I would say that it was a very decent step to irply group and tag the Corsair smugglers with [X], so that the opposing players had a chance to catch them via ingame action (FR5) and make the supply runs more difficult. It is realistic that it would take a little to be found out that they are a smuggler ring... so it is perfectly fine for Bretonia and other factions to strikt against the smuggler ring.
So I would not say that this step was anywhere oorp. I don't know about the rest, though.
