Sentry Service

The Sentry Service is a service in the Comms Department of the Imperial MFA. Its purpose is to monitor the signals, or telecommunication transmissions, of other nations in order to benefit the Imperial Government. The Sentry Service, or SS as it is occasionally referred to as, is somewhat of an open secret to more educated circles; in the diplomatic community and especially the MFA's Intelligence Dept, the SS is regarded as the "Eyes and Ears" of the Empire in regards to foreign nations. The SS monitors all incoming and outgoing communications of a given target; targets may or may not be civilian, governmental, military, or diplomatic.

Background
The function of a signals intelligence, or SIGINT, organization was originally fulfilled by the "Exiled Eyes & Ears," or EEE/3E. The 3E worked with the Tirnlander Exiled Government after it was founded in 1993, as an organization to monitor the communications of several political and armed groups that threatened the Tirnland's reunification process. On several occasions, the 3E either alerted other Exiled Government officers to action, or dispatched their own operatives if they decided it was needed.

One incident occurred in Somalia in March 1995, in Romania; a 3E monitor team intercepted a signal from an anarchist cell in Bucharest. This cell was planning on disrupting the "Frei Tirnland!" demonstration in Berlin the next month, and there were (alleged) indications that there was an imminent threat to innocent civilians. The 3E activated a team of assassins in the Czech Republic to target and eliminate the anarchist cell in reaction to this finding. The team arrived in the Romanian capital, and started their operation. After a week's worth of surveillance and recon, the team put together an ambush plan; one group would target the leadership for neutralization, and the other would target their headquarters in an abandoned apartment bloc. The execution of the plan went very wrong, leaving one member of the leadership team remaining, several documents unsecured, and two 3E operatives as casualties. This was broadcasted as an attack on the counterculture by the Romanian government, since the Tirnlanders were non-nationals and unable to be identified as Tirnlanders anyways. The mission was successful in that the demonstration did go off without any issues, but it showed just how dangerous a loose-cannon organization with such power can be.

In 2009, when the Tirnreich was reinstated and the land reunited, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs restarted this program under the name of the Sentry Service, identifying the idea of an "ever-watching guise of an armed guard at the nation's gate; however instead of being armed with a physical weapon, the Service is armed with knowledge."

Today, it serves mainly as a "rear" operation service, that provides information to the appropriate organizations, and leaves the operational aspect to those said organizations; essentially, they detect and report.

Controversial Actions
Several controversies have surrounded the SS as they continue to operate in stable areas as well as in the field.

One such controversy was the Orwellian Scandal of 1998. As part of a fact-finding campaign to estimate the support of a Tirnlander independence movement in the Czech and Polish regions, the SS (3E at that time) was ordered to tap the phone lines of any citizen of the Czech Republic and Poland to monitor any chatter mentioning independence or the movement that was being promoted in various back-channels. Czech officials picked up on the wiretapping, and investigated; however, SS officers were alerted to the situation, and aborted the office they had been using. When the Czech authorities arrived at the supposed comms center, they stumbled upon a t-shirt sweatshop. The SS team was again ordered to resume operations, but to be headquartered in the Czech Health Minister's estate; the Minister was being bribed by Exiled Government officials in exchange for what the Exiled called "ethnic security management," as the TEG feared a "Balkan-like attack on the Tirnlander people." Once again, the Czech authorities were tipped off by a wiretapped citizen who recognized some strange occurrences during calls, and the authorities pursued the case. Before breaking the news, the Health Minister admitted to housing what he called "pirate radio" broadcasters, which he said used his phone lines to broadcast a signal, and noted that an occasional glitch affected others on the same network. However, the authorities got to the bottom of the situation, and found and arrested the SS team. In all, 23 SS members were arrested, the Health Minister resigned, and members of his estate's help were fined or jailed.

On 14 January 2008, the SS was found out to be tapping several different networks in Poland and Germany, searching for any users who talked bad about the United Tirnlander Independence Movement. (UTIM) If the SS found a sedition perpetrator, they hired local thugs to hound the perp, in an effort to suppress the anti-Imperial views. One day a regularly tapped/attacked perpetrator in Saxony spotted the thugs stalking him, and he was able to defend himself, fight off the thugs, and send all but one into the emergency room; two bled out before the ambulance arrived. However, several innovent civilians were also attacked by the perp, and the one non-casualty thug was persuaded to come clean to German authorities, but he only revealed that he was paid to commit these acts, but not who was paying him.