Comlink Quandries, How far is too far? Options

[Degausser]

I'm getting confused about comlinks in Shadowrun, and how extensive the "big brother is watching" trail is. For example:

Let's say you've got a comlink, and some cash in a bank. But you lack a fake SIN or an actual SIN. Does that mean that you can't even go down to the local stuffer shack and grab the new Artery Clogger 3000 insta-nuke burger? The book says that computers read your comlink to map purchasing trends and such. So, if your comlink doesn't have your SIN, will it alert the authorities?

What about walking down the street? Does the GPS in your comlink monitor every place you been and broadcast the data? I realise 'hidden' mode makes your comlink not show up to other comlinks (well, not normally) but does it also stop all the stupid big brother crap? I know that you can just turn your comlink off (or the wireless reciever off) but will that preclude you from going anywhere or buying anything? (the book says comlinks are the primary source of payment in the sixth world.)

[knasser]

You're going to get a range of different answers on this one. But I think that only goes to show you that you as GM can justify quite a range of answers in your own game and still fit in with what's published. Also, bear in mind that a lot of this will vary according to location. Bellevue will be different to Tacoma which will be different to Redmond or the NAAN.

My own answers would be as follows.

Commlinks are often the means of payment and may / will have a biometric reader built in for security. However, I see the usefulness of the commlink being primarily that it is an interface that is already linked in to the systems of whatever shops you're currently in / subscribed to, that you have instant feedback about your bank balance, credit line, current bill total for all the clothes you've picked up in the store so far and, also importantly, bank details ready to be transferred to the shop. In short, it's the most common means of payment because it's incredibly useful and convenient. I think there are others. For example, stores will probably have their own (biometric) ways of authenticating you and your bank details assuming you know your details.

There are also still credsticks around that aren't tied to a particular SIN. You can purchase these from banks just by dumping the nuyen from your account and getting a credstick with the equivalent balance on it (minus a charge). These would be a common means of carrying electronic nuyen about for people without SINs or who wished to make anonymous purchases. They could also be biometrically tied to a particular user, perhaps.

Probably you could do the same with your commlink (though perhaps less securely). Essentially all you need are the electronic keys to the balance and that's as easy on a commlink as an anonymous credstick.

There's also the possibility of banks that don't require a SIN for an account. Well, when I say banks, it might just mean a Yakuza sponsored operation. But the SINless have to get by somehow. Quite possibly there are small independent banks that people can join, even community based ones.

As to being picked up or traced walking down the street. it depends where you are. Assuming that your commlink isn't in Hidden mode then you may need some sort of fake SIN in it, but I don't think any routine checks would be anything other than the most cursory. The problem would be when you put your comm into Hidden mode. The cameras will know that someone is there, but they wont know who, and that probably will get flagged up for a much closer look. In more affluent / controlled areas, having your comm in Hidden mode is a big red flag.

[WearzManySkins]

Well most SINless have have certified credsticks they use for transactions like you described.

Now if your comm link is buffed out ie max upgrades/increases, most causal scans by stores will gain them nothing, or if you a worker of AR/VR skills you can give the stores some preset/false data for them to grind their numbers to select your purchasing trends.

ie You walk into a Department Store, your falsified trends, leads them to believe you are mega spender, with "weird" tastes. So you might even get a meat body to come and ask you if you need assistance.

As for walking down the street and the street spam, well keep you comm linked buffed up to SOTA. You can tell your GPS to forget about where you have been. Just because the comm link stores some information about you does not mean the information has to stay "accurate". :D

[knasser]

[mfb]

the interesting question to me is, if i'm walking around Bellevue with my commlink in Hidden mode, or even turned off completely, how is anyone going to know? i'm not logging onto any networks, so they can't scan for Hidden nodes and find me. unless they try reverse triangulation (noting my physical location and attempting to find any signals coming from that point), which should be at least as non-trivial as regular triangulation, there's not going to be any way to tell that i'm in Hidden mode.

unless... maybe if you're not in Hidden mode, you have an AR icon? so a drone or a hacker using a seccam sees my physical body, and if they don't see an AR icon over me, they say "hey! he's either in Hidden mode or he doesn't have a commlink turned on!"

in that case, though, it should be pretty easy to stealth around in a place like Bellevue, simply by sticking fairly close to people who do have an active, non-Hidden commlink. if you're careful and lucky, anyone (hacker or drone) who sees you will see an AR icon nearby and will assume it's yours. i think that'd be a Shadowing roll, rather than Infiltration.

[knasser]

That's a good point which I hadn't thought of. I'd always just thought that the cameras would spot someone walking along and if they didn't pick up a corresponding ID signal, they'd flag an alert. But pinpointing the signal with that accuracy would be difficult. It would probably require some degree of active participation from the commlink - "I'm a commlink, I can see you from this angle and the camera over there from this other angle. Can you work it out from that or do you need more info?"

