| Legal Question: On the legality of Hileville and the Cabinet's actions of 21 January |
|
Amicus Brief
I’m not really a formal guy, so, I’m not going to be very formal; however, there are a few things you need to understand before you read this: The investigation I performed, while searching for the legality of the Cabinet’s actions was part of it, it was not the primary part. What I was trying to do was to find the source of what caused all of this, and find out what really happened to cause such a massive and oversized dispute. Everything that is censored in the photos that I present are either personal information(EI, my name, etc), were asked to be kept private by my interviewees, or otherwise irrelevant information(Discussions about RPs, etc). Should alternate copies be requested, they can be obtained. I started my investigation the night of the change. The change really came out of nowhere: no one said anything to anyone, and no one seemed to understand why all of this had happened. People were throwing insults in the RMB, and it seemed to be nothing more than Chaos. So, I decided to start with someone I could trust, someone who seemed to be as confused as I was: Tsu. Tsu's conversation 1 We both were unclear on what was going on, but, Tsu mentioned that he spoke to Hile, so I followed the trail there, and I talked to Hileville about what happened. So, after having interviewed Hile, I went back to Tsu, and we discussed our knowledge on the situation. Tsu's conversation 2 We both compared notes about Hile’s statements, and asked ourselves this question: Why would GR want to coup over Kris’ Citizenship? I decided that in that I needed to talk to the other admins as well. So, I PM’d both GR and Kris on the old site, to see what they knew. I asked GR about when the issue of Kris’ citizenship came up. Responded by saying that it came up in a PM conversation with Imki involving the removal of citizenships. He recalled that other than the PM conversation, that there was a lengthy debate on Discord, but, after that, nothing for two weeks, to either him or the other admins. He later sent me a picture of the PM conversation, which can be seen in the thread “I did not try to coup…”(link to thread here). I also had a Discord conversation with him just to confirm his knowledge on the situation. GR's conversation I got to interview Kris in a private IRC chat room(name blocked in pictures because it’s private), where we discussed the issue of his citizenship. He recalled a CSS thread about it back on the old 10.mx forums, and both he a tsu posted there, but, he did not recall anything in regards to who posted what. I attempted to use some of the other evidence I had to see if he knew anything else about the issue of his citizenship, including the private discussion between Imki and GR, but, he had no idea anything was going on, much less anything in regards to his citizenship. Kris's conversation After our conversation, I had a short talk with Punchwood via PMs about the situation(He was made aware of my investigation via a TG exchange early in the site change), where he brought up a private discussion between him and Hileville about Kris’ citizenship, as Imki was not the only one to notice. He approached Hile about it but was told to wait until a more thorough citizenship check was done after the holidays. This led me to the conclusion that whatever really happened to cause this, if GR really did make any threat to coup TSP like Hile claimed, it was on the other side of the PM chain with Imki. I decided that it would be good to talk to the Cabinet first.(Which I would like to somewhat apologize for, because I apparently came off as self-imposing and hostile.) I interviewed several members of the Cabinet, including Sopo, Scylla, Sam111, and Hileville(again) Scylla's Conversation Sam's conversation Sopo's conversation They all confirmed that they agreed with the forum change, and that it was done in secret in case of an attempted Admin coup, and their stories about the incidents seemed to line up with each other. I asked Sopo to check around the threads on the old site, and he confirmed that there were no apparent thread posts or discussions in regards to Kris’ citizenship in the Cabinet’s private sub-forums. I shared my conclusion with some of the Cabinet members, with Sam recalling GR saying something along the line of “We can’t get rid of Kris’ citizenship because he has a lot of influence and endorsements”. This further led to me believing that the answer to what caused this was in the PMs of Imki and GRs, and already having GR’s half, the only thing I needed Imki’s to finally sort this situation out. However, when I approached Imki about acquiring that information, I was denied, because she didn’t want to make a standard out of sharing PMs with the people, which was perfectly understandable. This sadly does leave my investigation rather open ended, however, In my conversation with Sam, I made note of three theories that I believed were possible. 