Bureau of Federal Security

The **Bureau of Federal Security**, often simply called **the Bureau**, is is a Terran domestic intelligence and investigation agency. Its task is to preserve internal stability of the Terran Federal Republic and the Dominions. It first existed as a secret police when it was still the **General Bureau of State Security** formed in 2062. The Bureau is headquartered in Geneva, on Earth. The Bureau is one of the most powerful institutions in the universe and the most influential agency in Terran intelligence.

Legally, the Bureau is restricted to Terran space. In practice however it is active across known space, most prominently in the Tesrat Republic and Ur-Han Kingdom.

The BFS was first founded by Phillipe Meursault on orders of the Custodian as a tool to eliminate political dissent. During the First Commonwealth, the General Bureau eliminated an estimated 80000 political dissidents. Most records were however wiped during the transition to the Terran Federation in an attempt to cover up the purge. Two years after its inception, in 2064, its role was expanded to cover anti-corruption and counterterrorism. Over time its responsibilities kept expanding until it became one of the most important institutions of the Federation. In 2333 the General Bureau of State Security was split into the modern day BFS and ICA. However most consider the BFS to be the true successor to the General Bureau, as the ICA bears little resemblance to it. To this day the Bureau is one of the most influential institutions in Terran politics.

## History

The BFS is one of the longest standing institutions of the Federation, as well as one of the most influential. As such its history is intertwined with that of the state it is a part of.

### Origins

The Custodian's coup to take over the European Federation resulted in the previously democratic nation becoming a military dictatorship. Nevertheless the Custodian remained immensely popular with the European public, especially lower to middle class citizens. He also had gathered the support of many corporations, to which he granted many concessions in exchange for their support of the war effort and his regime.

Even so, there was resistance to the new regime. Following the so-called month in limbo, with no clear leadership structure after the federal chancellor had been deposed, the Custodian proclaimed himself the eponymous title and effectively granted himself unlimited executive and legislative emergency powers for an undetermined period of time.

This announcement sparked protests across the capitals of the members of the Federation. These ranged from moderate in size, such as in Brussels and Frankfurt, to only a few hundred such as in Krakow. These protests were coordinated through various social media. Whilst these began as protests, there was an increasing movement in the European Parliament to depose the Custodian.

The Custodian had at this time already in mind his grand plans of human unification, and refused to be leave his position until he had completed his perceived task. In 2056 as protests grew he passed several censorship laws, most importantly the War-time Preservation of Information Act, which outlawed any anti-government speech online. This had the intended effect and crippled efforts at organised protesting for a time. A side consequence of this was the kickstarting of a large-scale armed resistance movement, which truly became an issue by mid-2057.

In response the Custodian began working on organising a secret police force. To do this he invited a senior military intelligence officer, Phillipe Meursault, to create what was to become the General Bureau of State Security. Until 2062 Meursault largely worked in secrecy with military and police services, forming the "Special Interior Service". From the beginning, both Meursault and the Custodian worked on making this force as efficient as possible, at eliminating dissidents but also at not engaging in mass executions or quotas such as the NKVD. Over the course of the following five years, the SIS executed over 5000 enemies of the state in complete secrecy. Most deaths were framed as accidents, whilst many others were sent to various military fronts and killed.

In 2062 the Custodian made Parliament recognise the Special Interior Service as an official institution, creating the General Bureau. It was presented to Parliament primarily as a counterespionage and intelligence agency, which whilst true omitted the much larger part it played in political repression. At this same time the black ops division of the SIS was reformed into the Terran Special Service, at the time known simply as Adjustments.

### General Bureau of State Security

#### European era

The General Bureau (also known as BSS) continued the work of its predecessor organisation for the rest of the existence of the European Federation. After being reformed it began accumulating more power, and became a truly general intelligence service. By 2065, it had engulfed all matters of military, civilian and corporate internal and external intelligence, as well as secret policing. This was largely due to Meursault's efforts to reinforce his agency, to put it on par with the departments led by other close advisors of the Custodian. By 2070, the Bureau was considered to be only surpassed in importance by Rijsewijk's department, the Armed Forces.

For the remaining two years of the European Federation's existence as a sovereign member-state of TAU, the Bureau consolidated its power further. It was granted the monopoly of military inspections and all other European intelligence agencies were dissolved or integrated by 2071. Between its inception and the creation of First Commonwealth, the Bureau was responsible for around 15000 deaths, still largely painted as accidents.

