• halcyoncmdr@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Yes, but probably not for the reason you think.

      The accusation was that the astronaut illegally accessed her bank account from the International Space Station while the couple was going through a divorce. Which is totally possible. The ISS does, in fact, have Internet access. And every byte of data transferred to and from the station is tracked. It is very easy to verify whether an account was accessed from there.

      But that’s not even where the false accusation part is. From the NYT Article about this:

      Ms. Worden accused Colonel McClain of guessing her password to illegally access her personal bank account from space in January 2019, a claim that sparked inquiries from the Federal Trade Commission and NASA’s Inspector General.

      Federal investigators later found that Ms. Worden had, in fact, given Colonel McClain access to her accounts since 2015 as part of the couple’s intertwined finances.

      In an indictment unsealed in April 2020, prosecutors accused Ms. Worden of lying about when she first opened her personal account and when she first changed her login credentials.

      Colonel McClain has stated since the allegations first emerged that she had permission to access Ms. Worden’s accounts, and was merely managing the couple’s finances with the full knowledge of her estranged spouse.

      So access wasn’t illegal, she had the password and was allowed access at the time it happened.