1. GR actually did threaten to use Kris to Coup the region, and Hile is telling the Truth 2. Something GR said got taken horribly out of context, and Imki read it as "I'm going to use Kris to Coup". 3. GR told Imki that he wasn't going to remove Kris' citizenship until the Assembly heard the issue, where the logs from the Admin only thread would be released, and, somehow, no matter how unlikely, Imki and Hile saw the opportunity for a massive power exchange, and told the entire Cabinet of this situation to secure positions as admins. As of my conclusion of this investigation, I do believe that the most likely event was in fact theory #2. I do believe that there was some sort of miscommunication between the two, and that escalated to the situation we have now. However, I cannot come to a final conclusion on this as I do not have the last piece of the puzzle. However: Do I believe that the Cabinet, after my interviews and questions with them, committed an illegal act by creating the new site in secret? Yes, I do. I do believe that it violates the right of the Assembly to make the decision to transfer to a new site. Do I believe they did so with ill intentions? Not at all. If there was a threat of an Admin coup, I do believe that they acted with integrity in character, and not out of political spite or intended drama, but, out of precaution of a possible threat. I cannot blame them for the actions they’ve taken, but, I cannot say that we should lawfully condone them either. I believe that the best course of action would be a reset of sorts. Everything I’ve collected suggests that Hileville and his Cabinet were prepared to see the Admins logs before the PM between Imki and GR, and even the suggestion of pursuing it in the Assembly. I believe that we should go back, and have that discussion on the old site. Let both sides present their version of the issue, and let the Assembly decide.
An eye for an eye just makes the whole world go blind.
~Mahatma Gandhi HCLQ1602
Janurary 27th, 2016
Petitioner
Sandaoguo
Presiding Justice
Farengeto
To the Permanent Justice of the High Court of The South Pacific, The following Legal Question is submitted, challenging the legality of the Cabinet's actions on 21 January 2015, which are: unilaterally creating a new forum and redirecting the domain (thesouthpacific.org) to these new forums; unilaterally removing Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as forum administrators; unilaterally installing Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as forum administrators; unilaterally removing Kringalia's citizenship and his membership in the Committee on State Security; and unilaterally removing Regional Officer Border Control powers from Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, Kringalia, and Farengeto. Part 1: Unilaterally creating a new forum and redirecting the domain to those new forums In contradiction of Articles 9.1 and 9.2, Hileville and the Cabinet created a new forum on 10 January 2015. (As evidenced by the creation date for the “Lampshade” root account.) These forums are located at the following URL: http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/ (hereafter “the Zetaboards domain” or “the Zetaboards forum”). They did so in direct violation of Article 9.3 of the Charter, usurping the Assembly's exclusive right over establishing new forums. Part 1(a): Article 9.1 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states: “1. The Coalition's official Regional Forum is located at http://thesouthpacific.org.” (Herein after “the forums.”) Hileville, owner the thesouthpacific.org domain, set up a URL redirect to the Zetaboards domain. When typing in “thesouthpacific.org” in their browser, the user is redirected to the Zetaboards domain. As such, in a purely legalistic argument, the forums created by Hileville and the Cabinet are not “located at” http://thesouthpacific.org. The are “located at” http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/. Therefore, the forums at the Zetaboards domain are not the Coalition's official Regional Forum under the Charter. Part 1(b): Article 9.2 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states: “2. Should the Regional Forum cease to exist or otherwise become permanently unavailable then the Cabinet is authorized to establish a replacement Regional Forum.” Hileville and the Cabinet make no argument in their statement that the forums had ceased to exist or had become permanently unavailable. Their arguments for taking those drastic actions were grievances against members of the Administration Team. Nowhere in the Charter is that a valid reason to establish new forums. Therefore, the Cabinet was not “authorized to establish a replacement Regional Forum.” Part 1(c ): Article 9.3 (as amended 8 December 2015) of the Charter states: “3. Barring circumstances outlined in Section 2 the Assembly reserves the sole right to authorize the creation of a new Regional Forum.” The Assembly did not debate, and certainly did not vote, on Hileville and the Cabinet's forum move. Because the