So, you remember that piece about the Ubiquitous Law Enforcement system that performed exactly as designed and arrested everyone due to edge cases not taken into account?
We’re not there yet - it still requires Russian bureaucrats - but we’re getting closer…
Are we sure those bureaucrats aren’t secretly Ukranian sympathizers reading from Simple Sabotage Field Manual - Wikisource, the free online library ?
So… heroic freedom fighters struggling against the regime by turning the tools of their job against it, or petty-minded jobsworths enforcing the rules out of inability to conceive doing otherwise (or possibly being shot)? I know which I’m betting on.
(It’s actually neither of the above, since I’ve been reminded that some ridiculous quantity of fines enforced by the Russian traffic police end up directly in the pocket of the Russian traffic policeman.
I mean, just 'cause there’s a war on doesn’t mean you can stop the good times from rolling. Just everything else.)
Also a good reminder that sometimes “jobsworth syndrome” emerges not because of intellectually or ethically lazy employees, but because the consequences of trying to do better than your job will get you fired or even killed, depending on regime.
(Further corollary that in any society barbaric enough that ‘working for a living’ has a near literal meaning, the former can be just a ‘softer’ form of the latter)