FK 27 - Ancillary Documentation The Preempt Act

[Skyweir]

Ancillary Documentation 26 April 2019

The Preempt Act

Prior to the ascent of the Preemptive Enabling Act for Security, the powers capable of exercise by the UMCP were considerably limited.

The UMCP were initially governed by the Articles of Mission, and according to the Articles, the UMCP mandate was purposed to combat piracy and ensure the lawful use of space.

The interpretive presumption re The Articles was initially narrow. Anything outside of piracy and lawful use of space fell outside the legitimate mandate that governed the UCMP exercise of powers.

Each human station or local administration was managed independently from the UMCP. Each human station, ie the Terminus, Sagittarius Unlimited, Valdor Industrial station, SpaceLab Annexe, the Outreach station employed and managed their own security personnel and assets.

Furthermore, the Articles limited UMCP exercise of powers and jurisdiction to outside human station perimeters .. to specifically the space outside the operation and control OF station based security.

Nevertheless, private security personnel and assets were required to cooperate with UMCP in instances of piracy or unlawful uses of space.

Yet this was changing and evolving with the practical expansion of human and industrial colonisation IN space.

As the exercise of powers took precedence over the limitation of powers ... the inevitable next step was indeed the Preempt Act.

The Preempt Act enabled the UMCP to combat piracy and illegals operating ON human stations AS WELL AS combating the growing Amnion threat.

Of course the UMCP benefited from ultimate control over human stations, where prior to the Preempt Act they had little to none.

Operationally this would make a lot of sense, from a practical perspective and I could sympathise with movements to enable greater power ... but with greater power and jurisdictional expansion comes the very real risk of a monopoly of power in the hands of the UMCP.

It is this that I would imagine the Libertarian opposition was mostly focussed on.

But this is very odd to me and maybe Ive missed some dots.

The UMCP seemingly grew out of the United Mining Companies expansion in space. Given its industrial corporate nature, such an enforcement body is already smack bang in the centre of an inevitable conflict of interest.

Which I think has made the UMCP itself readily corruptible.

So how has a private security provider become in charge of and mandated with the security and safety of all space beyond the Earth?

I hope someone can explain this, because I apologetically feel at a loss to explain it myself.

[Cord Hurn]

Prior to the Prempt Act, and prior to this chapter, we learned that the UMCP gained power through the knowledge it required from the requirement of datacores for human ships. This doesn't by itself explain why a private security company became so powerful as an arm of the human government, but it explains how the UMCP was able to expand power. The power of knowledge is good for sales and blackmail, after all, for profit and coercion.

[quote="In the fifth chapter of Forbidden Knowledge, entitled "Ancillary Documentation: Datacores", was"]Both metaphorically and actually, they [datacores] were powerful tools for order. They gave the governments of Earth--and their effective enforcement arm, the United Mining Companies Police--the ability to find out what happened to any ship anywhere in human space. Ultimately anything that could be known could be controlled--or at least punished.[/quote]

[Cord Hurn]

Another explanation that has been given earlier in the Gap story for why the UMCP became a powerful player in human galactic defense was that owning InterTech gave the UMCP a moral responsibility to defend human space.

[quote="In the ninth chapter of Forbidden Knowledge, entitled "Ancillary Documentation: Intertech", was"]Under the circumstance, InterTech had no choice but to seek acquisition by some more viable corporate entity. Reluctantly, a bid was accepted from Space Mines, Inc. (later the United Mining Companies). Aside from the necessary cash, the only obvious price SMI had to pay was an amendment to its charter, requiring SMI as a whole to foreswear genetic engineering and to protect humankind from genetic corruption by the Amnion.[/quote]

That charter amendment doesn't sound like a price SMI had to pay, but more like an opportunity that it just had to seize!

[Cord Hurn]

The Preempt Act makes all the difference in the UMCP having unquestionable dominance in enforcing the law in human space--not just because of their authority having stronger legal force, but also because the UMCP suddenly has access to all the (official) information known to be shared among humans.

[quote="In the twenty-seventh chapter of Forbidden Knowledge, entitled "Ancillary Documentation: The Preempt Act", was"]Prior to the [Preempt] Act, local Security was required to give cooperation, information, and support to UMCP officers and agents whenever they were on station; but UMCP "turf" only began at the perimeters of station control space--that is, at the effective limits of station fire. The rationale for this restriction had to do with the UMCP Articles of Mission. According to the Articles, the UMCP existed to "combat piracy and secure the defense of space." Nothing more.

For some time, however, interpretation of the Articles had been predicated, not upon "nothing more," but upon "nothing less." In particular, no intelligent effort could be made to "combat piracy" without confronting the problem of the Amnion. As the personnel, resources, and determination of the UMCP expanded, so did its mission, which soon came to include the defense of human space against any crime.[/quote]

Who did the interpreting here, urging the expansion of the UMCP's mission? It's not said here, but it is probably whoever owns the United Mining Company. Perhaps it's some other governmental authority, but it's not yet clear about that in the text.

[Cord Hurn]

The UMCP seemingly grew out of the United Mining Companies expansion in space. Given its industrial corporate nature, such an enforcement body is already smack bang in the centre of an inevitable conflict of interest.

Which I think has made the UMCP itself readily corruptible.

So how has a private security provider become in charge of and mandated with the security and safety of all space beyond the Earth?

I hope someone can explain this, because I apologetically feel at a loss to explain it myself.

Some of the ways in which the UMCP gained power to become a formidable government force haven't been discussed thus far in the story. So, alas, I must not discuss them here because It would be providing spoiler information.

But, I feel I can at least say this much: there will be Ancillary Documentation chapters in the next Gap book, A Dark and Hungry God Arises, that give further details about the rise of the UMCP's power.

[Cord Hurn]

I hope that in the future, readers of the Gap will feel free and comfortable to post their own thoughts on the chapters being discussed here on the relevant threads in this subforum, regardless of how long it has been since someone posted in a particular thread.

After all, the texts of these books have not changed by so much as a single punctuation mark over the years (so far as I know), and aren't likely to change one bit, so a comment made years after the last comment in a Group Read thread can still seem comfortably matched with earlier posts about the same chapter. I'm glad we're making some of these chapter dissection threads, and once again I appreciate all the contributors, here and elsewhere in the Group Readings forum!