A Matter of National Security

[Nentsia]

*Ahem*

Okay, so I want to open up a discussion about setting up this baby of mine, the ''Federal Security Department'' of Nyland. As its name suggests, it is a federal ~security service~. I have no intention of it being like the American equivalent, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). There exists a crucial difference between the American understanding of a ''security service'' and the West-European meaning: the FBI is quite unique in being a combination of law enforcement agency and an intelligence agency. Its European counterparts, BfD (Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz/Federal Office for Constitutional Protection) in Germany, AIVD in the Netherlands (Main Intelligence and Security Service), DGSI in France (General Directorate of Internal Security), MI5/Security Service in the UK - none of them have law-enforcement tasks. They focus entirely on the collection, processing, and dissemination of intelligence relating to threats against the national security, and providing advice to those whom it concerns on security issues.

The FBI is also a law enforcement agency, which means that it also investigates federal crime, prosecutes people, and makes arrests. In Europe, since the 1930's, security services actively distanced themselves from all policing tasks, partly out of arrogance (''let cops handle crime, we're cooler than that'') and partly because in Europe the combination of intelligence and policing is heavily associated with the Gestapo in Nazi-Germany, amounting to a secret police. Another negative post-war example of such a combination was the KGB in the USSR and the Stasi in East-Germany. This model was developed by the British MI5 and MI6/SIS, and most post-war intelligence services in Europe tended to be modelled on the British. MI5 went so far even as to resist the appointment of a former police-chief as Director-General of MI5.

I would like to set up and run a European-style security agency, because I like to RP how it struggles to defend Nyland from internal and external enemies of the People threats to the National Security. I do think an OOC discussion is warranted, because it would be cool if everyone involved in Nyland could find some common agreement about whether the FSD may be a thing at all, and how far-reaching its powers would be to investigate the Bourgeois-nationalist Trotskyite Saboteurs elements that threaten the democratic order in Nyland. Another reason I want an OOC discussion is because the FSD-proposal would infringe on an existing territory controlled by Ikar, the so-called SHIELD agency. SHIELD is also a secret agency, involved in spying and intelligence activities both at home and abroad. But........ RP-wise it is kinda inactive, plus it is not so common to have 1 agency perform all intelligence tasks. That would, in the US equivalent, amount to having the Secret Service, CIA, FBI, DIA, NRO, and NSA all in one super-organisation. Even the Soviets, with their bureaucratic monster called KGB, saw the necessity of having a separate, specialized agency called GRU (plus, the KGB's internal departments were practically independent organisations on their own, with their own specialisations and barely cooperating).

The way I see it, Ikar intends SHIELD to be Nyland's main spy agency, and I think we could translate that to being a combination of the CIA and DIA (foreign & military intelligence + covert operations). The Federal Security Department would then roughly translate to being Nyland's equivalent of the FBI's National Security Branch, focussing on counter-intelligence, political extremism, and terrorism.

I would also like to add a large sub-department, Communications & Information Office (CIO), charged with the protection of government communications and digital infrastructure, and the collection of electronic intelligence (internet communication, telecommunication, radar, satellite information etc). Most of the smaller services have such a department jointly shared with the foreign/military intelligence services, but in the US and the UK, these are enormous intelligence agencies in their own right (NSA & GCHQ). I'd love to run my own as a subordinate department, Im willing to share it with SHIELD, I also understand if people want that to be an independent thing. (NSA and GCHQ are massive organisations, their budgets make up 95% of the total budgets going to the intelligence community, because the costs of running servers, databases, and satellites (which few countries in the world have...) are extremely expensive. The volumes of intelligence that they basically suck up like a vacuum cleaner is so big that both the NSA and GCHQ require vast armies of translators, analysts, and IT specialists to store and process it all.

These are my thoughts, that have been in the back of my head for quite some months. I am open to all ideas and don't hesitate to share your honest opinion. I have no intention of forcing this down the throat of anyone, but be warned that I do have compromising information on every single one of you.