forums had not ceased to exist and did not become permanently unavailable, the only legal means for the creation of a new forum is through an Assembly vote on a Charter amendment. No such vote occurred. The Assembly's sole right to establish new forums is further evidenced by the move to the DigitalOcean server, approved on 8 December 2015 (http://104.131.34.7/thread-3474.html). The Admins had been discussing a forum move with the Assembly since February 2015. It took a full year through the political process to conduct a nondisruptive forum move. It flies in the face of reason that Hileville and the Cabinet argue they are authorized to move to new forums in an instant, without Assembly consultation, without a debate, and without a vote, and in a highly disruptive manner that leaves nearly two years of threads, posts, logs, Assembly votes, election results, roleplays, games, diplomatic events, and archives effectively inaccessible. Furthermore, the above resolution (which is a binding legal document) specifies that the Official Regional Forum will be located on a server owned by Tsunamy and maintained by Sandaoguo. Neither of these conditions exist for the Zetaboards forum. Question: Given the above, did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly violate Articles 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 of the Charter? ----- Part 2: Unilaterally removing Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as admins, and installing Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as admins. Without any granted authority under the Charter to do so, Hileville and the Cabinet removed the entire Administration Team and installed the above three Cabinet members as administrators of the Zetaboards forums. They did without any consultation with the Assembly, the High Court, the Committee on State Security, or the sitting Administration Team. Article 9 of the Charter, which governs the Administration Team, contains no provision for Cabinet authority to remove or install members of the Administration Team. Such rules are governed by the Administrative Procedures, as specified in Article 9.5. The Administrative Procedures (http://104.131.34.7/thread-567-post-30458.html#pid30458) set forth an application process for new Administrators and Moderators. The Administration Team had not announced open applications for new administrators. Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla never submitted applications to become administrators. They were never chosen to become administrators. Under no law of the Coalition are they authorized to be administrators of the official Regional Forum. Question: Given the above, did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly act without legal authorization to remove Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as administrators, and did they act without any legal authorization and against Administrative Procedures to install Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as administrators? ----- Part 3: Unilaterally removing Kringalia from the Committee on State Security Without any legal authority under the Charter, Hileville and the Cabinet removed Kringalia from the Committee on State Security (CSS). They did so by illegally removing his citizenship and claiming he could not sit on the CSS as a result. Part 3(a): Illegally removing Kringalia's citizenship On 30 December 2015, Imkihca send a Private Message to Sandaoguo with a list of players who no longer qualified for citizenship, either because they ceased to exist in TSP, or they did not meet the activity requirements of 2 posts within a 30 day period. Kringalia was included on this list, with Imkihca noting that his last 2 posts were made on 22 November 2015. On 4 January 2016, following the move to the DigitalOcean server, Sandaoguo conducted the demasking of the list, save Kringalia. The reason given was that Kringalia had actually made posts in the private administration forum, which Imkihca could not see. For the record, those posts were made on 3:52pm (Eastern) on 1 December 2015 and 10:29am (Eastern) on 2 December 2015. In other words, Kringalia had made 2 posts within the 30 day period since Imkihca sent the demask list. Proof can be supplied to the Permanent Justice upon request. Hileville and the Cabinet contend that those posts do not count, because they were made in a private area of the forum that Imkihca could not see. There is no legal basis for this argument. There are several areas of the forum that the Vice Delegate cannot see, including Ministry forums, Cabinet forums, and confidential military forums. When citizens make posts in those forums, they count. They have always counted. In response to Sandaoguo, Imkihca even agreed that she had “no problem including posts in private sections of the forums.” (Proof of all Private Message content can be supplied to the Permanent Justice upon request.) There was a legitimate issue with the Vice Delegate being responsible for conducting activity checks, but not being able to see