Before 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.
There'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.
Note that one of the astronauts has claimed that the incident was completely accidental and presumably a side effect of drastic sleep deprivation. (At that point all three of the crew were getting less than four hours of sleep a day, on top of the physiological effects of being first-time astronauts.)
> in David Hitt’s 2008 book Homesteading Space, Gibson says that the three men simply failed to synchronize their radio response shifts, and that as a result, “one day we made a mistake and for a whole orbit we all had our radios off!” The press, he says, misconstrued this as a purposeful action. “There was no ‘strike in space’ by any stretch of the imagination,” Gibson says in the book. “What could we threaten to do, go live on the moon?” He says the same in his oral history, calling it a “myth.”
Interesting 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.
It'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.
On the other hand, NASA has been known to put astronauts on a "never flies into space again" list for even the smallest indiscretion or misstep. Engaging in something the equivalent of a very brief labor stoppage can be a literal career ender. Not that any of the astronauts on Skylab couldn't walk out the door of NASA and into a new job in the aerospace industry at probably 175%+ of their former government salary.
> Not that any of the astronauts on Skylab couldn't walk out the door of NASA and into a new job in the aerospace industry at probably 175%+ of their former government salary.
Curious, what are the job opportunities of ex-astronauts? I assume they're not the kind of openings to be found on linkedin.
I don’t know about modern astronauts, but bear in mind that at the point when the Skylab missions happened there were only about 50 astronauts total in the US. Only about half of those had actually flown in space. I have a feeling that being one of the ~25 people in the country with space flight experience was enough to open doors at basically every aerospace company, most large defense contractors, etc.
The astronauts finished all the experiments ahead of schedule, even with the "strike". It seems like taking a break (accidental or not) increased their productivity afterwards
Interesting list. I wouldn't be too fond of my Gemini crew mate who brought the corned beef sandwich.
What was special about the Apollo 15 postal covers, and relevant to the OP, was that the crew accepted monetary compensation to transport them without informing NASA officials. This was where the legality debate came into play.
As for "postal covers" [1], I had to look it up, too. I always thought that they brought collectable stamps.
I don't even understand that. Why was it even such a problem? So they took some stamps to the moon so they could be sold as "stamps that have been on the moon". I don't understand why that should even be such a controversy. I can understand with regards to things like "moon rocks" or "lunar dust", etc, but something that was brought to the moon in the first place? What's the big deal?
The "big deal", at least according to NASA and congress, was that the crew accepted funds ($7,000 each) to transport the items to the surface of the moon without informing NASA officials.
I don't have a firm opinion on the matter. I just remember feeling a bit sad when I first read the story as a high-school kid, thinking that the Apollo astronauts would need to supplement their NASA salary with the 1971 equivalent of eBay. That may not have been the case, though.
Also cosmonauts smuggled Armenian cognac during Salyut 7. This was just before the dry laws of Soviet Union, when they started cracking down on drinking on the job.
To 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.
Seems very... vindictive and an overreaction by the spouses part to be contacting the agencies:
> She filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and her family lodged one with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, accusing Ms. McClain of identity theft and improper access to Ms. Worden’s private financial records.
The fact she was an astronaut put her in an unique vulnerable position in the divorce process, where there are thousands of additional administrative rules she must observe. Normally this would just be a personal issue between two adults or merely a police investigation.
She was using government property at her workplace to do these things. If I was using my work computer and network to do improper things online, I’d expect my employer to be contacted about it.
The difference here is that she was basically stuck in the office for months. But that doesn’t make it OK.
Sure but can't the police handle the identity theft accusations? Which will of course end up involving her work so they'd find out either way and will likely respond in kind.
Why bring the FTC and NASA Inspector General's Office... other than to inflict the maximum amount of punishment?
It's now the lead story on the Drudge Report. So it'll be chattered about for a while, whether we like it or not.
The oddities of space law are perfectly suited to Saturday morning banter. This case turns out to be extraordinarily mundane, the more you read about it. (Astronaut McClain says she was just checking to make sure that child-expense bills were being paid on time, and didn't do anything more. She's cooperating with the "investigation.")
But that doesn't stop swarms of casually curious people from giving the headline a look.
Exactly 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.
There 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.
I never saw mention of her sexually until you decided an injustice happened. I think you are doing society a favor by standing up for her but what's happening is you are sexualizing her story and character.
Not to mention prejudging the actions of a group of people over a future chat.
I actually read 100+ messages under the story before posting what I did. I doubt it would have been acceptable for me to post those comments here.
Her sexuality is mentioned in the first paragraph "after her estranged wife alleged she stole her identity and accessed her bank account without permission during a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station."
