Imperial Intelligence & The Ine Givar

[Captain Midnight]

Originally Posted by G. Kashkanun Anderson

A good place to start might be Great Britain's Official Secrets Act of 1989. Section 5 of the Act deals with penalties for disseminating secret information.

Merely mentioning something in conversation wouldn't be the same thing as publishing information about it, or actively seeking to disseminate information about a top secret Imperial organization.

I'm with you on that, but his original quote was "It is illegal to mention, or even hint at, their existence." I think it would make more sense to describe them as heavily classified, which avoids the issue of the authorizing legislation being unable to actually mention the organization that it is criminalizing the mention of. ("Any mention of, or hint to the identity of, Organization X is unlawful. Reading this law after publication is considered an offense, as it would necessitate mentioning the organization. Mentioning the criminal penalties for this act could be construed as hinting at the actual authorizing text, which would imply hinting at the unmentionable, and is therefore also an offense.")

Unintended ramifications are the rule, rather than the exception, in most laws passed into the books. This should be an easy thing to do with IE-97, which, besides being incredibly broad in its scope, also happens to be a good 34 pages long!

Anyone familiar with US tax law will laugh at the childish simplicity of any edict that can be compressed into a mere 34 pages. :)

[Tinman]

Capt. Midnight. - Thanks for the goodies. That's great stuff.

As I am getting responces I finnd it incredible that the Imperium never saw a need to create a proper 'Intellegence Service'.

I have to assume that there IS an I.I.S. its just so below the radar or it's like the N.S.A. and it 'does not officialy exist' (at least it did not from the time of it's creation untill the late 70's [I think]).

As for Sec 97. I would sugest that if it's officialy 'Secret' that means if you discuss it you would be charged with relesing/leaking classified info. Thats all any one needs to say.

Of couse they could be a 'Black' Operation and carry MOJ or Naval Intell ID and they just don't exist in any report or budget ect...

For me I think they will be like the CIA. [And the roumor's that there is a secret Dept - That officialy doesn't exist - is of course absurd... :)]

[LKW]

Originally Posted by Tinman

Capt. Midnight. - Thanks for the goodies. That's great stuff.

As I am getting responces I finnd it incredible that the Imperium never saw a need to create a proper 'Intellegence Service'.

Why? Many very powerful countries have not had a "proper" (by which I assume you mean "single") intelligence service.

However, I'll say what I say to everyone: "It's your campaign, do what you want with it, as long as you and your players have fun."

[Tinman]

It just strikes me as a HUGE hole in the defence of the Empire. As a competantly run political entity it seems like a huge oversight.

I don't what modern countries did not have an intell service of some kind. However, seeing the sucesses of agencies such as the Mosad & KGB, states such as the 3rd Empire would be grossly incompetant not to have one.

By 'Proper' I mean a general Intell Service.
The Navy looks for military threats.
MOJ looks for criminal threats.
The IISS looks for ???.

There is no political/General Intell Service.

[sn0wball]

Neither the Roman, not the British Empire had anything like an Intelligent Service, since the concept hadn´t been invented yet.

The concept seems to have worked great in the 20th century, but perhaps that success didn´t carry on in the following centuries. I don´t know anything about it, but the concept might be dependend on a fast communications network - which is obviously missing in the Imperium as a whole.

Or intelligence services have too often played major roles in intrigues or revolts, so that there would be no net benefit to the Imperium as a whole.

Or there is a Secret Service, and it is working well, therefore we don´t know anything about it. Perhaps even the Emperor doesn´t know anything about it. It might be a conspiracy - Foundation, anyone ?

[Astromancer]

So where is the most coherent description of Ine Givar?

I'd like to know for a game.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Tinman

It just strikes me as a HUGE hole in the defence of the Empire. As a competantly run political entity it seems like a huge oversight.

I don't what modern countries did not have an intell service of some kind. However, seeing the sucesses of agencies such as the Mosad & KGB, states such as the 3rd Empire would be grossly incompetant not to have one.

By 'Proper' I mean a general Intell Service.
The Navy looks for military threats.
MOJ looks for criminal threats.
The IISS looks for ???.

There is no political/General Intell Service.

The Scouts are kind of like the Indian Political Service during the British government. They look for intelligence in the borders and boonies.

[Mike Wightman]

As originally presented the Ine Givar were freedom fighters, a bit like the rebels in Star Wars.
They were fighting the corrupt Imperium to prevent it taking over direct rule of planets in frontier sectors like the Spinward Marches.
Or at least that's how the early Traveller adventures presented things.

Look to GDW JTAS TAS news articles in the early editions, A:1 Kinunir, 76 patrons for an Ine Givar sponsored adventure.

[SteveS]

Originally Posted by Tinman

. . .
By 'Proper' I mean a general Intell Service.
The Navy looks for military threats.
MOJ looks for criminal threats.
The IISS looks for ???.

There is no political/General Intell Service.

Another way to look at it is that the Imperium has a multitude of intelligence agencies -- so many that they're diffused down below the level of detail of an Imperium-wide organization chart. Each is devoted to a specific kind of intelligence, and coordination of analysis goes up the chain of command of the larger divisions of government, to be coordinated as the regional nobility see fit. The nobles of the Spinward Marches would likely be watching for the next mischief from the Zhodani, coreward Vargr, and rimward Aslan. The nobles near the rim would be watching for mischief from the Solomani. Nobles to trailing would be watching for trouble from the K'kree (and ignoring the Hivers, unless the Hivers want attention). Nobles along the coreward frontier would be watching for trouble with Vargr and the humans who were part of the Ziru Sirka but never joined the Imperium after the Long Night. And nobles in the seemingly comfortable interior would be watching for internal dissention -- and watching each other.

What does the IISS spy upon? Everything. But it's specialty seems likely to be open source intelligence. One of my high school acquaintances was really good at learning languages, and when he joined the Army they sent him to Russian language school. His main job in the Army wasn't listening to covertly gathered communications, it was to read and listen to open communications -- Soviet television, radio, newspapers, public government documents, etc. -- and write reports on them for analysts to combine with covertly collected information. Or maybe he translated covert sources too, but didn't talk about that because he wasn't supposed to. In any case, there's a lot a good spy agency can learn without actually "spying" in the sense of gathering data covertly.

[jason taylor]

In the 1800s there was a lot of territory between Britain and Russia that was unknown and when it wasn't wilderness was controlled by princes no one knew much about. That is what I mean by comparing the IISS to the IPS. They do Great Game sorts of things.

The Imperial Archives might well have a subsection dedicated to intelligence analysis of reports from the differing agencies.

Also don't forget there are plenty of places to hitch a black op too.