all posts in all areas of the forum. As with many thing in The South Pacific, a hodge-podge series of amendments to laws and inadequate planning led to a hole in the process. Seeking to be helpful, Sandaoguo created a tool to alleviate this issue, which showed the dates of the last two posts made by all citizens regardless of where they were made, without needing to grant the Vice Delegate permissions to access those areas. Imkihca was sent the URL to this tool, which is publicly available at http://104.131.34.7/pages.php?page=citizens-list, on 12 January 2015. This was slightly over one week after the issue was brought to the Administration Team's attention. In fact, between the time this issue arose and the time Hileville created the Zetaboards forum on 10 January 2015, only 6 days had passed. The Cabinet did not bother to have an actual discussion with the Administration Team over the issue, and used it as a pillar in their statement even though the Citizen Roster was created specifically to fix the issue. If Hileville and the Cabinet continued to have a grievance over Kringalia's citizenship status, they did not express that to any administrator after 4 January 2015. Imkihca did not continue the Private Message thread with Sandaoguo after he provided her the explanation and justification. The Cabinet did not issue a formal complaint. They did not raise the issue with Tsunamy or Kringalia. How can the Administration Team remedy an issue without communication? Furthermore, if the Cabinet and the Administration Team could not reach an agreement, even though no attempt had been made, the appropriate venue to turn to would be the High Court. Disagreements over the meaning and application of the laws are settled in our judiciary. Instead, they created the Zetaboards forum, sat on those forums for 11 days, and during that time did not attempt whatsoever to pursue any legal means of addressing their grievances. Part 3(b): Illegally removing Kringalia from the Committee on State Security There are three means under the law by which a member of the CSS may lose their membership: 1. Resigning. 2. Losing citizenship. 3. A successful recall under Article 2 of the Code of Laws. Kringalia did not resign. Pursuant to Part 3(a), he remains a citizen. As such, and until one of the above three events happen, Kringalia is a member of the CSS. Hileville and the Cabinet cannot point to any legal means for the Cabinet to unilaterally remove any member of the CSS. Question: Did Hileville and the Cabinet knowingly and flagrantly act without any legal authorization to remove Kringalia's citizenship and remove him from the Committee on State Security? Ruling
On the matter of the two forums - hereafter referred to as the MyBB forum located at http://104.131.34.7/, and the Zetaboards forum located at http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/ - and its related legal question the court issues the following judgement. The Court wishes to remind all parties that as a legal question, this ruling determines only the legality of the matters and does not constitute a judgement of any criminal acts. If any criminal acts are believed to have been committed according to our Criminal Code, guilt must be determined in a proper criminal case. Part 1: Unilaterally creating a new forum and redirecting the domain to those new forums While at its creation the Zetaboards forum located at http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/ did not link directly to the URL specified in Article 9.1 of the Charter, as of the time of this ruling the forum now links directly to thesouthpacific.org and thus is sufficient to fulfill the text of Article 9.1 of the Charter. However, despite the Zetaboards forum located at http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/ is clearly a new forum within the context of Article 9 of the Charter, operating under new hosts, new servers, new administration, a new IP, etc. As a new forum its creation and validity is determined under Article 9.2 and 9.3 of the Charter, for which the requirements remain unmet. At the time of the activation of the Zetaboards forum located at http://s15.zetaboards.com/the_South_Pacific/, the MyBB forum located at http://104.131.34.7/ remained continued to exist, and remained available for access and use without any issues that impeded its availability, temporarily or permanently. Thus the forum had not ceased to exist nor had become permanently unavailable and the Cabinet was not empowered to create a new forum in accordance with the Article 9.2 of the Charter. Furthermore the Assembly did not vote on the creation of a new forum and thus the requirements of Article 9.3 of the Charter were not met. This further contradicts the precedent and text set by the binding reolution passed by the Assembly, the Resolution on Moving the Forums (http://104.131.34.7/thread-3474.html), which authorized the change to the forums, which referred to the new address of http://www.thesouthpacific.org in the context of a forum hosted on “a new