratching their heads as to why for a while. It’s not like the treaty is prescriptive. Maybe he wants corps or individuals to be able to have sovereignty in outer space or something.

The company that produced the payload for the rocket is in the US and was denied their application to launch this payload because it poses a risk to other satellites and spacecraft.

If all companies were outside of the US then it would come down to whether a treaty or similar agreement exists (of which I am not aware).

> a treaty or similar agreement exists (of which I am not aware).

If you're interested you can take a look at the "five United Nations treaties on outer space" which are the basis of international space law: http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/spacelaw/treaties.html

Specifically, under the terms of the Space Liability Convention, a state which launches an object into space is liable for damages caused by that object. A practical example was the crash of Kosmos 954 over northern Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosmos_954

I can't upvote you more than once, but thank you! This'll be interesting to look into.

>For instance if you have lived in Japan for 10 years you still would have to pay taxed back to the US.

Only on US earned income. There are no taxes on any FEI if you stay off of US soil for 330 days in any consecutive 12 month period. [0]

[0]https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

Oh at least there is an exclusion. Looking further at this it looks like it start in the year 2006.[0] It has limit $100,800 and some other things that can not be excluded. However, I guess my knowledge was a bit out of date. Although, it would still suck to work 6 months in japan, and then work 6 months in the US for instance.

[0]https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

>Only on US earned income.

For Japan at least, this is incorrect. If you are an American living in Japan, both countries will tax your unearned income[0], regardless of the source.

[0]Social Security and other government pensions being the main exceptions.

They're physically located in, do business in, and are incorporated in the US.

That's a different Swarm. The one making satellites is http://www.swarm-technologies.com/

The rest of what you said is correct though: the FCC has jurisdiction because the company being discussed is an American one.

Fixed!

(for reference, I incorrectly stated "Hell, even their domain name is a .us")

American company using American banking system. FCC has all the jurisdiction. They should've incorporated in a different country.

That wouldn't make any difference at all.

If they go to India or New Zealand, and cause havoc for the FCC by doing something stupid, the US can crush them just the same by working with those governments. Essentially all nations capable of putting things into space have generally shown a desire to be good neighbors with everyone else when it comes to space. Just going to a different country wouldn't spare a company from the consequences of their actions.

So you are saying the US is the world's bully and we'd better get in line?

No, they're saying that all of the space-going nations tend to cooperate, and that they generally want to keep things safe for all.

> Essentially all nations capable of putting things into space have generally shown a desire to be good neighbors with everyone else when it comes to space.

China intentionally blew up one of their old satellites in 2007, in an event that increased the amount of space debris by as much as 75%.

NATO responded a month later by adopting guidelines for such thing never to happen again.

More info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Chinese_anti-satellite_mi...

Except that still doesn't matter.

American companies break American laws all the time in their foreign branches. It's impossible not to, since countries have conflicting laws.

Imagine if all employees of international conglomerates were required to pay American minimum wage? Do you understand how ridiculous and controlling that is?

Actually, I think that'd be a pretty good thing, especially if that was higher than the local minimum wage.

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