comStar Firewall alert - PhaseThrough

Matrix overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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a tag on you and you’re within range of a wireless tower or relay
point, you can be physically tracked. Your commlink isn’t the only
thing broadcasting a signal, a fact you’d do well to remember. And
while law enforcement and public services may maintain that GPS
system, hackers have just as many reasons to use it.
> If you plan an extraction, you better have a tag eraser with you. Be
sure to watch out for stealth tags, which are almost impossible to
spot. Damn little buggers.
> Mika
> Law enforcement uses RFID tags to keep track of criminals. Sex
offenders get tagged (generally someplace not so easily removed);
if they go within a certain distance of a school or childcare facility,
their parole officer is notified and a warrant can be issued. There’s
been fighting in courts over placing RFID tags in sex offenders that
broadcast their crime, so that anyone who comes within range is
notified that they are a SEX OFFENDER. Ruins their lives, since who
wants to have that in their building, workplace, or, well, anywhere?
Occasionally one of them will end up beaten or dead at the hands
of vigilantes. So far, UCAS has held that it’s legal. It’s up at the
Supreme Court later this year; we’ll see if they uphold it.
> Kay St. Irregular
> Gee, it’s a good thing that everything a RFID tag broadcasts is
the truth.
> Snopes
> Another trick for law enforcement (or the corps) is to spray out a
RFID tag “mist” that blankets a crowd with microscopic tags, enabling
them to track protestors, rioters, vandals, etc. even after the
fact. Some corps use this as a passive measure to track criminals
who break into a facility.
> Hard Exit
> If you’re tracking someone—maybe for an extraction, maybe you
want to keep track of a suspicious Mr. J, or just want to bug your
ex—you can slip a tag onto (or into) them, then tap into the system.
Doesn’t let you watch ‘em or listen in on them—you need spy gear
for that shit—but it will tell you where they go.
> Mika
SUrveiLLance SocietY
If you want to live in the civilized world these days, you have
to accept that surveillance is simply part of the package. Still, there
are a few ways to get around the all-seeing eye. The most effective is
to just make like a tree and leave. Go live in the Barrens somewhere
or the middle of the Amazonian jungle (although I hear Horizon’s
working on bringing a wireless net there, too, so the birdies and
beasties can make long-distance commcalls). There are countries
that opt out of the surveillance web. Asamando, perhaps, if you
can stand the smell. Trans-Polar Aleut, if you don’t mind the snow
and the lack of neighbors. If you want to live some place where
there is paying work, though, you’ll have to put up with the corps’
invasion of your privacy.
Of course, if you don’t have a SIN (by choice or circumstance),
you’ll be forced to survive in the edges of society anyway, like the
Redmond Barrens in the Seattle sprawl or San Bernardino in LA.
Without a SIN, you can’t have a bank account, can’t purchase a
commlink, can’t hold a job, can’t even ride the bus into the welfare
office—not that it matters, since you can’t get welfare anyway. On
the bright side, the gov’t and corps don’t know or care about your
existence. Even better, you won’t have to deal with spam.
Another way to avoid trouble is to realize that while the Man
may always be watching, he probably isn’t always paying attention.
Be smart. Buy a fake SIN. Make sure it matches up with you—even
the dumbest cop is going to know that a troll doesn’t come packaged
as a dwarf. Invest in some fake licenses for that ‘ware and the
weapons you can’t leave at home, and try not to shoot people at
bus stops. Have a couple of extra IDs and the disguises to match
‘em. Savvy runners utilize alt-skin, nano-paste, and latex masks to
make sure their real face never gets seen when they’re out committing
crimes. Living a double life is a pain in the ass, but it’s less than
what you’d get doing twenty-to-life at a Lone Star facility.
> Buying fake SINs only works if you’ve got the money. At about
1,000¥ for the cheapest (which won’t do much more than let you ride
the bus as a police scan will pop it as a fake almost immediately), it’s
out of reach for most of the SINless in the barrens. People who want
to get out often have to hock their souls to a fake-ID outfit, like the
Mafia or a Matrix gang. Or, if you’re the right age, you can hook up
with the military. A bunch of UCAS recruiting stations have moved
to the edges of the barrens—used to be kids came to them. Now,
those kids can’t even walk across town, so the military has come to
them. For a lot of the kids, it’s the only shot they’ll have of getting
out of the Barrens, or even seeing their 20th birthday.
> Fatima
On the bright side, if you’re trying to run surveillance on a
mark or just stalking an ex, really good hackers can tap into the
surveillance system and use it for their own purpose. Just like using
a GPS system to track someone, if you can tap into, say, Lone Star’s
street camera system, you can monitor your mark as he cluelessly
goes about his business. Tap into the GridLink system and you can
monitor that box truck carrying some valuable gear you’d like to
acquire. The possibilities are endless.
data SearcHeS
Anyone can run a data search. Pop a name and SIN into the
search box and click go. Even the clumsiest user can perform a
search on something—or someone—that will return amazing
amounts of information. A basic search on a person can turn up
name, birthdate, birthplace, parent’s names, employer, work history,
criminal history, education, marriages, even a SIN. In-depth
searches can turn up even more. And that’s just by a regular Joe;
hackers and technomancers can dig up information that even the
subject didn’t know. The only way to ensure your privacy is to step
off the grid, and become SINless. For most people, though (runners
excluded), that is too high a price to pay.
Data searches are just a fact of life for wage-slaves. Schools run
them, employers run them, the government runs them. Runners like
us may have a slightly different view, depending on if you started
out with or without a SIN. If you have a real SIN (even if you don’t
use it), you’ll be in the system. Smart runners will want to erase data
relating to themselves. SIN deletion is costly, time consuming, and
so intricate that only major syndicates and hacker crews have the
Unwired
Simon Wentworth (order #1132857) 9