Perhaps the life of a Starfleet officer isn’t for you. After all, it’s not unlike the real-world armed forces, where you sign away years of your life to a military or quasi-military force and all of its rules. As a civilian, you won’t see a whole lot of adventuring amongst the stars, sure, but at least there isn’t some smug guy in a uniform telling you what to do, right?
Too bad you live in the Federation, buddy. On occasion, the governing forces may decide to invoke Regulation 21, Section 6, Paragraph 4. According to Memory Beta, this regulation states that the security of the Federation may occasionally take precedence over the rights of its citizens. Now, given that Memory Beta covers works that aren’t strictly canon, you may want to dismiss this thought. Yet there’s “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine” and its Season 4 two-parter, “Homefront” and “Paradise Lost.” In those episodes, as Tor notes, the threat of an alien invasion causes Starfleet to put Earth under martial law in short order, with the implication that pesky things like civil rights might get pushed to the side
Sure, you may be saying, this is pretty dystopian, but is it all that weird? For the Federation, it sure is. Worlds within the Federation are supposed to be fair and open societies, but watching security personnel stalk the streets with phaser rifles is both strange and deeply unnerving.
