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***Roavin*** · 12-10-2018, 04:57 PM

(12-10-2018, 04:55 PM)Belschaft Wrote:
(12-10-2018, 03:55 PM)Roavin Wrote:
(12-10-2018, 02:27 PM)Belschaft Wrote: I cannot support giving the proposed S&I group control of our elections and legislative body.

Again, in which way would the proposed CSI have control that the combined CRS+LegComm don't have right now anyway?

CRS, and to a much greater extent LegCom, are fundamentally different kinds of organisations to your proposed CSI. This is not a like-for-like comparison.

That's ... still not explaining how CSI holds so much more control (in some fashion) than CRS+LegComm did. I'd like to understand your argument.

(This post was last modified: 12-10-2018, 04:57 PM by Roavin.)

**Belschaft** · 12-11-2018, 09:58 AM

(12-10-2018, 04:57 PM)Roavin Wrote:
(12-10-2018, 04:55 PM)Belschaft Wrote:
(12-10-2018, 03:55 PM)Roavin Wrote:
(12-10-2018, 02:27 PM)Belschaft Wrote: I cannot support giving the proposed S&I group control of our elections and legislative body.

Again, in which way would the proposed CSI have control that the combined CRS+LegComm don't have right now anyway?

CRS, and to a much greater extent LegCom, are fundamentally different kinds of organisations to your proposed CSI. This is not a like-for-like comparison.

That's ... still not explaining how CSI holds so much more control (in some fashion) than CRS+LegComm did. I'd like to understand your argument.

I’m fairly sure you are being disingenuous, as that is quite clearly not the point I was making. It’s not a question of powers but of organisations; LegCom and CRS are fundemtally “civilian” organisations, in a way that the proposed CSI isn’t. LegCom in particular is designed to have a limited mandate, and is subject to reconfirm every four months. It is clearly and directly accountable to the Assembly in a way that CSI isn’t.

Transferring what are essentially civilian functions - oversight of elections and assembly membership - to a security and intelligence body is not acceptable to me, on point of principle.

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(This post was last modified: 12-11-2018, 11:30 AM by Belschaft.)

***Roavin*** · 12-11-2018, 11:57 AM

TSP is much too important to me that I could be disingenuous about this issue. I am merely trying to understand the reason you disapprove of the mandate currently proposed for the CSI.

You state that the Council on Regional Security, which according to the Charter is a "central authority for protecting the Coalition’s security" and who selects the coordinator who handles "all intelligence and counter-intelligence operations", is a civilian body, while the proposed Council on Security and Intelligence (which is intended to be, as you correctly state, a security and intelligence body) is not. Can you explain the difference to me?

***Tsunamy*** · 12-11-2018, 09:51 PM

(12-11-2018, 11:57 AM)Roavin Wrote: TSP is much too important to me that I could be disingenuous about this issue. I am merely trying to understand the reason you disapprove of the mandate currently proposed for the CSI.

You state that the Council on Regional Security, which according to the Charter is a "central authority for protecting the Coalition’s security" and who selects the coordinator who handles "all intelligence and counter-intelligence operations", is a civilian body, while the proposed Council on Security and Intelligence (which is intended to be, as you correctly state, a security and intelligence body) is not. Can you explain the difference to me?

I may be missing where this was changed, but my assumption (on Bel's argument) is that the CSI in the initial proposal is self-selecting rather than approved by the Assembly as both LegComm and the CRS are now.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

***Roavin*** · 12-12-2018, 02:46 AM

The current recap has the CSI as Cabinet-appointed, Assembly-approved, as opposed to the CRS which is self-appointed, Assembly-approved.

***Roavin*** · 12-16-2018, 12:30 AM

Bumping this, because there are quite a few open questions within that which we need to debate and add to the recap before we move on to actual drafting

(12-10-2018, 08:37 AM)Roavin Wrote: I took a brief look at our extant laws to see what the consequences of what's currently in the recap would be.

Currently, the MoMA may establish an intelligence office with the CRS. I'd drop that altogether.

Currently, the CRS may declare a state of emergency. I'd replace that with the CSI.

