Month: February 2022

Enlarge (credit: SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images)

Two US senators have asked the Central Intelligence Agency to release the details of a secret bulk data collection program that has apparently ensnared Americans.

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) wrote the director of national intelligence and the CIA (PDF), asking them to declassify a review of a CIA program known as “Deep Dive II,” the details of which were redacted from their letter. The letter was written in April 2021 but was classified until yesterday.

The secret CIA program is operated under the authority of Executive Order 12333, which former President Ronald Reagan issued in 1981. It has been used to justify bulk data collection of people in the US, including phone calls, SMS messages, and, until recently, email metadata. That practice was limited by a 2015 reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which banned the bulk collection of phone and SMS metadata by the FBI.

Enlarge / A prototype SX Core device soldered to a Nintendo Switch motherboard. (credit: Team Xeceuter)

Gary Bowser, a member of the notorious Team Xecuter group of console hackers, has been sentenced to 40 months in prison for his role in promoting and selling devices in the SX OS line of piracy-enabling devices for the Nintendo Switch.

The final sentence, which comes after Bowser filed a guilty plea in November, falls almost precisely between the 60 months sought by prosecutors and the 19 months sought by Bowser’s defense. Bowser has already served 16 months of pre-sentencing detention after being arrested in the Dominican Republic and deported to the US in 2020.

In pushing for jail time for Bowser, federal prosecutors were clear that they thought a significant sentence “would send a message that there are consequences for participating in a sustained effort to undermine the video game industry.” Prosecutors are also expecting that media coverage of Bowser’s fate will help with deterrence, writing that “any sentence imposed in this case will be widely disseminated within the video gaming community, as this case is being watched closely by the industry.”

Enlarge / SpaceX’s stacked Starship vehicle complete with its impressive launch tower. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann)

STARBASE, Texas—Shortly after SpaceX founder Elon Musk completed a 75-minute presentation on Starship Thursday evening, I huddled with a few veteran space reporters. What, we discussed, were the headlines from the event? No one was sure, as we agreed that Musk had not really broken any news.

In his speech, Musk repeated themes he has touched on in the past about why SpaceX is building the Starship vehicle to settle Mars and why this is important to humanity. There were two primary reasons, Musk reiterated. First, there is the life insurance rationale. Although the chance of a planet-wide calamity extinguishing our species is low, it is not zero.

For the first time in 4.5 billion years, a creature living on Earth has the ability to do something about this threat by helping humanity to become a spacefaring species. We ought to seize the opportunity, he said. “To be frank, civilization is feeling a little bit fragile right now,” Musk said.

Enlarge / A fully stacked Starship and Super Heavy rocket on Thursday morning in South Texas. (credit: Trevor Mahlmann / Ars Technica)

Welcome to Edition 4.32 of the Rocket Report! There are plenty of international happenings this week, with progress in Europe, Asia, and North America. But the biggest news may have come from SpaceX’s Starship presentation last night, hosted by company founder Elon Musk in South Texas. Expect full coverage on Ars Technica later this morning.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe via the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets and a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Astra launch attempt from Florida fails. The California company’s Rocket 3.3 failed to reach orbit after entering into a tumble about three minutes into flight on Thursday afternoon, Spaceflight Now reports. The rocket launch was Astra’s first attempt from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Four NASA-sponsored CubeSats were lost in the mishap.