#### First Commonwealth era

The First Commonwealth is widely considered the "golden age" of the Bureau. At this time it had virtually unlimited powers, and this unsurprisingly coincides with the peak of the purges of that period. Whilst in 2072 a total of 15000 people on record had been executed, most of which were organisers of resistance movements, by 2076 that number jumped to a total of 30000 and by 2088 it had reached 80000. This explosion in the number of executions is largely explained by the extreme centralisation efforts made in the immediate aftermath of the Unification. These were both met with large resistance but also gave unprecented powers to the BSS, even more extensive than those it had during the European Federation.

Whilst this repression was extremely effective at destroying rebel cells, it became increasingly clear that these small resistance groups posed no serious threat to the now unified planet wide government. What was before solved with the sniper assassination of a few high ranking insurgents was now solved by cutting any support they might have had by offering extreme improvements to the quality of life of local populations. Support withered out in most places and those where it didn't direct military operations would wipe out cells before they bexame threats.

With the world unified under a single regime, more widespread calls to limit the Custodian's powers began to be heard across the globe. These were less radical than those in the 2050s, merely demanding for the return of some democratic institutions and the curtailing of the Custodian's power. To reduce this general dissent, nearly impossible to eradicate through repression, the Custodian decided to make several concessions. These culminated in the 2088 reforms. Part of these was the cessation of all political repression by the Bureau, and the establishment of the Executive Council. It is important to note that the cessation of repression did not affect Adjustments, as it did not officially exist. As Meursault was given a permanent seat, which largely stopped his ambitions to further expand Bureau powers. This put an end to the complete hegemony of the Bureau. As the Commonwealth had become the sole state on Earth, the need for an intelligence service disappeared, and progressively the need for political monitoring disappeared as the popularity of the new regime skyrocketed with its popular policies.

Due to the now near non-existent need for the Bureau, there were calls to dissolve it. These were reinforced in 2095 when the files on the purging of political opponents were declassified. Meursault himself resigned from his post as Director of the agency in February of the next year. The Custodian however still had use for the Bureau, and did not wish to let it go to waste. He assumed the office of Director himself, and he steered the organisation in a new direction. It was now an anti-corruption agency.

#### Federal era

The late First Commonwealth and early Federal era were plagued by corruption, due to the technocratic elements of government having yet to have their strict regulations and education criteria imposed. The Bureau was able to fight corruption extremely effectively, to the point where it became popular with the Terran public by the mid 22nd century.

This period also saw the resurgence of terrorism, employed by fringe political and more rarely religious movements. The BSS was allowed to devote one of its divisions to fighting terrorism, and less than a century later with the advent of cheap space travel, space piracy.

Some historians consider this to be the true "golden era" of the agency, as it was popular with all stratas of Terran opinion and all political alignments. It was also during this period that the Bureau was the furthest away from a tool of repression and closest to an institution truly protecting the Terran people.

#### First Contact War and end of the General Bureau

With the eruption of the First Contact War Terran society and institutions saw massive changes, and the Bureau was no exception. The explosion of xenophobic views quickly became mainstream and eventually became state policy. All those accused of alien sympathies were susceptible of being blacklisted at best and arrested and sent to prison worlds at worst. These operations were quickly judged to be outside of the jurisdiction of Federal Security and Control, and the Bureau was chosen to enforce these policies.

The Bureau's political divisions were reinstated and it quickly rose to prominence again. The Bureau supervised the construction of the new federal armadas and the analysis of any and all alien data.

As there was increased contact with the aliens upon the occupation of several of their worlds, many of them were shown to be inclined to work with Federation as spies and saboteurs. Terran paranoia also led to many human officers being accused of working for the enemy. In 2333, in a joint announcement of the Senate and Assembly, it was declared the General Bureau was to be split into the Bureau of Federal Security and the Intelligence and Counterespionnage Agency. This was the beginning of the modern Bureau.

### Bureau of Federal Security

#### Late FCW and aftermath

For the remainder of the First Contact War the Bureau took a secondary role as the ICA rose in prominence. Nevertheless it remained a crucial part of the elimination of all xenophilic sentiment. Through censorship, blacklisting, arrests and pure terror effectively all xenophilic groups and individuals of prominence were silenced. Those which were not silenced disappeared.

After the war ended and the Federation's security was ensured xenophobic sentiments were further strengthened, as many humans believed the wider galactic community had let the Ur-Han bully the Federation, still in its infancy compared to other galactic nations. This view has been proven to be false with modern alien records, but was nonetheless propagated by the Terran government at the time. The Bureau continued its policy of repression and it became in many ways worse than during the war. By the late 2400s, an estimated two billion Terran citizens had been arrested, blacklisted or seen other forms of discrimination by the Bureau due to perceived xenophilic views.