However, I think face recognition would also be quite advanced by 2070. Maybe not sufficient for identifying people without any hints, but it should be easy for the security system to pull up the photos attached to all the IDs currently being broadcast at it by the passing commlinks.

it's a good point though. There are a number of other ways around it (such as handing off information from camera to camera along the route and working it out through elimination), but it's definitely something that needs to be answered.

[hobgoblin]

Im not sure if one can get a comlink without a sin...

[psychophipps]

It main book states that black comlink access for those trying to stay off the books or without SIN is fairly common.

Hell, it was the only way Bulldog could get access with his criminal SIN,
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

[Demon_Bob]

[Jack Kain]

[mfb]

haha. you know what? it shouldn't check for a SIN--it should check for a positive account balance (bank account, certified credstick, whatever) or available credit. if you don't have a SIN, you don't have rights, sure, but unless you're causing trouble (possibly including such felonies as Walking while Goblinized), nobody cares where you go--as long as you are a potential customer, verifiable through a financial account linked to your commlink.

[hobgoblin]

Well the has always been the concept of certified credsticks. But can a comlink be pre-paid, like some mobile phones are today?

[mfb]

if my idea were how SR worked, then... yes, sorta. you wouldn't get charged just for being online (beyond the amount you pay, if any, to your MSP). basically, as long as your commlink is connected (skinlink, subscription, whatever) to an account with a positive balance--be it a bank account, a certified credstick, or whatever--then you'd have a much-reduced chance of getting hassled for being where you aren't welcome.

[Degausser]

Just had a thought in relation to he walking-around-while-in-hidden/off mode.

Comlinks run off of batteries. Sure, super-sophisticated sixty-years-in-the-future bateries, but bateries none the less. What if a perfectly 'normal' person forgot to leave the house with their comlink. or forgot to charge it? Then they would be running around without a comlink. You gotta figure this would happen some of the time, right. Is lonestar willing to track down every Joe, Jhonny and Mary who forgot to take their comlink to the corner convieniance store/forgot to charge it the night before? Might make the game a little more believable for 'walking around."

Plus, you gotta figure there are paranoid dudes out there, perfectly legit people who just like running their commlinks in hidden mode because they don't want to broadcast everything to everyone. Sure, they'll make phone calls and buy stuff, but they don't want anyone they don't know looking at their details. So maybe running in hidden mode isn't so strange.

[Meriss]

One prob with batteries Degausser. You know those Eco watches? They have this itty bitty pendulem that winds a teeny spring that makes the watch go. And aparently they're working on human powered junk all over the place. I'm not saying your low end link has one of these but you're SOTA link might. (And yes they have an electric version of this) Then again I look at anything that says future and go "It's the future frag it they can do anything" But that's just years of sci-fi reading talking.

I agree with you on the paranoid dudes. Heck some of these guys might have whole "Don't mess with me" bunkers somewhere (Total gun freedom it's a beautiful thing)

[laughingowl]

Yep

Shadrun to the best of my impressions pretty much gives for 'normal' uses, energy is not a problem.

lasers and huge drain items might have an endurance but expect you commlink to last longer then you is the impression I get.

[kzt]

[Sterling]

Okay, my take on this (and again, I'm Not Your GM aka INYGM) is that you only need one commlink, but a SINchip needs to be present. This allows your commlink to make purchases and know whose bank account to debit. It's possible you could have prepaid commlinks, which is a really nifty idea, but you'd have to have some sort of fake data so the commlink can identify you when queried by nodes or drones.

And that's my 'vision' of how it all works in SR4land. As you walk down the street, your commlink is moving from node to node. But as you're jandering down the street, a drone will be running a circuit (in AAA zones, maybe as thick as one drone/block) and as it passes overhead it's lazily scanning people and checking their PANs. If it spots a person with a PAN in hidden mode (which might as well be no PAN), it either announces it or reports it to the appropriate security personnel or both. A Spider may be alerted and jump into the drone. This means that with a rating 1 illegal SIN and the cruddiest piece of junk Commlink you could, in theory, have no problem walking around. Four million people in Seattle means there's such an overload of information that in the short term, you can count on the odds being in your favor. Drones are everywhere, from acting as stoplights/traffic control, courier duty, etc, but there's only so much a drone can do.

The drones aren't even much of a danger beyond PAN checks, since a decent lined coat and concealable holster means even a heavy pistol (zero modifier base to detect it) is now at negative three dice on the test. Every drone in the book has a sensor of... you guessed it, three or less. Therefore, without a clearsight autosoft, the drone can barely check PANs per person. If you do think Lone Star or whomever can afford to dump Clearsight autosofts in every drone, there's another factor, the problem drones have in targetting metahumans (another neg three dice) so even with an autosoft rating of four in clearsight, the drone has one die to roll to get a five or above.

