Statement regarding Escade

[Hileville]

Early this morning we were alerted to the possibility of newly elected Delegate Escade being a sleeper nation. This information was immediately communicated to the Committee for State Security, our regional counter-intelligence and security body, which consists of former Delegates Fudgetopia, SouthernBellz, Brutland and Norden, Hileville and incumbent Delegate Belschaft. Over the past few hours those of us who have been able to get away from our family Christmas celebrations and come online have been investigating the matter, and the administrative team is currently conducting an extensive security check. A number of irregularities relating to IP addresses have been uncovered, which we are continuing to investigate as best as we can at this time. We would like to make clear that we do not consider it probable that the allegations we have received are correct; the most likely explanation is that someone is attempting to make mischief. However, our primary concern must be the security of the region, and we have no choice but to act accordingly.
 
Until such a time that we are able to talk to Escade and other individuals not currently available it is vital to the security of the region that she not be allowed to take the Delegate seat. Whilst this situation is unpleasant, we feel that being forced to fight a full scale GCR war should the information prove correct would be much worse. As such, and in accordance with the Charter, incumbent Delegate Belschaft has requested that the CSS declare a State of Emergency. Preventative measures will be used to keep Escade at a safe endorsement level until we are able to talk to her, so as to answer the allegations made regarding her identity.
 
We apologize for the inconvenience this will cause, and will keep you updated as we gather more information. Until the State of Emergency is over please pay attention to the WFE and endorse those members of the CSS listed there.
 
- The Committee for State Security

[karatengisa]

This is a weird turn of events.

[Loh]

Well, that's a surprise. No answer from Escade yet, Hile?

[Belschaft]

She's not logged on yet.

[Rebel-topia]

And being Christmas, I doubt she will until late tonight/tomorrow

[Escade]

What the heck?

[Escade]

I'm right here, what. Is this a joke or something? I just talked to Kris about this yesterday, Hile how did you contact me?

[Cormac]

I'm just going to throw this out there: Not a tiny bit of this appears to be legal according to either the Charter or the Code of Laws. According to the Charter, the Delegate can declare a state of emergency with majority approval from the CSS. The Charter makes no distinction between "in-game Delegate" and "legal Delegate," nor between "incumbent Delegate" and "Delegate-elect," so the only Delegate under the Charter is the legal Delegate. Belschaft has no power that I can see to declare a state of emergency or to legally prevent the assumption of the Delegacy by the legal Delegate, and neither does the CSS.

[Escade]

Dude, I don't care about the delegacy right now. Why would someone call me a sleeper agent or whatever? Especially since I wasn't even going to run if I wasn't convinced by other people.

[Vibrant Coconuts]

(Yes, I'm aware such legal ramblings are probably not the priority right now, but...)

I'm just going to throw this out there: Not a tiny bit of this appears to be legal according to either the Charter or the Code of Laws. According to the Charter, the Delegate can declare a state of emergency with majority approval from the CSS. The Charter makes no distinction between "in-game Delegate" and "legal Delegate," nor between "incumbent Delegate" and "Delegate-elect," so the only Delegate under the Charter is the legal Delegate. Belschaft has no power that I can see to declare a state of emergency or to legally prevent the assumption of the Delegacy by the legal Delegate, and neither does the CSS.

I'd be interested to learn what the precedent is here. My reading of the Charter would be that, precisely because - as you point out - it makes no accommodation towards the "Delegate-elect", Belschaft does retain power in this particular situation because he is literally the Delegate, and equally that if during this process Escade does acceed to the delegacy in-game, she becomes Delegate with respect to the Charter and would be free to revoke the State of Emergency.

 

But that's just based on a plain reading of the laws: as I say, there may well be precedent in general (even if not regard to this specific clause) and that would no doubt resolve some of the confusion.

[Escade]

I screenshot and posted the TG I received and my responses on imgur and linked to Bel and the current cabinet.

[Belschaft]

In Regards to the State of Emergency

 

Roughly an hour ago TSP Delegate-Elect Escade came online, and immediately contacted myself and Hileville, the members of the Committee for State Security investigating the allegations against her. Almost immediately she was able to identify her accuser, the name of whom I had not shared with anyone, based upon a threatening TG exchange she had with the nation a few days ago. In this exchange the nation in question, Axelnod, a puppet of an unknown player, attempted to blackmail her into meting him on forums under his control. The purposes of this meeting was to have been discussing what she would do for him and be prepared to give him. Should she refuse to comply, Axelnod threatened to 'out' her as Empire member Minineenee to TSP's security authorities. Needless to say Escade refused to comply, and as a result this morning we received allegations that Escade was Minineenee. As a result of this, the CSS implemented a State of Emergency to buy us time to investigate the allegations and talk to Escade. We are quite confident that Escade is not Minineenee; at no point did any member of the CSS believe the accusations, but we felt required to act as if in a worst case scenario.