How 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.
The 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."
Tangential question I don't think anyone here can answer: what did the Times mean by 'put her intelligence background to work'?
Does that mean her training suggested a possible thing she should check? Or does it mean she somehow used her position or contacts within the intelligence community to get information which would not otherwise be provided?
I've never asked my bank for this type of information; I've no idea whether or not a bank would provide it (although it seems a reasonable request)... But if she used her official position to get information she would not otherwise be provided, that's a pretty clear ethics violation.
I'm not throwing stones here;I just wish the Times quote was clearer.
I 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.
If 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.
If it happened during the time that Anne McClain was on the ISS, and she was the only person within NASA with credentials to this account, it seems like a plausible conclusion that she accessed the it from space.
it's plausible but it's not true/factual (imagine a bank that didn't expire credentials, somebody broke into her computer at work and logged in there, etc, etc). However, she did apparently admit she did this. I was just hoping the article had a line line, "and NASA verified the IP was coming from space" or something like that. Otherwise, it's circumstantial.
A complaint was filed. We don't know why the NASA employee still had access to the (formerly joint?) account. [ADDED: One would have thought the person whose account was accessed would have been savvy enough to have changed their password unless there's some important detail that's missing.]
Space law is obviously the somewhat interesting story angle. Other than that it's certainly a complete non-story.
Sure, but for this to be an easy case to prosecute, it helps if there's documentation of that revocation (as a personal example: I've known plenty of family members and acquaintances who maintained accounts with ex-spouses, especially for things like childcare and other responsibilities that don't exactly go away just because a relationship went sour).
Also, if one does want to make sure a previously-authorized individual can no longer access something, the responsible thing is to change the locks ASAP, thus revoking that implicit authorization.
This is true, courts always measure motive and balance the actions with how divergent it was from how a reasonable person would act.
There's plenty of reasonable reasons for her to have access. Especially if she had access to the account previously in a shared role and only read the information instead of modified it somehow. But that of course depends on whether the individual made it clear it was now off limits because (for example) it is now a strictly personal account again or the divorce was finalized and there was zero financial connection which exists between them.
Plus things like how reasonable it would be to not say anything about it but expecting them to know better. Which is why the exact details of the arrangement needs to be clear.
Sure, IANAL and don't know the legality of handing out my password to people because I've never had the need to do so. But I take it that you agree the "unlocked window" analogy is not a good one.
No, I don't agree. I might give my neighbour a key for emergencies, for example. That does not imply that they have permission to enter whenver they want for whatever reason they want.
Exactly. If McClain has the credentials, then it means either
1) she somehow got them illicitly (e.g. stealing them from Worden)
or
2) she previously had legitimate and authorized access to the account (e.g. while she and her spouse were not yet estranged / filing for divorce)
If #2, then I reckon this becomes a much harder case to prosecute, given that McClain was implicitly authorized to access the account (else, Worden would have changed the password or otherwise revoked that access). Unless, of course, there's documentation of Worden having told McClain not to access it (and yet still didn't change the password...).
Imagine 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.
Stanley 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.
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.
I 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?)
> 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.
> 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.
I 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
Seems 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?
I 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.
Jeeze 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.
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.
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.
I 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.
If 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.
In 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.
If 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.
Change gender of the Accused. A woman and man go through a divorce, the man continue to keep tab of his ex-wife through their previous shared bank account. Does that sound like a crime, even if there was no hacking involved?
Are you asking me what I think of it on an ethical level? I was more curious about the actual legalities of it or not.
Because if it is actually a crime, me and my partner have been committing that crime on some of our accounts.
Personally, I don't find it to be criminal no. Like giving keys to my appartment to a friend when I'm away on vacation to check on my dog. Obviously, if they come in my house and steal things that's different, but if they were to come in for some seemingly reasonable reason and I didn't want them doing that anymore I should ask for the key back or change my lock.
A divorce can be a pretty nasty thing for all parties involved. Had you shared your bank account with your significant other in an informal way, such as giving them your user/password for it, but not actually made them an official account holder, and during the divorce if the partner signs in for something seemingly reasonable, like making sure there's enough money to pay the bills, I also don't find that criminal. You probably need to have a talk about this, and might want to change your password if you don't want this happening anymore. Again, would be very different if money was transferred out and stolen.
I 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."
The breach of contract in theory means the bank is not liable for any ensuing damages, and that you are. But in the case of the OP it may not be especially pertinent.
"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."
A 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.
I 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.
It’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.
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.
I was surprised that it was not mentioned in the BBC story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_15_postal_covers_incide...