#### Era of isolation

With the establishment of the first dominions (2375), Terran intense repression against non-xenophobes slowed down, to complete disappear by the early 2500s with the encounter with the Menya. It is however wrong to assume that this correlated with the disappearance of widespread xenophobia in the Federation, which is only happening now.

With this slow down the Bureau also stopped blacklisting, but with its power fully restored it was now free to go after effectively anyone, as long as they were corrupt in some form. This resulted in the Assassination of Chancellor Petrovsky in 2513. This event was extremely important for both the Bureau and the Federation as it proved the Bureau essentially acted with total impunity. During an official visit to New Sidon, Chancellor Petrovsky was stopped by three Bureau agents and was shot on the spot. The justification given was that he had diverted over $70 billion to him and his supporters. Whilst this was easily proven by the Bureau and other sources, legally the Bureau had no right to such a sort of summary execution instead of a trial. Two of the three Bureau officers were tried and found not guilty.

In almost identical circumstances, an extremely similar affair happened in 2566 with Senator Zhu, who had also been diverting money but was also proven to work with the Ur-Han. Yet again, the Bureau agents went unpunished. In 2568,the Bureau was given total autonomy from Supreme Terran Command, whilst retaining its seats on that council. At this stage the Bureau reached its legal and administrative status it still holds presently.

#### Great War

Just as in the FCW, during the Great War the Bureau was relegated to a secondary role as the ICA was more important to the general war effort. However the Bureau gained an important role in occupied alien territories, as it was tasked with the "elimination of all threats and destabilising influences which can directly or indirectly compromise Terran interests on alien worlds".

Following the ultimate Terran victory in the war the Bureau established itself abroad. Primarily in the new-found Terran ally that is the Tesrat Republic as well as the occupied Ur-Han.

#### Modern Bureau

In the aftermath of the Great War the Bureau largely returned to its pre-war activities, with its added itnernational presence. Although it officially withdrew from the Ur-Han along the rest of occupation forces in 2677, it still has a sizeable influence in the country. It is also permanently, albeit unofficially, present in the Tesrat Republic. There it serves as it does in Terran dominions, but has the additional role of monitoring the diplomats of other nations which represent them in the Union of Cygnus-Orion, headquartered on Tesrat.

The Bureau has also expanded along with the Federation, specifically in its acquisition of the Terran Territories, where it plays a major role in law enforcement along with the ISCA.

## Divisions

The Bureau is divided into 6 divisions, called detachments.

### First Detachment

The First Detachment is the political police branch of the BFS. It is tasked with the suppression of political dissent. In the early 2090s, the General Bureau was sometimes referred to as the Inquisition. This name has persisted over the years and is still used to refer to the First Detachment. Originally the First Detachment engulfed the entire Bureau, but as time went on it became secondary.

### Second Detachment

The Second Detachment is the anti-corruption branch of the BFS. It is tasked with the elimination of corruption within the Terran Federation. Its agents are often called Black Coats, due to their uniforms. It is the most prominent divisions of the Bureau, despite corruption having been tremendously reduced over the years.

### Third Detachment

The Third Detachment is the data gathering branch of the BFS. It is tasked with collecting data about Terran citizens. Today it supervises cosmonet and internet usage of most of the Terran population. The Third Detachment is involved in almost every Federal Security and Control (Police), ICA or BFS operation.

### Fourth Detachment

The Fourth Detachment was disbanded in 2347.

### Fifth Detachment

The Fifth Detachment is the counterterrorist and anti-piracy branch of the BFS. It is tasked with preventing terrorist organizations from forming and from executing attacks as well as the localisation and gathering of data about pirates within the Federation. It then further transmits this information to the Terran Navy which proceeds with the neutralisation of pirates. Initially only concerned with terrorism, its role was expanded in 2453 when piracy became a large-scale issue.

### Sixth Detachment

The Sixth Detachment is the Dominion assistance, security and defense branch of the BFS. It is tasked with aiding Dominions with their internal affairs, as well as the protection of Terran interests in Dominions. The Sixth Detachment works in tandem with the Governor and Comissar of every Dominion. The Detachment is tasked with the neutering of any openly separatist movements which would wish to gain independence from the Federation. It also locates and gathers information on political dissidents, terrorists and pirates which hide in Dominion territory, and further transmits that information to the corresponding Detachment. Other Detachments can also aid Dominions and their own anti-corruption, anti-piracy and counterterrorist organizations through the Sixth Detachment.