Is Security functionally immune to Space Law IC?

General
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There is a lot to unpack with this thought so bear with me.

I want to start by saying that in 1000 hours of gameplay vaguely split between Salamander and the other Wizden servers, I have never, not once, seen any SecOff or Command officer get brigged or otherwise punished for breaking Space Law, ever. I have seen them break SpaceLaw.

Now I don’t know if it’s for meta reasons or some psychological blue-line-adjacent effect is happening, but it’s getting really old.

Though in the end, it’s not even the big, egregious things that go unpunished that frustrate me. It’s more about the small things that are not worth admin noting or the other small things that feel really petty to report. Stuff like leaving you handcuffed to the bed while brigged(while clearly non-violent), having all of your tools(including belt and tools not used in the crime) confiscated after committing petty crimes, or getting searched on code green for whispering in maintenance as a Passenger(because if the Secoff doesn’t see your name show up on the radio, he knows the only reason to whisper is a syndi headset!). All of these are real examples, and there are many more.

It also feels like SecOffs have meta-AA. Not a single department head will ever throw Sec out of their department while they trespass, let them in without question when asked, and more-or-less allow them free access to any space without reason or need. And not only that, but the SecOffs feel entitled to that access, so if you deny them, they simply ignore you and no one will ever stop them. And the idea of a SecOff being charged with trespass is actually laughable.

And lastly, can we get a little more clarity on what is legal on code blue “random” searches? I’m getting tired of getting stun-cuffed for refusing to turnover headsets, hats, face masks, gloves, boots, or whatever else that the SecOff is asking for. And since there is no one to stop if them if they choose to stun-cuff you to get that search, and it’s impossible to know if they are breaking Space Law because you don’t know what meta-shields are broken, and because no one will help you once you’ve been arrested or brigged if it WAS an illegal search, they are functionally immune to any SpaceLaw that protects people from “random” searches taking more than they are allowed.

All of these gaps and special carve-outs for Security allow them to literally walk up to any person on code green, announce they are suspicious enough to warrant a search in some way(Usually they just say “anonymous tip”), search you on green (including implant checks and glove/comm checks), arrest you for any found contra, brigg or perma you, and effectively round end you, with zero IC accountability.

Now up until this point, i’ve been referring exclusively to in-round, in-character resolution for these problems. And that leads me to the next frustration. If there is any resolution to these problems through admin notes or intervention, it is completely invisible. This leads to other SecOffs learning these habits without knowing they are bad, and victims of those habits not feeling like there is any closure or resolution. It also leads to vagueness, since all we have is the law but never the judges precedence, and the doctrine of stare decisis is kinda required to actually have a regular interpretation of law.

TL:DR Tiders have rights damn it.

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Personally I’ve seen alot of command/sec brigged and when I’m sec i take every opportunity to do this.
If you see security/command breaking spacelaw, please AHelp it. They are not allowed to do this willingly, even for small stuff.
But also just to inform you, security can search you for any reason (or no reason at all) on blue and can search you with good reason on green, they are not in the wrong for this by rules, but if you still feel it was done in bad faith, you can always AHelp.
Checking gloves is metagaming provided they haven’t found an open uplink, if someone does this to you, once again, AHelp it.
About security having Meta-AA, yeah this is honestly kind of an issue i’ve never seen discussed before, but to be frank they often need to get into departments to do their job, so its not really a big deal imo.

Shittery and breaking spacelaw isn’t acceptable on security, and if you genuinely feel this is happening in your round, AHelp. As long as you make AHelps in good faith there’s no problem. Just make sure not to LOOC argue with security breaking rules because it tends to just make things worse.

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Im not disputing that sec rarely or never gets brigged, but command officers definitely get brigged from time to time.

Sec are almost always going to be on secs side, I wouldn’t say functionally immune but rather that there is a significantly higher bar that needs to be crossed. It happens, but takes way more effort. I don’t think there is a nice ic solution, it’s just how people work. Play sec and dispute something another officer does, it takes half the round to get anywhere.

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Sec not getting brigged is kind of a ‘who watches the watchmen’ scenario (answer is admins ig), although it does depend on who sec is (personally i’ve brigged officers multiple times), but rules wise sec and command are absolutely subject to space law. If you do think a situation is unfair, ahelp and we’ll investigate it

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i recently made a post aobut adding more laws whic includes stuff that will “hopefully” give power to lawyers to do somethink about it, but most people was saying its “not needed” (we need more laws" post)

i personnaly was playing lawyer for long time untill i realized i can t do anythink besides ahelp, i ve seen Captain do capital crimes and get away with it, same with HOS, i ve seen them get slap on wrist when i complained about it to other heads / Captain, i have been forcefully removed from my job (lawyer, command and sec, once even atmos) when i atempted to do somethink about it or snitch to captain / hos, i got permakilled / permad / told to leave round otherwize said person will make sure i don t get to enjoy the round / removed from department or job for no reason / my fax removed / removed all fax machines that i could acess including libary and public ones / ignored / metagrudged / pressured into leaving my job etc. etc. you can commonly see me in salamander get super mad when these happen because my overall experience (you can also see command members teaming up agains me to remove me from the whatever command / sec role because i actually fire people or do somethink about it)

my most recent example is from two months ago when HOS said i am above the law as captain and tried varius thinks with RD to get me out of the captain job when i said i am not above laws and i will fire him on spot if he treats me as such (sorry for textwall but i am kinda fed up on this topic)

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Lawyer is an RP role that barely even works for RP, they don’t even have the power to enforce any of those laws.
Lawyer is certainly not the solution to this.