Currently, the line of succession for the Delegacy is Del+CRS+PM. I'd exchange CRS for DC here.

Appointments would be a general mandate for the Cabinet, enshrined in the Charter.

Currently, CRS appoints an EC. This would be replaced by CSI.

Border Control Act: This will be difficult to split up. Do we say taht the CSI has all the authority here, or is some of that with the DC?

Parole Board: Currently members of CRS, Court, and CoA. Replace with CSI?

Proscription Act: Replace CRS with CSI

Regional Communication Act: Replace CRS with CSI

Regional Officers Act: Replace CRS BCs with something like "2 or more DCs", but keep the mandate to order the appointment of further BCs with the CSI.

Legion of Honor Award Act: ... can we just repeal this? - the Valor thing would be CSI rather than CRS.

***Tsunamy*** · 12-16-2018, 10:14 AM

Quote:Regional Officers Act: Replace CRS BCs with something like "2 or more DCs", but keep the mandate to order the appointment of further BCs with the CSI.

I don't understand what this is especially proposing.

It makes more sense for the DC to keep BC powers (rather than the CSI), since they'd have more influence and thus would be in a better position to use them.

-tsunamy
[forum admin]

***Roavin*** · 12-17-2018, 09:34 AM

(12-16-2018, 10:14 AM)Tsunamy Wrote:
Quote:Regional Officers Act: Replace CRS BCs with something like "2 or more DCs", but keep the mandate to order the appointment of further BCs with the CSI.

I don't understand what this is especially proposing.

It makes more sense for the DC to keep BC powers (rather than the CSI), since they'd have more influence and thus would be in a better position to use them.

Pretty much what you said. Tounge

**Amerion** · 12-18-2018, 11:22 PM

(12-10-2018, 08:37 AM)Roavin Wrote: I took a brief look at our extant laws to see what the consequences of what's currently in the recap would be.
Currently, the MoMA may establish an intelligence office with the CRS. I'd drop that altogether.

Currently, the CRS may declare a state of emergency. I'd replace that with the CSI.

Currently, the line of succession for the Delegacy is Del+CRS+PM. I'd exchange CRS for DC here.

Appointments would be a general mandate for the Cabinet, enshrined in the Charter.

Currently, CRS appoints an EC. This would be replaced by CSI.

Border Control Act: This will be difficult to split up. Do we say that the CSI has all the authority here, or is some of that with the DC?

Parole Board: Currently members of CRS, Court, and CoA. Replace with CSI?

Proscription Act: Replace CRS with CSI

Regional Communication Act: Replace CRS with CSI

Regional Officers Act: Replace CRS BCs with something like "2 or more DCs", but keep the mandate to order the appointment of further BCs with the CSI.

Legion of Honor Award Act: ... can we just repeal this? - the Valor thing would be CSI rather than CRS.

It could be that this was raised before in this thread but how many CSI members do we expect to have? Because if we are simply importing the current CRS members to the CSI, that is a concerning amount of authority to place in what has been a somewhat unorganised institution ...

I would feel much more confident with these reforms if we sort out the internal policy of the CSI beforehand (as well as change the acronym ...)

Edit: Here is what I said about this topic in Discord:

I think for me, what your reforms have highlighted is just how much authority the CRS legally has. Now, this by no means is a completely negative thing. In many respects, it is logical. However, I believe the effectiveness of the CRS has been hindered by what appears, at least from an outsider’s perspective, to be its disorganisation.

While I can’t recall the specifics, I think either Kringle or Farengeto wrote in this lounge some time back about how they had to pester some people for information relating to some security matter (it could have been the proscriptions). Similarly, Glen has consistently bemoaned here and elsewhere about how his warnings on such issues are received by the public. By no means am I suggesting that Glen is a prophet and necessarily correct about everything but, at the moment, he is more like a broken record. All of which comes across as how a security institution should not function.

These reforms are certainly a good start and they have got the conversation going. Nevertheless, besides the potential effect of moving some current CRS into the proposed DC, and bringing non-mobile WA nations who have security expertise into the CSI, I’m not confident that the present situation of ‘ineffectiveness’ has been addressed.

