[REPEAL] Regional Services and Security Act

The Magisterium
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1

The following is a breakdown of every substantial / mechanical clause in the RSSA and reasoning as to why it is redundant or problematic:

SECTION II, which attempts to establish jurisdiction, is redundant vs. the Concordat and the rest of the laws, as there is nothing which provides for reprisals against foreign officials or any sort of external “enforcement” of our laws besides prohibition / proscription of non-Citizens (actually not external, technically) and military retaliation by EPSA (also not technically “law enforcement”). We do not need to establish “jurisdiction” since the Conk & laws are precise or should be precise regarding scope of punishment: i.e., removal of government positions within TEP (which can only be held by Citizens or Registered Voters), summary offenses / indictable offenses being punishable by “banishment from The East Pacific” (where a law simply says “banishment” this is a problem), et cetera. If the goal of this clause was to make banishment enforceable across the various regional media (forums, Discord, etc.) as well as from the actual region onsite when “The East Pacific” was invoked, this was the wrong way to go about it. This should be specified within the law, or perhaps within a new Penal Code (wink) that we should consider drafting. SECTION II is provided below:

Any platform utilized for communication by The East Pacific as a whole or by any of its communities, alongside those used by citizens to primarily discuss topics regarding The East Pacific in some manner, shall be recognized as a “Regional Service”.

The East Pacific’s official forum shall be “forum.theeastpacific.com”.

Jurisdiction shall be defined as any area where the East Pacific can expect the Concordat, subsequent laws, and decisions of the Conclave to be enforced.

It is recommended for all Regional Services to cooperate with the government in enforcing the Concordat, laws, and Conclave decisions.

This shall not preclude the government from duly punishing a Citizen who has violated Eastern Pacifican law outside the jurisdiction of the East Pacific.

SECTION III is redundant, potentially self-conflicting, and nondescript: it is redundant in that the Praesidium is currently granted the ability to proscribe non-Citizens in the Voter Registration Act (there’s some confusion regarding whether they’re also able to proscribe Citizens within that law, but that’s for a different thread…). P1 also grants proscription powers to the Delegate at their unilateral discretion, which, in my opinion, is too much power to hand to the Executive. It potentially conflicts with the Voter Registration Act in that it says proscription may not be used against Citizens, whereas the VRA implies that it can be. It then self-conflicts by implying that the Delegate has the ability to “refuse” Vizier proscriptions when Vizier ROs could hypothetically carry out the denial of entry mentioned in p1. Finally, p4 is redundant vs. the Concordat (this is a minor complaint, but I’d like to eliminate any instance of “Citizens … have the right to seek appeal before the Conclave” when this firmly established in the Concordat as a right for any action taken against them, short of OOC bans and adds needless verbosity to the legal code). Overall, it is nondescript in that mechanisms of “denial [of] entry” are unspecified - you can’t ban a nation before it arrives in TEP, and it is a Citizen by default after arriving in TEP. This entire section is fatally flawed. SECTION III is provided below:

The Praesidium and the Delegate can each deny entry or residence to any nation it deems a significant risk to the East Pacific.

This power may not be exercised against Citizens who present a significant risk by committing an indictable offense or being suspected of such.

The Praesidium may overrule any Delegate exercise or refusal of this power following the Standing Orders of the Viziers. If no procedure exists, this overrule shall be done by a 2/3 majority vote of all Viziers.

Citizens banned or ejected from the East Pacific without having been sentenced by the Conclave to ejection or banishment have the right to seek appeal before the Conclave.

SECTION IV is redundant vs. the RMBRA, and adds an additional, dangerous ability to the Delegate’s repertoire in p2 which could essentially allow them to suppress anything they like on the RMB regardless of whether it aligns with the RMBRA or our other laws. SECTION IV, p3 is both redundant and potentially in conflict with Article G, Section 4 of the Concordat, which states that “Any ban, decided by the Administration in consensus for violations of the applicable rules of conduct related to the official off-site services, shall be considered a ban under the law for the same duration, and executed as such by the relevant regional authorities, without trial, hearing or appeal to the Conclave.” - S4p3 of this law excludes said “relevant regional authorities” and instead stipulates that the “Delegate shall be primarily responsible for executing . . . ban[s] as requested by the Administration.” p4 is redundant vs. the RMBRA. SECTION IV is provided below:

The Delegate shall uphold public order in all NationStates on-site regional affairs - primarily by being the primary enforcer of all laws related to Regional Message Board conduct.

The Delegate can publish any additional rules of RMB conduct by an official decree posted on the official forum (“Executive Order”), so long as they do not contravene statutory law. Violation of said rules shall be punishable by suppression of the offending post.

The Delegate shall be primarily responsible for executing any on-site ban as requested by the Administration.

The Delegate shall enforce Nationstates’s site rules. Any Citizen who violates the on-site rules of NationStates shall be committing a summary offense with a maximum punishment of indefinite banishment.

SECTION V is the finale: p1 it is redundant vs. the entire legal code and entirely unnecessary, and p2 + p3 provide a hysterical option to a rogue Delegate and Conclave combo, wherein a rogue player could use almost any example of “witnessing” a crime and not reporting it to bring virtually anyone to trial in which two rogue Arbiters could order their permanent banishment from our region. So, in effect, it only takes three rogue players to break our government. Even if this scenario seems outlandish, establishing an offense punishable by permanent ban for something so nondescript as “Not respecting any provision of this Act” is absurd. SECTION V is provided below:

All Citizens of the East Pacific are required to follow the laws of the East Pacific in all reasonable circumstances.