As always, ahelp to make sure these shitheads don’t get the chance to ruin any more rounds. Specially on Salamander where there is a whitelist as an extra measure, anyone getting banned due to a Salamander offense is gonna have an extra hard time getting back into that server.

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I play on MRP and it sounds like OP plays on LRP.

MRP server I play on has SOP which is like a whole ruleset separate from the server rules. I know I’m stating the obvious but it has to be said. LRP is so much different and people get away with murder just because the HoS might find it funny on LRP while on MRP this could mean a demotion or even roleban.

Personally been HoS for almost 100 hours now and I’ve demoted several secoffs for underperforming or not taking the role seriously. Given, server I play on has internal agents who act as lawyers against the personnel. They are there to make sure SOP is followed and if not they can directly take people to court.

As HoS my duty is to the law and no one, not even the captain, is above Space Law. I’ve personally arrested the captain twice for blatant law breaking and many other heads of staff. As I said before, demoting security isn’t uncommon at all and it really depends on how they behave as secoffs. If they’re too violent aka never use non-lethals or even wear stupid outfits it’s something I will punish them for. All it takes is eye witness accounts and not 1 secoffs word vs 1 of a crew member.

This is why I have a strict “no-maints” IC rule for secoffs. One, so they don’t get gibbed in maints and two, because it’s in the SOP anyway. There needs to be clear reason to go into maints as sec, like hearing a noise or you heard something was up. Just wandering into maints at the start of the round is risky but also ruins the attempts for antags to do some of their more fun stuff. They get some peace to find cool stash locations and my secoffs interact with the other crew. Everyone wins in terms of RP.

Captains who roam in maints at start or other heads of staff (apart from maybe CE doing his job) is also frowned upon, but not against any Space Law obviously, but against SOP. Break enough of SOP and you’re liable of being removed from your post. Captain included.

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Lawyer is there to defend the crew from too harsh of a sentences, or for fun, try to lower them with good RP. They aren’t really there for internal disputes. That is what internal affairs agents are for at least on my server. They are the upholders of good standard. Or upholders of the SOP. They can directly talk to the captain about those who break it and the captain has to take their claims seriously. IAA are also mindshielded at the start of the shift and cannot be antags, while lawyers are not. A lawyers RP is all about what they can come up with and in case of sec vs a criminal, that’s when they come in.

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One minor thing i’d like to add on is that there is a large role-play aspect to being security and command as well. It’s something I find alot of players on both sides forget about: Side note, this mostly applies to MRP.

Players will just view sec and command personnel as glorified NPC characters that have to respond to certain situations in certain ways and portions of the rules/space-law also make this a semi-reality but at the same time, these are still players who have their own sense of role-play, style of character and mindset on looking at things.

Space law is purposely ambiguous in some areas and entirely silent in many others. It’s not designed as a catch-all in-game rule book to followed by the letter by every crew member who isn’t an antag. Not everyone doing action A is guilty of the associated space-law A. As an add-on to that, the game is intended to be played with different viewpoints on things, while in many cases when certain things happen in game, and the majority of players expect station authority to respond in a certain way to ensure swift victory, it becomes a hidden-meta issue, probably even almost entirely subconsciously. I have seen really intense OOC discussions and anger against command/sec for not immediately doing the only “Correct” actions to win a round. Ditto on the other-side of that though, I have also witnessed members of command/sec meta-grudge and act like an NPC themselves, and I totally understand the aspect where in many rounds, many players will overlook their fellow authorities violations, if not by accident then due to them agreeing with the actions, sometimes it can really suck, especially for antags.

Also, security is designed with the idea of “meta-access” to be a thing for them. By extension of their job and duty to protect people and enforce space-law on the station they work, they are allowed access into just about every section of the station, specifically with good reason. thou their IDs do not allow it, many maps are also designed with basic access into most departments via security checkpoints. SS14 (the station itself not the game) isn’t designed as a nation-state. It’s a corporate station, security is designed as an integral defence component of the station and its crew, it’s worth noting that while security doesn’t have full access IDs, all department heads have basic security access.

Sorry for the long winded protracted drivel. Just some things I see and feel.
TLDR: Actual abuse and rule breaks by command or sec should be, and is, punished by the admin team, sometimes if no one reports what happened it will get missed, but when spotted it is handled. But there is always the human aspect to remember too, each player is and should be their own person with their own way of reacting.