With that being said, I’m not sure, short of someone within the CRS taking a long bamboo cane and whipping people into shape and enacting something resembling an internal policy, how this can be fixed.

TLDR: My impression of the CRS right now is a housewarming of five friends who aren’t really on speaking terms. Four of whom are awkwardly looking at their phones, waiting until the time when it’s socially acceptable to leave. And then there is Glen, who is standing in the faraway corner, shouting to himself about asbestos.

(This post was last modified: 12-19-2018, 10:30 AM by Amerion.)

***sandaoguo*** · 12-19-2018, 11:35 AM

Bear in mind the following is my personal opinion only, and I don’t speak for anyone else and can’t know their own thoughts. But I’ll provide my perspective on the CRS.

The CRS isn’t disorganized, really. It’s *demoralized* when it comes to the subjective security aspects of the job. The other stuff— endorsements, for example— is going along great.

That demoralization is largely the fault of the Assembly itself, particularly bad actors within it. You have to know the history of security in TSP to understand why the CRS appears as it is today. It used to be much more active and involved. But when we found out Belschaft was involved in shady conversations with Empire-led Osiris, an enemy region at the time, and tried to take *some action* to deter future misbehavior, it nearly sparked a constitutional crisis.

Not to re-litigate, but the CRS had very good reason to punish Belschaft, a player that had plotted to coup before, had been caught in many lies, and was now found to be chatting with an enemy (Neo Kervoskia, Empire and Osiris leader) asking if there was anything he could do to help Osiris against TSP. His defense was that he was doing “intel,” despite not being authorized by anyone and that not being verifiable in any way. The CRS went to the Assembly, the Assembly passed very strict and specific laws on what the CRS could do, and we published a huge investigation, more in-depth than this region had ever seen or has seen since. The result of that investigation was the CRS decided not to ban Belschaft, but to prohibit him from seeking office for a finite time.

That exploded into a full-blown crisis. Cormac, who had practically crafted the law authorizing us to do so, went full-on populist anti-CRS when it turned out his home region of Osiris was implicated and we were revealing the Empire connections to it all. And the Assembly went along with it, hook, line, and sinker. Nobody cared about the evidence we had. Nobody cared about the careful analysis or the unprecedented investigation. The moment it became about Cormac and Belschaft yelling about corruption, violation of rights, etc., it became all about PR and politics. I was the only one left who cared enough to push back, because who the hell wants to fight that battle?

From that moment on, the CRS has been reluctant to do much of anything on security. Everyone who was around for the Bel-Cormac mess fears that the Assembly will simply fall into populist uproar no matter how solid of a case we have. And frankly, the response to Souls’ proscription kind of reinforced that for me. I can’t speak to his motivation, but I’d be willing to bet Roavin wanted that proscription to go through the Cabinet because of the CRS’s reluctance to do anything that would provoke even the slightest bit of debate. And while I would have handled things different (I would’ve revealed the evidence from the get-go), I saw the way the Cabinet and Assembly responded. And it was almost entirely about the PR, with the actual security considerations coming a distant second.

The issues we have aren’t with the specific institution, whether it be the Cabinet, the CRS, or anything new we create. The Assembly, and by that I mean our community, simply is bad at security. We appoint people to make security decisions, but once they’re made we take that back and demand the Assembly decide. We moralize about “democracy” and unilaterally disarm ourselves for the benefit of Gameplayers who don’t give a shit about democracy and want to destroy TSP. And most perniciously, we dismiss security concerns without valid reason. I can’t even count how many times I’ve laid out a case, based on historical and contemporary evidence, only to have it dismissed because “I just don’t see the reason to be concerned” or “But that’s the past, they might be different now.”

At the end of the day, if we’re going to create an institution that’s in charge of our security, we need to be willing to actually let them be in charge. That has always been our region’s major security failure. Despite creating these bodies and confirmed people into them, individual members of the Assembly always end up believing that they need a say. Inevitably, security decisions become political decisions.

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