 

Aexlnod has now been banned from The South Pacific; whilst we have suspicions about his identity, we have no way of proving it. We will however be attempting to do so over coming days. In the meantime I would to express my complete confidence in Delegate-Elect Escade, and apologize to her for the truly awful Christmas she has had. Only a particularly sadistic player would attempt to blackmail another player; only a cold-hearted one would give someone a Christmas present such as this. At this point in time I am very pleased to declare the State of Emergency over, and would like to ask you all to please endorse Escade once more.

 

- Belschaft

[Belschaft]

Off the record, I'd like to add that the player in question is a complete and utter bastard.

[Unibot]

Not to be hating on TNI, but seeing as how we're TNI's closest ally in the GCRs, next to Balder -- a democratic transition is the easiest way for The Empire to snatch TSP and make a bargain with TNI: Osiris for TSP.

 

Minineenee also has experience in playing various roles.

 

Hileville and Bel had to take these accusations seriously. I'm sorry to see it happen on Christmas and to such a nice player.

[HEM]

Not to be hating on TNI, but seeing as how we're TNI's closest ally in the GCRs, next to Balder -- a democratic transition is the easiest way for The Empire to snatch TSP and make a bargain with TNI: Osiris for TSP.

 

Minineenee also has experience in playing various roles.

 

Hileville and Bel had to take these accusations seriously. I'm sorry to see it happen on Christmas and to such a nice player.

 

I see eye-to-eye with Unibot here, especially the part about it being a major shame.

[Belschaft]

Uni's theory would only make sense if The Empire had been purged from Osiris for the last eight or so months.

[Unibot]

Uni's theory would only make sense if The Empire had been purged from Osiris for the last eight or so months.

 

From what I understand, tension between The Empire and the imperialist-friendly crowd in Osiris has been going on for quite a while (and was largely kept hidden from political outsiders) -- a bit of a political power struggle. They do plan ahead, however it's not even necessary for them to have planted someone in The South Pacific for any purpose at all -- sometimes the usefulness of things only emerges later. I wouldn't put it against The Empire to have accounts in all of the GCRs for a rainy day.

 

I'm saying this strange accusation had some merit to it (and came out of the blue), which means you and Hileville needed to take it seriously -- I'm not saying these accusations are true. 

[Sierra Lobo]

Belschaft is the sitting delegate. He have all rights to declare the state of emergency. The thing I find puzzling is the reactive nature of the whole fiasco. Why are candidates not screened for security threats before the elections. If the threat was indeed real they could have easily piled up foreign support before TSP citizens logged in after christmas.

 

Though, TSP is hard to coup in a long term since we do have a sizeable number of high influence nation. I just find the CSS actions slow. They should have investigated every delegate-candidates and prune out possible imposters and we could have spared escade a bad bad christmas gift.

[Cormac]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Belschaft" data-cid="112374" data-time="1388001486">
<div>
Uni's theory would only make sense if The Empire had been purged from Osiris for the last eight or so months.

 

From what I understand, tension between The Empire and the imperialist-friendly crowd in Osiris has been going on for quite a while (and was largely kept hidden from political outsiders) -- a bit of a political power struggle. They do plan ahead, however it's not even necessary for them to have planted someone in The South Pacific for any purpose at all -- sometimes the usefulness of things only emerges later. I wouldn't put it against The Empire to have accounts in all of the GCRs for a rainy day.

 

I'm saying this strange accusation had some merit to it (and came out of the blue), which means you and Hileville needed to take it seriously -- I'm not saying these accusations are true. 

 

</div>
</blockquote>
 

I will confirm that The Empire is active in other Feeders and Sinkers as a matter of routine. They specialize in coups d'etat and they never really give up on that hobby; they have sleepers in several if not all, though which they have sleepers in and to what degree they're using them is unfortunately a question to which I don't have a definite answer. The location of Neenee's WA has been unknown for some time, at least since the end of Osiris' July coup. I will add however that if memory serves me right, Escade and Neenee both had separate WAs, the latter in Osiris fighting The Dourian Embassy during the July coup (I may even be able to find the identity of Neenee's WA at that time in my IRC logs), so if that's the case this particular accusation had no merit which is part of why I was so concerned that a state of emergency had been called. But in general, Unibot is correct in stating that The Empire has hands in many cookie jars as a matter of routine.