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Hate to say, I’ve seen all the same. Officers being thugs, HOS being violent and metagaming, complaints to the captain being met with, quote, “I’m sorry. I don’t give a shit.” then the aHelp feeling like you put your report straight into a shredder since they don’t tell you what they determined.
The HOS and captain in question still regularly play as both, and I never see any indication that any officers ever get any sort of corrective action for poor behavior, and of course still never any update on anything when you ahelp it.
On top of that, officers seem to have lately developed a nasty habit of just calling something contra because they said so, and you have zero means to challenge it beyond asking nicely.

From what I’ve seen so far, there’s like OP said, next to no real accountability for sec or most department heads, and in fact I find you’re more likely to be punished for reporting the victimization or even protecting yourself from it. Apparently the person protecting themselves from the same tider breaking in for the fourth time in the shift and ransacking everything, then stabbing you when challenged, is blameless and just let security arrest them for a couple minutes because you can’t do anything about it yourself.
Sorry, sec needs to be reigned in since as is they’re just indulging in power fantasies and sinking everyone else’s rounds.

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Captain doesn’t even take heads seriously, much less an RP role.

And EVEN LESS when this is already a matter of a server rule break.

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I agree and don’t think Sec getting AA or partial AA is that bad, given some station have sec doors to all the departments. And yeah, totally agree with everything else you said. Sec is supposed to be careful about the laws, Countless rounds i played sec and spent more time policing colleagues than doing actual sec work

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so, I don’t play on wizden often so this might not apply here. but I’ve arrested security on MANY occasions as warden, I once arrested the HoS on delta. chances are they will try to attack you and end up with more charges but, you know. trespassing and assault are the usual charges (don’t know if wizdens space law has abuse of power but it’s a common one I arrest and fire people over) in other words with all this, if you have a competent security player, security will be held accountable.

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As someone who plays Sec quite often, I hesitantly agree with what you’re saying here regarding the blue-line effect and disagree on the meta-AA.

To get the meta-AA out of the way, it’s kinda required to do the job sometimes. Some maps even have the checkpoints as others have mentioned. I have been questioned before as to why I need in but I very typically have a good reason to do so. As my job is to respond to threats to the crew and station, sometimes I don’t have time for 20 questions. This probably shouldn’t change. However, if a head has a reason to want a member of Sec to get out of their department, and the Sec doesn’t have a reason to be there, they should leave or be charged with Trespassing like anyone else.

I have definitely brigged members of Security and Command staff before, and I do see the blue-line effect frequently regarding this. When brigging them, Warden/HoS/Cap will often question me (rightfully) but then decide that the person in question doesn’t have to serve a sentence for whatever reason. I’m of the opinion that Sec/Heads should get worse IC sentences because they are expected to be held to a higher standard. They definitely shouldn’t get off scot-free. I also see many Sec/Heads that seem to think they’re above Space Law, Captains in particular. What’s worse is when someone interferes in the arrest of a member of Sec/Command because of their position. Captain stopping me from arresting HoP for giving the tiders armory access for example.

I want it to be clear though that people can make mistakes, Sec are not NPCs like the other poster said. I’ve accidentally confiscated someone’s tools as Ward because of a mix-up where I thought the officer bringing them in said they broke in somewhere, but in reality they just tailgated into the area, not actually broke in with tools. We’ve all seen how chaotic the brig can be, how much miscommunication there is. Just because I confiscated your tools by accident, doesn’t mean I should serve brig time myself. Sometimes there just isn’t enough evidence or communication to make an informed decision. Just get new tools. I know it feels good to be right, and to get what you (rightfully again) deserve, but making a mountain out of a molehill over some tools only wastes your own time typically.

This does not excuse situations where the officers actually know better and choose to be a shitter anyway. Meta-checking gloves in a “random” search should never happen. More importantly I do think Space Law should be updated when it comes to what can be checked in a “random” search. Pockets, belt, and bags should be the only things allowed. If you wanna check headsets or gloves or anything else, there should be some kind of procedure to follow first. I honestly think that more invasive checks should only happen at Security, and maybe only after someone is taken in for some other reason, not just because “I’m Sec and you gotta come to Sec because I told you so.”

An issue I see with this, is I can recall more than 1 shift where I have a member of Security who seems to think their only job is to arrest other members of Security/Heads. A Sec shitter that seems to relish sticking it to their fellow officers. We’re talking trying to arrest me (the Detective) for trespassing for following up on a lead in another department, and even being allowed in. Another example is a Detective saying that me (the HoS) telling them to prioritize one case over the other is akin to Endangerment or accessory to whatever crime they’re investigating currently. Confrontational officers like this exist, they suck, and they shouldn’t be encouraged. Obviously I aHelp these situations, but enabling officers to arrest eachother more often will bring these shitters out of the woodworks.

The reality is you should aHelp it. Sadly I know you can’t rely on anything to come from that, but that’s what you should do.

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That`s actually how it is in ss13. Only detective can check gloves and only after he that found specific fiber that give him a reasonable suspicion. And even then he cannot randomly check all people, he need log from doors, witness, prints or DNA. Basically reasonable suspicion (Which is part of his gameplay)

Current metasearch thing literally lead to the point, as a warden i literally know 2 detective out of like more then 18 ish who know that they can get log from doors or how test prints\dna
Like those other “more then 16ish” people are just sec off in trench coat