This came up in my last session due to the fact two of the players had SR2/3 era characters. The mage didn't have any problem, really. Commlink off and invis means you're not on the grid and no one notices. The Samurai was pretty bummed, but then I pointed out that a commlink in the hidden or off position coupled with a good chameleon suit and a decent infiltration skill or stealth skill group means never having to deal with drones or nodes at all (no commlink, and neg four to be spotted, plus any stealth successes). The only three flaws in that plan are thermographic vision, which can be fixed with the thermal dampener addition to armor, ultrasound... which I don't even need to mention how easy that is to get around... and mages. Damn fingerwigglers... but they're not as common as say, a drone.

I also reasoned if you had two sins and two commlinks, one for your 'everyday' activities (decent SIN rating, light pistol license, bland average data) and your Shadow SIN and Comm (tricked out comm, max affordable SIN, licenses for everything, yadda yadda) the best place to switch would be a boundary overlay (like zoning in most MMORPGS) where you leave one node (like the Metrolink station) and enter another (stepping out into the street).

Commlinks offer the new 'easy' way of running, hack it until it can't be hacked or spoofed or edited, then start shooting. But there's still several oldschool ways (the chameleon and stealth option, for example) that can work out well. Hell, you could just drop 1100 nuyen (book value) and wear one crappy commlink with a rating one SIN, do the run all muscle no tech finesse, and when it's done take off your Urban Explorer jumpsuit and helmet and chuck the crapcom into the Puget Sound. Congratulations, 'Bob Jones', the guy who noisily broke into that secure facility is now off the grid forever. This doesn't even touch the old standbys of kidnap/threaten/extort an employee to get you in with their legit passcode.

[Degausser]

Two things:
1) Batteries: this was just an example. What I meant to illistrate was that there are all sorts of reasons one might not have their comlink with them at every point in every day. It could break, be stolen, forgotten, get a virus, become hacked . . . . (not to mention NOT having a comlink isn't a crime. The technology is still only six years old. . . there's gotta be SOME holdout people still left in the world witht their old cell phones and cyberdecks). The question I really meant to ask was "Is Lonestar really going to stop and question every single non-comlink user who they happen to find? My initial questions were really more for the idea of how a person with a comlink but without a SIN could survive, not if a dude could survive by turning OFF his comlink.

2)

This is how I view hidden mode:

Dude turns on "normal" mode (A.k.a. super noobie mode) and he is broadcasting his signal out there, trying to get as much attention as possible. Yay, good for him. All other comlinks pick up his broadcast, and he picks up all other comlink broadcasts.

Dude turns on "hidden" mode and all of the sudden he stops advertising. However, if you "authorise" a user (or, in my mind, give him some information, akin to modern day IP address) then your buddy can "ping" for your comlink, and, if it's in range (and if you are allowing him to talk to you) your two comlinks can handshake, start a diologue, whatever.

Note that it IS possible for hackers to hack a 'hidden' comlink, it's just harder. In my mind, (and again, I'm no computer engineer) the hacker could 'ping' the area, determin which comlinks are transmitting at all (even hidden comlinks are transmitting to their buddies) and then try to force the comlink to give them access. Tough, but the book has rules for it.

[kzt]

[Sterling]

Regarding hidden versus active versus passive, there's a website here that has been around for ages. Click on ShieldsUP for a check on your PC's security.

What it does is it scans your computer (the one you're on now, also taking into account your firewall, router, or whatever) and sees if the ports are considered open (active in SR4 terms), closed (passive), or stealth (hidden). This can be done while you are online, receiving mail, etc. So yeah, the technology does somewhat exist* to show if your computer is in active, passive, or hidden mode. And if you're in proper hidden mode, your PC won't even respond to an IP ping.

*I do need to mention that the port example would be practically airtight if it wasn't for the fact the first thing the website does is tell you your IP address. But this does fit, it's sort of similar to the broadcast ID KZT was mentioning. Like a wireless MAC address.

And KZT, I do think there is a lot of truth to what you say, but as an example, I can swap the SIM chip out of my cell phone into another, and the wireless phone companies don't want me to do that either. While your average person wouldn't be able to do it, I never underestimate the dedication of a shadowrunner with a microelectronic toolkit. But yeah, we can go with your premise and then say a runner has multiple commlinks. If you're dropping three to six thousand on a fake SIN, you'd want a decent commlink to back it up.

[Degausser]

Yeah, I need to upgrad the firewall on my comlink. Running in hidden mode just isn't going to cut it.

[mfb]

[bait]

[Degausser]

Hey, just a quick question that has very little to do with this discussion.

Can a dude manipulate AR without AR gloves? I was under the impression that he could use his comlink's interface to interact with AR devices (it was just more clunky than the AR gloves.) Am I on the right track here?