So, for the record, I dislike COE's rewrite. It has room for improvement, but the fundamental premise remains flawed (and COE agrees with me), so I'm not going to belabor the point.
But holy wow, I don't really even know what to say about the author's chosen draft. It amounts to nothing less than a bill of censorship - and let us all remember how that played out
last time censorship became an issue. Ordinarily, I would try to write an improved draft even of a bill I didn't want to pass, but this one is just so unworkable I can't even.
First of all, you can't put
examples in the Legal Code! It's not a narrative document. It doesn't justify or explain itself beyond its written provisions. If you want to codify who can declassify material, do
that. If you need to make sure people understand the clause you're exampling,
write it more clearly.
Second of all, this layout sucks. Definitions, like "secure area", go on top, not mixed in the middle somewhere, or - even worse - at the end. And the definition is really bad, too - if A has access to areas 51 and 52, and B has access to 51, and C has access to 52, under your definition Area 51 is less secure than Area 52 and Area 52 is less secure than Area 51. This is awful. And lest you think I am making this example up, see
literally any ministry headquarters as compared to another.
Including "without limiting" any off-forum area is another huge mistake. For example, not all people have access to the TNP Discord chat. They all
could, if they chose to create an account and log in and request access, but they
don't. It also excludes banned individuals, even if they were to hold citizenship on the forum. By this definition, someone wouldn't be able to transfer a conversation from a private RA only discord chat to the private RA subforum because one person was an ass on discord and got banned. This despite such a chat being explicitly for that very purpose!
Thirdly - because (did I mention?) this definition is
really bad, "private message" encompasses literally everything... and nothing. Is a multi-PM a private message? Is a several person discord chat outside of any server a private message? How many people do you have to add before it becomes not-a-private-message? Is a query on IRC a private message? What about a channel with only two people in it? What about three people in that channel? Again, how many do you add before it's not a private message?
If you want to limit it to anything that only 2 people can access, what if those people discuss important government business that falls under the ownership of a government department? What if they set up a secret area of the forum to discuss in?
This stuff is complex, and hard to get right, and the offered definition falls on its face. Go home, "secure area", you're drunk.
Next, let's dig into the court section. First of all, why is it being limited to TNP residents? In all other cases, we grant the possibility that any individual might have cause to bring something to the court. It's also opened up to "any person" later on, so this inconsistency seems sloppy (if unintentional) or bizarre (if intentional). Oh, and since this is related to the espionage law, it's plausible a non-tnp-resident citizen-of-an-ally could need to contest some material taken from a "secure area" of theirs, except that there are no provisions to address non-TNP material. Whoops?
Back to the court. You cannot have it both ways. The court's powers are limited, explicitly and by design. Either this is a criminal trial - which it must be, for the court to conduct it, as that is the only kind of trial authorized under the constitution - and must be treated as such - or it is not a criminal trial and the court does not have the power to fart in its general direction.
Additionally, the punishment laid out - and make no mistake, it
is a punishment, and a restriction of someone's rights - cannot legally be applied
without a determination of guilt. The bill of rights protects nations from suffering punishments absent an actual finding of guilt, or an outright TOS violation. Full fucking stop. A criminal trial without a finding on guilt is merely farce.
It is also blatantly unconstitutional for the Legal Code to attempt to strip a
guaranteed constitutional right from a nation who - again! - has not even been found guilty of misconduct, but has only been accused. I'm going to quote that part here so everyone can see it:
No action by the governmental authorities of the region shall deny to any Nation of The North Pacific, due process of law, including prior notice and the opportunity to be heard.
You may not take away their right to be heard. You may not take away due process.
NEXT. It is wholly inappropriate for the court - a body which is supposed to be making unbiased rulings after considering all the facts - to make any kind of preliminary ruling as to the actual facts of a case. This is not a parallel to banning someone from the region prior to conviction in a trial - in that situation, the court can consider
in the abstract whether a person with X endorsements and Y influence, if they intended to overthrow the government, would present a genuine threat, without needing to know any of the evidence against the nation in question or anything at all about their intentions. That has no bearing on a case of publishing material, where it is *ahem* material to the facts what the specific content is, and what the facts are regarding its release.
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
To respond to your reply to COE, your arguments are largely nonsensical.
Espionage requires the information to be shared with a "group or region", rather than merely posted publicly. On its face, this seems to require an active act of distributing information to a foreign entity.
That is neither true "on its face" nor from any legal finding by the court. Releasing classified material publicly on the forum is, in fact, sharing with a group - that group being "the general public". And having been part of the drafting process, I can assert confidently that that was in fact its original intention.
I think that your version affects those rights adversely to a far greater degree than mine, by relinquishing the decision directly to the A-G or even a private citizen. Further, it is far less effective by requiring the restoration of the material should there be a finding of NG for espionage, which may be due to a technicality (such as a missing fault element).
In other words, "your bill is too restrictive of peoples' rights, and also makes it too easy to correct unjustified restrictions on peoples' rights."
I could go on, but need I?