Prime Directive

Also known as Starfleet General Order One, the Federation's Prime Directive is its most important law. Violation of the Prime Directive is generally considered a terrible crime that carries severe punishment without sufficient justification of the violation.

The Directive states that members of the Federation (including Starfleet) must not interfere in the internal affairs of another species, or the natural development of pre-warp civilizations, either by direct intervention, or the revelation of technology (including the means to create such technology) to the inhabitants. When studying a civilization, particularly during a planetary survey, the Prime Directive makes it clear that there are to be: "No identification of self or mission. No interference with the social development of said planet. No references to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations..."

Starfleet officers are required to understand that allowing cultures to develop on their own is an important right and therefore must make any sacrifice to protect cultures from contamination, even at the cost of their own lives.

In all, there are 47 sub-orders in the Prime Directive.

Originally the Directive was a shield for primitive worlds. If such a world was in danger, Starfleet had been known to order ships to save that world, provided it could be done without violating the Directive. The Directive was later amended, prohibiting Starfleet officers from intervening even if it would result in the extinction of an entire species or the end of all life on a planet or star system. By the 24th century the Federation had begun applying the Prime Directive to warp-capable species, refusing to interfere in internal matters such as the Klingon Civil War.

There are two general exceptions to the Prime Directive:

The first in in cases where a an extreme threat to the Federation exists. General Order 24 authorizes a Captain to order the destruction of an entire civilization under certain circumstances. The Omega Directive is the largest exception, and is implimented when a Starfleet vessel encounters an Omega molecule. When the Omega Directive is in force, the Prime Directive is rescinded. (Due to issues of security, only Starfleet officers ranked Captain and above are privy to knowledge of this directive.) The second exception to the Directive is in the event that a protected civilization has already been exposed to the knowledge of an superior technologies and off-world civilizations.

Some Starfleet Captains, including James T. Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard and Kathryn Janeway have argued that the Prime Directive only applies to living growing civilizations and have overlooked the directive where it has been more convenient to do so.

The Federation also had no qualm about dealing with civilizations that, while posessing the requisite knowledge of advanced technology, choose not to make use of it. An example of such a culture would be the Ba'ku. Though the Ba'ku were initially treated as "protected" by the Prime Directive (Admiral Dougherty's and the Son'a's machinations aside) due to the appearance that they were a pre-warp culture, it later became known that they in fact were not.

Source: Memory Alpha