Well, considering that vanilla YJ (and IA) don't have any Aleph units available, I tend to see things as the Imperial SS having help from Friend Computer. I'm not sure I actually count Sun as Aleph. Yes, Aleph made him, but he at least thinks he is separate from Aleph's monitoring. See that piece of fluff in 3rd Offensive (or Dire Foes) where he and Saladin are talking in a separate-from-Aleph datasphere.
I'll risk getting off-topic, but perhaps I'll be able to point you to a pararell... I'm currently running a SW RPG game. Freighter crew / smuggler oriented. So far, my players had minimal contact with the Empire: - got searched by the Customs a few times (and passed through, once custom duties were paid, and since nothing illegal was found). - got saved from a pirate attack by an Imperial Navy's warship. - seen Imperial Navy's security troops doing street patrols in their home port. Now, since their home port is on a world where there is some serious trouble brewing up - long story short, two cultures / species there are getting rowdy, and in time this is going to turn into a nasty civil war (the characters have been already smuggling supplies that the local crime lord peddles to both factions). Once this gets beyond the point of local government's ability to handle things, I plan the Empire to step in and declare martial law, filling streets with stormtroopers and having doors knocked down in search of weapon storehouses both warring factions use. I'm not intending to present the Empire as "the good guys" there (even though individual Imperial servicemen / officials might be decent and /or likeable), but definitely they can be sensible. Forces of law and order, even if they might get somewhat iron-fisted there. But their primary job is not to opress and laugh in an evil manner - their job is to maintain law and order, and assure that the state - socierty - economy does work. They didn't come to help the characters against the pirate attack because they're good guys - they've done that, because a pirate group was attacking civillian freighter. And that's impeding the interstellar commerce - Navy's job is (among others) to keep shipping lanes open for trade. And, by pararell - I do perceive Imperial Service to be likewise. They were initially created to fight Triads (i.e. organized crime) the ordinary YJ police forces couldn't handle. Because that's what the state does: ensure the society and econoemy can function without unlawful interference.
A lot of people did. Turns out the rest of the Yu Jing faction was just created to be an Evil Empire for PanO and JSA to fight.
