Talk: Old City

How can the FBI have jurisdiction in Old City if it's in Canada? Did I miss something here? -- SaganamiFan ^{(talk) (Contribs)} 13:38, October 30, 2011 (UTC)

Answer

I had the same exact question too. It took me almost nine years, but I finally JUST figured it out. It has everything to do with the U.N. connection between Canada and the United States. In the show, there is a SCIU office (reassigning and using FBI agents) located in New City just across the river. The FBI, though a primary U.S. domestic agency, it is allowed to operate outside of the country.

"Although many of the FBI's functions are unique, its activities in support of national security are comparable to those of the British MI5 and the Russian FSB. Unlike the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has no law enforcement authority and is focused on intelligence collection abroad, the FBI is primarily a domestic agency, maintaining 56 field offices in major cities throughout the United States, and more than 400 resident agencies in smaller cities and areas across the nation. At an FBI field office, a senior-level FBI officer concurrently serves as the representative of the Director of National Intelligence. Despite its domestic focus, the FBI also maintains a significant international footprint, operating 60 Legal Attache (LEGAT) offices and 15 sub-offices in U.S. embassies and consulates across the globe. These foreign offices exist primarily for the purpose of coordination with foreign security services and do not usually conduct unilateral operations in the host countries. The FBI can and does at times carry out secret activities overseas, just as the CIA has a limited domestic function; these activities generally require coordination across government agencies."

In regards to SCIU, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is also allowed to act on threats outside of the country. In the show, the abnormal insurgency was a massive global threat.

"Whereas the Department of Defense is charged with military actions abroad, the Department of Homeland Security works in the civilian sphere to protect the United States within, at, and outside its borders. Its stated goal is to prepare for, prevent, and respond to domestic emergencies, particularly terrorism."

As far as the FBI connection to Homeland Security, while not an actual part of Homeland, they do provide their services and resources.

"However, much of the nation's homeland security activity remains outside of DHS; for example, the FBI and CIA are not part of the Department, and other executive departments such as the Department of Defense and United States Department of Health and Human Services and they play a significant role in certain aspects of homeland security. ... The scope of homeland security includes: Domestic and International intelligence activities, largely today within the FBI;" "National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC): The current mission of the NIPC is to provide "a national focal point for gathering information on threats to the infrastructures" and to provide "the principal means of facilitating and coordinating the Federal Government's response to an incident, mitigating attacks, investigating threats and monitoring reconstitution efforts." Current guidelines define critical infrastructures to be "those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government," to include, without limitation, "telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems and emergency services, both governmental and private." The NIPC is the only organization in the federal government with such a comprehensive national infrastructure protection mission. ... NIPC Watch Center and Multi-Agency Staffing: Within the Center, the NIPC has full-time representatives from a dozen federal government agencies, led in number by the FBI and the Department of Defense, as well as from foreign partners (which have included the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia)."

The rest of the pieces kind of fell into place for me when I was researching the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council. In the real world, the United States is a major leader for "peace keeping" etc. New York City is the base of operations for the UNSC. The United States is a permanent member of the UN and one of five permanent seats on the UNSC. Canada, also a permanent member of the UN is however only a non-permanent seat on the UNSC. My logical deduction from all of this information leads me to the conclusion that while the United States can enter and operate in Canada under certain "normal" circumstances, that in the show, with such a major "terrorist" threat and the two countries being UN members that the United States was easily able to "takeover" the job of quelling the insurgency. Just like how it's the "world police" today. Of course, there has to be some jurisdictional muddling involved along the way about who's authority is in charge where, but for simplicity sake, in this case it seems like the United States can just take what it wants practically in regards to Hollow Earth abnormals due to it's high UN status.

The UN had already been involved in Old City prior to SCIU's creation by using Lotus Defense Corps. Since the LDC disappear after Episode 4x02 - "Uprising", it looks like they got effectively replaced by SCIU instead for whatever many reasons (possibly due to their ineptitude to deal with abnormals at the camp).

I made sure to add this explanation on the page under the "Notes" section. I felt it was best suited there rather than as part of the main article describing the city, as it's technically an "outside" force in connection with the city, not the city itself.

I honestly don't know how much research the writers did for this, but from what I can tell, it all pans out well, albeit surprisingly. TV shows usually get something highly detailed/complicated wrong somewhere, and with what I learned about the writers getting just about a month to put this season together (about five weeks or less), it's not bad.

--X20ArchAngel09x ^{(talk) (Contribs)} 01:10, May 9, 2020 (UTC)