All Citizens shall report evidence of criminal acts to the relevant regional authorities.

Not respecting any provision of this Act or any other statutory obligation imposed by law shall be an indictable offense, punishable by up to a permanent ban, insofar no other punishments have been determined by law.

Overall, this law is entirely defunct and is otherwise irreconcilable and irreparable and should simply be repealed.

2

Goes to show how bad I am at writing (or re-writing, in this case), law :stuck_out_tongue:

Mostly good points. I support this repeal, generally.

However, on the jurisdiction thing there isnt a better way. The government has relinquished all control over Admin, and with it, any ability to force Admin to enforce government law. The best thing the government can do is ask, although I can see why at that point its just useless verbosity.

Or, I guess, the government could mandate that any services it promotes follow gov law or something… but idk the legality of that versus Article G.

There are two key important parts of this Act that must be preserved. Prohibition is a lengthy, more officiallized process for a ban. It wont do for emergency situations; we need to enable the Praesidium to ban any individual for security reasons, per its SoP. This will probably require a Concordat amendment as well, but i n any case prohibition as-is is not a good substitute.

Additionally, I firmly believe there should exist an expectation for citizens to report crimes they witness. Obviously, the clause I wrote was too broad and allowed persecution for public crimes. But I would hate for us to be unable to take action against any individual who knew a crime was happening away from the public eye and is allowed to be in our region because they didnt report the crime itself. This clause should be remade in some other law.

3

I think there’s a core purpose this law serves, but if the execution is such, then removal is probably necessary. I would like to note that the trend of less laws, less government is not one I agree with as a matter of principle, but I will judge them all on a case by case basis.

4

The government has relinquished all control over Admin, and with it, any ability to force Admin to enforce government law. The best thing the government can do is ask, although I can see why at that point its just useless verbosity.

Yeah, basically what you said at the end. But the staff have never refused an IC government order, from what I know.

Or, I guess, the government could mandate that any services it promotes follow gov law or something… but idk the legality of that versus Article G.

I just don’t think it’s necessary to say this. The Conk and laws like the Treason Act don’t specify the medium by which offenses need to be committed in order to be considered in court; to use Python’s trial again as an example, evidence for his treason was taken from Discord DMs and from Google Drive. It goes without saying that anyone with Citizenship is expected to be following TEP’s laws everywhere, and that failure to do so can result in action against them within TEP’s region and media.

There are two key important parts of this Act that must be preserved. Prohibition is a lengthy, more officiallized process for a ban. It wont do for emergency situations; we need to enable the Praesidium to ban any individual for security reasons, per its SoP. This will probably require a Concordat amendment as well, but i n any case prohibition as-is is not a good substitute.

The biggest problem with the way that it’s written into this act is that it is “nondescript”, in that the definitions or mechanisms are not specified and it is therefore unclear as to how action would be taken. There is no mechanism by which to “deny entry”, and to “deny residence” seems synonymous with “eject” or “eject & ban”; however, that’s impossible now that we’ve defined merely existing in TEP as having Citizenship and the subsequent line says that this power can’t be exercised against Citizens. And if we’re trying to “deny entry” to some specific player or piler force and they show up under some unidentifiable alt then we’re stuck. Like you said, emergency powers need to exist, but I think it needs to be done via the Concordat because this doesn’t make any sense.

Additionally, I firmly believe there should exist an expectation for citizens to report crimes they witness.

I agree and we should think about how to implement that effectively.

I think there’s a core purpose this law serves

I don’t remember exactly how it all played out and I could be wrong but I seem to recall this being some kind of half-measure prior to the RMBRA (there was some controversy over that at the time), to proscription, and to Article G’s addition to the Concordat. Zuk is right in that we still need to consider adding emergency powers but not like this.

I would like to note that the trend of less laws, less government is not one I agree with

What I’m currently working on is not intended to be “less laws, less government” but rather elimination of pointless verbosity with no function, elimination of aspects of the law that we are not upholding, repair and improvement of mechanisms that are either broken in some way or should just be downright different than they are, and consolidation / reorganization of laws so that it’s not as painful for everyone (but especially for new players that we claim to want to recruit) to get familiar with how our region functions.

I’m beginning with repeals and amendments to pare away material (like the Award Fraud punishments) because that is the best place to start. If we start by removing what doesn’t need to be there and then don’t need to consider it in subsequent amendments / rewrites it will be easier to fix everything else.

5

Something else I just noticed is that S3p4 is unconstitutional, in that “Citizens banned or ejected from [TEP] without having been sentenced by the Conclave . . . have the right to seek appeal before the Conclave” is FALSE in certain instances (see Article G).

6

Everything beyond the RMB stuff is from the Dictum I think. Jurisdiction stuff is basically re-writes of concepts from 2014, idrk where the Praesidium ban powers came from, I wrote in the reporting crimes thing I think recently

8

I move to vote on this.

9

Seconded.

10

Quoting this for later reference.

11

Acknowledged.

Vote here