Limited function angelnet system used for security, law enforcement, and general control of subject or conquered populations. Guardwebs lack the subtlety and flexibility of standard angelnet or utility fog systems, but are much easier to manufacture and rapidly deploy when required.
Guardwebs are primarily used as a method of maintaining order in situations where local populations may be inclined to engage in rebellion, civil unrest, or civil war and local angelnet or other law enforcement systems are either ineffective, nonfunctional, or nonexistent. In such situations the guardweb operates as a form of 'ubiquitous law enforcement' able to provide virtually total surveillance of all sophont activity (including mental activity if necessary) and to physically restrain any individuals who attempt to break whatever laws or regulations are in force until sophont law enforcement or military forces can arrive.
Typically guardwebs are only deployed on a temporary basis in situations where conditions have resulted in a significant breakdown in social order. In such situations the web is gradually withdrawn as local memetic engineering and diplomatic efforts work to restore social cohesion and order. However in some rare cases there have been recorded instances of totalitarian regimes using guardweb systems to subjugate and abuse either their own or other conquered populations.
The Universal Declaration of Sentient Rights contains no less than two entire definitive clauses and three full appendices pertaining to the proper and acceptable use of guardwebs and their deployment, application, and withdrawal. Violations of these clauses has been surprisingly rare, due perhaps to a combination of vigorous enforcement by sephirotic military forces and the occasionally draconian levels of transapient (and in three recorded instances, archai) retribution that have been visited upon violators when modosophont level enforcement attempts have either failed or been slow in developing. In all such in cases, no warning, explanation, or follow-up statement was provided after the transapient intervention was concluded.
For their own reasons, the transapients seem to wish to prevent the use of guardweb technology from becoming either too widespread or readily abused.
Text by Todd Drashner
Initially published on 23 February 2007.
page uploaded 23 February 2007, last updated 26 December 2007