 

So I don't think the emergency action taken by the CSS was necessarily unreasonable. I do think that it was legally ambiguous and that this needs further clarified in law, but I suppose that is a discussion for the Assembly and I will bring it up for discussion once the Christmas holiday is over.

[StGeorgie]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Belschaft" data-cid="112374" data-time="1388001486">
<div>
Uni's theory would only make sense if The Empire had been purged from Osiris for the last eight or so months.

 

From what I understand, tension between The Empire and the imperialist-friendly crowd in Osiris has been going on for quite a while (and was largely kept hidden from political outsiders) -- a bit of a political power struggle. They do plan ahead, however it's not even necessary for them to have planted someone in The South Pacific for any purpose at all -- sometimes the usefulness of things only emerges later. I wouldn't put it against The Empire to have accounts in all of the GCRs for a rainy day.

 

I'm saying this strange accusation had some merit to it (and came out of the blue), which means you and Hileville needed to take it seriously -- I'm not saying these accusations are true. 

 

</div>
</blockquote>
Whilst the tension has been going on a while, it has not been going on for 8 months.

[Belschaft]

Belschaft is the sitting delegate. He have all rights to declare the state of emergency. The thing I find puzzling is the reactive nature of the whole fiasco. Why are candidates not screened for security threats before the elections. If the threat was indeed real they could have easily piled up foreign support before TSP citizens logged in after christmas.

 

Though, TSP is hard to coup in a long term since we do have a sizeable number of high influence nation. I just find the CSS actions slow. They should have investigated every delegate-candidates and prune out possible imposters and we could have spared escade a bad bad christmas gift.

Well, all citizens have to go through the same basic security sweeps when they sign up, and now and again we do run random IP checks, but neither the CSS nor the admin team is a secret police force. We don't actively go about investigating people, and I wouldn't really want to live in a region where that kind of thing happens.

 

Further, we didn't receive the accusation untill this morning. All told we're talking about eight hours from receiving it to having cleared the matter up, and were Escade not in place to take the Delegacy last update - and thus the State of Emergency - we would have handled this as quietly as possible.

[Sandaoguo]

I'm glad this turned out to be a bunch of false accusations.

 

Regarding the legal questions raised, I think it's a misunderstanding. As I understand it, the decision was made by the Committee on State Security, and not under some assumed authority of Belschaft as the in-game Delegate. The Charter gives zero authority to the in-game Delegate, but the CSS is charged with the internal security of the Coalition.

 

However, this does bring to front the lack of regulations and guidance when it comes to the CSS, which is something the Assembly might want to discuss.

[Geomania]

 

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Sierra Lobo" data-cid="112380" data-time="1388004582">
<div>
Belschaft is the sitting delegate. He have all rights to declare the state of emergency. The thing I find puzzling is the reactive nature of the whole fiasco. Why are candidates not screened for security threats before the elections. If the threat was indeed real they could have easily piled up foreign support before TSP citizens logged in after christmas.

 

Though, TSP is hard to coup in a long term since we do have a sizeable number of high influence nation. I just find the CSS actions slow. They should have investigated every delegate-candidates and prune out possible imposters and we could have spared escade a bad bad christmas gift.

Well, all citizens have to go through the same basic security sweeps when they sign up, and now and again we do run random IP checks, but neither the CSS nor the admin team is a secret police force. We don't actively go about investigating people, and I wouldn't really want to live in a region where that kind of thing happens.

 

Further, we didn't receive the accusation untill this morning. All told we're talking about eight hours from receiving it to having cleared the matter up, and were Escade not in place to take the Delegacy last update - and thus the State of Emergency - we would have handled this as quietly as possible.

 

</div>
</blockquote>
 

I think it's tough to criticize the government for this. I am sure they did their due diligence on vetting Escade via IP checks and whatnot.

[Cassius]

An odd turn of events. I do hope all this nonsense didn't put any downer on your christmas Escade, you certainly don't deserve this.

[Brutland and Norden]

Now, why do weird things happen in TSP when I'm away? :/

 

I do hope all this nonsense didn't put any downer on your christmas Escade, you certainly don't deserve this.

I certainly would like to echo this sentiment. Hopefully now we can really move on from all this drama.