I am here today to propose an amendment to the Citizenship Act which shall require Citizenship applications to include aliases and regional affiliations. This is something that pretty much every major region already does, and unless we implement this, it is completely legal for someone to gain citizenship with The East Pacific without informing us that they, say are an LWU Wolf or Pergamon in disguise. A good example of the harm this can cause is Hemogard aka Ernest Drake, who gained citizenship in TEP without disclosing to the Praesidium that he was also known by the alias Amalteia, an identity he used to infiltrate our treaty ally.
This requirement should only impact cosmos – I will work with the Citizenship Office to ensure that the wording of this requirement is fairly and clearly explained so that new players aren’t confused or deterred. For those cosmos who it does affect, I’m sure most maintain this list anyway and if they don’t, it is not unreasonable to request it for the peace of mind of our regional security. As someone with many aliases and regions, I personally don’t think this makes it any more difficult to gain citizenship. I’m open to questions, commentary, and tweaking, though.
SECTION III: NATURALIZATION
Amend Clause 1 to introduce new sub-clause, 1.3, between 1.2 and existing 1.3, which shall be renumbered to 1.4:
Include a list of any aliases by which they are known in NationStates and any regions in which they have held citizenship or military enlistment. Citizenship Officials shall make efforts in good faith to make this requirement clearly understood by residents who may not be familiar with the structure of NationStates Gameplay.
Amend Clause 5 to add the following sentence to the end:
Citizenship may be subject to removal by the Praesidium pending a criminal trial if information provided within the application is determined to be falsified.
I don’t think Citizenship should be removed by the Praesidium after-the-fact if something turns out to be falsified - that should be a matter for trial.
I’d also turn “shall” into “may” for the clause 5 amendment because something could theoretically not be disclosed and be falsified but in reality they forgot to list their puppet storage or something.
Although honestly I don’t see why the residency declaration is nessecary - people are likely to be residents of stupid regions they make or w/e - any enemy region we care about either has citizenship processes or is a military org, so I’d rephrase it into “have held citizenship or were enlisted.”
I think it’s difficult to make a certain rule of that, honestly, unless if we define regions worthy of disclosing in confusing ways. I also think that if citizenship was invalid from the start, then it shouldn’t need a trial to be removed. Like, if the Praesidium gives citizenship to someone who doesn’t have a WA nation, we shouldn’t need a trial to undo that mistake. I’m open to ideas on how to have our caek and eat it too, though. Perhaps, if there’s an easy determination of fault? Or perhaps citizenship can be suspended pending a trial?
I think the clause would be better as 3.1.2 to make it clear that the information is part of the application process not the response process that the current 3.1.2 and 3.1.3 deal with.
Also agree with Zuk that residencies are unnecessary and would prefer to see citizenships or enlistments.
Given that Citizenship auditing exists and since the Viziers are automatically part of the Cit Office, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to turn removal of Citizenship for false information in the application into a function of Citizenship auditing as something Cit Office can check as part of their auditing procedures.
I would prefer to see removal of Citizenship encapsulated within the existing procedures and protections rather than giving The Praesidium carte blanch to perform potentially undocumented removals of Citizenships.
I am for the amendment and honestly think people should disclose everything, including citizenships, residencies and enlistments.
Also perhaps instead of “and any regions in which they have held residency or citizenship” also add the present tense? Like have held and are holding […].
Concurring with Zukchiva: falsification is and should remain a matter of trial.
I additionally concur with Ulmer in that transparency is a matter of great importance, though some residencies are probably best concealed for various reasons that we may or may not be pertinent to (operations of various sorts)… necessitating the disclosure of all residencies may rub some folks the wrong way. Either that, or you add an “unless classified” clause. Just kind of throwing that out there.
Citizenships and enlistments are definite musts.
Would prefer to see the above points addressed, but my support is with this amendment as it stands.
Seconding Vixen, it is a double edged sword. And honestly Aiv is right, citizenship is easy to get in TEP. Especially since I don’t know of any other region with such lax rules. I am a person with quite a few puppets distributed in NS and was active in multiple regions at a single point of time, so sharing residencies is important to me too.
I’m still opposed to including residencies. It makes this law a bit ridiculous to enforce and puts a lot of needless burden on cosmos for very little security benefit to us. If someone wants to make their residencies known they’re free to post a dispatch in the nationstates Discord channel or make that information available in their PDF.
To put it simply: if someone is just a resident in say X enemy region but does nothing there, I see no reason why that should matter to us security-wise.
That being said now that I think of it, it’s probably a good idea to list government involvements.
Honestly, if a cosmos think its a burden (basically every other region has it) then they can always just not join. Any security gap is a security gap. I honestly don’t think you will have much of the residencies either, cause anyone can just simply lie with alts anyway.
But you can still do as much as possible and this little misbenefit for cosmos is alright to me
I think if we notice that a nation happened to be in an LWU or BOM puppet storage once upon a time, that’s a valid concern that we can’t do much about if we can’t get them on excluding crucial information.
I’m not really convinced by these arguments. For one, I’m pretty sure most regions don’t require the listing of every single residency ever - just the major ones. For two - if someone has a puppet in LWU/BOM then that requires more investigation (and if they happened to have lied about being LWU/BOM - then that’s enough to rat them out), not automatic removal of their Citizenship or pushing them through a trial. Unless I’m reading the amendment wrong, but it seems like that’d be a more reasonable and possible course of action that wouldn’t really hinder enforcement.
A security gap is a security gap but all security decisions need to be balanced with their effect on activity and participation in our region. Admittedly I’m not someone who maintains a lot of puppets so I don’t know how this would look like to such, but I do think being too strict simply makes being a citizen less and less enticing.
All that being said, I won’t oppose this amendment based on those grounds. But I can’t really view disclosing any residency ever as a too-beneficial thing either compared to its theoretical cons.
I remember there was a thought that we should just impose PDF questions on citizenship apps, what about that as an alternative to remove double requirements?
IMO that would make being a citizen difficulter for newbies. The biggest issues newbies come across when applying to the Magi tends to be making a PDF.
This amendment is sorta a middle ground between that idea and the current system, based on discussions with Breth and I think Zuk as well. I’ll adjust slightly for recent comments when I have some more free time.
Pursuant to the comments I received, I’ve removed residencies, added enlistments, and mandated that any audit which removes citizenship for these reasons immediately begin a trial, so that Conclave can have the final say.