server owned by Tsunamy and maintained by Sandaoguo.” Thus while the new forum possesses the address of the official forum it is unauthorized and is thus not the Regional Forum, illegally occupying the address of the official Regional Forum authorized by the Coalition of the South Pacific, the MyBB forum located at http://104.131.34.7/. Due to the issues demonstrated by the usage of dynamic location for the forums such as a URL, the court issues an official recommendation that Article 9.1 of the Charter be amended to a more static definition to prevent further issues resulting from domain name ownership. Part 2: Unilaterally removing Tsunamy, Sandaoguo, and Kringalia as admins, and installing Hileville, Imkihca, and Scylla as admins. The Administration policy is not defined in any official laws of the Coalition of the South Pacific and thus with no relevant basis in our laws the Court cannot issue a verdict on the matter. This matter must be resolved by the administration team of the Regional Forum determined in Part 1 of this ruling according to its Administrative Procedures and Moderation Policies, or by laws of the South Pacific. Part 3: Unilaterally removing Kringalia from the Committee on State Security Article 1.2.8 does not define any limitations as to where on the regional forum the required posting must occur, so it is the opinion of this court that all posts are valid as long as they occur on the domain of the official regional forum. According to the record provided by Tsunamy (http://i.imgur.com/e8nlWGs.png) as of December 30th, 2015 Kringalia had made two posts within a 30 day period, but for an approximately 72 hour period between January 2nd and 5th, 2015 Kringalia had not made the required posts. However as ruled in HCLQ1509 (http://thesouthpacific.x10.mx/thread-210...l#pid57980) and HCLQ1510 (http://thesouthpacific.x10.mx/thread-210...l#pid57982) this removal is not automatic. In HLCQ1509 it was ruled that the Vice Delegate was to be the sole individual responsible for determining citizenship, unless otherwise empowered by our laws. Thus at the time of the request for removal by Imkihca, the reference time also recognized by all parties in this case, Kringalia had met the posting requirement and as they met requirements for maintaining citizenship the administration was justified in refusing to remove Kringalia’s citizenship. As Kringalia was still legally a citizen and was not otherwise legally removed there is therefore no legal grounds for his removal from the Committee for State Security. Quote:Before I question the ruling made above, I must first call to attention the legitimacy of the ruling on this case. I've read this over a few times, and one passage early on caught my attention:I have recused myself from the parts of this case for which the executive action affected me. The Executive Action regarding the CSS had no bearing on the rest on the case thus I saw no reason recuse myself for it. Part 4 of the case, which deals with that subject matter, will be addressed by Temporary Justice Feirmont. Quote:Part 1The laws on the matter are by no means perfect. As of this writing the forums must be located at the specified URL, however at the same time the forums currently occupying the URL are not legally authorized by our laws. Quote:Part 3The matter of the date was a subject of much debate. However the rulings place the weight of determining citizenship expiration on the delegate (including as referenced above the "physical action of the removal of citizenship of this forum by the Vice-Delegate (or other authorised persons under the Charter)"), and the dates of Imkihca's submission of citizenship removals have been used as the reference point for the removal date by both Sandaoguo and Hileville in their testimonies, both of which led me to to use it as the relevant time period in the ruling. Perhaps it is also fitting to reiterate the court's previous recommendation on the issue in HCLQ1509 from April 2015: Quote:However, this question raises some important points that require consideration by the Assembly. Not least, the Charter makes no explicit reference to who should be empowered to remove citizenship should a nation fail to meet the provisions of Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 8 or how often such citizenship checks should take place. On this basis, in addition to this ruling the Court urges the Assembly to debate this matter as a matter of urgency for the purpose of providing legislative clarity for future elections.
Former Delegate of the South Pacific
Posts outside High Court venues should be taken as those of any other legislator. I do not participate in the regional server, but I am happy to talk through instant messaging or on the forum. Legal Resources: THE MATT-DUCK Law Archive | Mavenu Diplomatic Archive | Rules of the High Court | Case Submission System | Online Rulings Consultation System |
![[+]](/images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
Spoiler
| Users browsing this thread: |
| 1 Guest(s) |