This article got me to thinking about how screwed you would be in someone checked off dead on your SIN.

Wow. I want to say "I can't believe that could happen!" but I can't bring myself to do it. It's a government agency run by human beings. Toss in even a small margin of error, and you have a massive problem. Humans, unfortunately, come with built-in errors. Still, that's one seriously screw up. I really feel for those people.

I have had family members who have switched insurance plans who go through similar process's. The old insurance place is where the hospital send the bills who then send you a bill, but your not even with them anymore, and when you call the hospital they dont have any clue about your new insurance policy and when they call your old insurance place the old insurance place doesnt help resolve the issue at all.

That all happens because of multiple nodes of information. I think in the future there will be a central database. All the people you owe money to will subscribe to that database in order to get their information on how to bill you and what not. This would eliminate all the discrepencies. The central database would get backed up every night and have a offline daily save so nothing could really harm it. Unless you went onsite and planted c4 on the offline save and then crashed the online database hehehe.

In SRworld it seems that one of the requirements to be employed as an computer operations manager is to be mentally retarded. Otherwise they couldn't have these huge meltdowns every few years in which "all data is lost" because people who have a clue ensure that data that they consider important is backed up off-site and have an on-line replica in another physical location.

I blame it more on the fact that no one actually does anything at all with computers, in Shadowrun, but rather with computer shaped plot devices.

So, in Shadowrun, the wage-monkeys do not have problems with mistyping or not backing up, they have problems fitting square-shaped data block A into circle-shaped storage node B. Or stealing/breaking the shiny date ball altogether! Given the state of the typical data-entry positions nowadays and the growing tie-in of data with everyday life, the smallest glitch is sure to cause some interesting things.

No matter how many safeguards get put in place to protect the integrity of our data, there are always equal and sometimes exceeding evolutions of idiots and miscreants ready to break things.

That's a requirement for most management positions IRL.

And I think it describes our "IT Person" precisely. Ah, must be nice to be the owner's daughter. *cough* But I digress. Yes, I work with a lot of management types that would not have a job if they did not have a strong department underneath them to cover the slack.

In the real world, in larger organization, idiots (if nothing else) cause the backup guy to have to restore data from backups all the time. If he can't restore the VPs documents he tends to have the opportunity to seek other opportunities. Though if she's the owners daughter she might just get an assistant that actually does the work. I've seen that before.

You have to remember for every "idiot proof system" in the existence, the Universe evolves a better idiot.

SINs in shadowrun make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Say I'm a CAS citizen working formally working for one of the megas that collapsed, joined Ares in the breakup, then emigrated to UCAS and assumed UCAS citizenship, while joining Horizon.

This is not a particularly unlikely circumstance. I imagine many people do something similar today.

By my count, I have five 'passports' and five different single identity numbers, as the CAS, UCAS, and megacorps are all valid issuing authorities, and if I just change my name differently in four jurisdictions I now have five separate identities. It's really weird to take them as some sort of golden identifying label, when a john doe can perfectly legitimately have 5.

Also, one of the SINs was issued by a country that no longer exists, and probably cannot have its validity checked. Ever.

Also funny: Say I lost my records in the crash, but had a new set issued from everywhere I worked - thats now 5 'dead' and 5 'live' identities a regular corporate worker has.

What the hell?

There is a reason the FASA motto was "sell the sizzle, not the steak". Cool cover illustrations and neat ideas sold games, consistency and logic didn't and took time and money from marketing. Plus you had Jodie making changes just prior to shipping things, which is how you got the ST Combat Simulator with an event where you could kill everyone on a ship with a photon torpedo and have the ship totally undamaged. The playtesters and designers were a bit hot over that . . .

To be fair, that's rather speculative, isn't it? I'm sure that many countries and corporations attempt to set it up so that there's one master SIN that is modified as needed rather than issuing multiple SINs to a single entity. Of course, whether they're successful in having a somewhat unified system or not is another issue entirely.

There is one real advantage to being dead. You can do anything and get away with it. You could become an assassin for hire and not even make the slightest attempt to cover your tracks because the police will always be stonewalled by the fact that the only fingerprints belong to a dead person. Filing tax returns shouldn't be a problem if you don't pay taxes and, being dead, the IRS is never going to come after you for failure to pay taxes.

I hate to tell you, but the cops are not that stupid. The minor fact that someone claims you are dead will not slow them down. The reports of people's demise are often greatly exaggerated. Now the IRS, that's another matter. But the solution is that you probably won't be allowed to get hired if you are dead once the various anti-illegal proposals go through.

There is a legal definition of dead, but there is not a legal definition of "alive." If you have gotten yourself, somehw, legally declared dead, it has proven nearly impossible to get that decision reversed. I remember readong a guy who had actually had something happen where he was declared dead, complet with death certificate, and the guy spend 20 years trying to prove that he, legally, was alive. From what I understand..he died of old age before things could be straightened out.

I see no real reason for it to work like that, honestly. If I was setting up a SIN system, I'd set up a person with a single SIN, registered to them at birth, and simply attach or detach citizenships to that SIN as needed--this SIN is a registered citizen with Ares Macrotechnology, oh wait, it is no longer, remove that citizenship and attach it to Fuchi, etc. etc.

If a persons SIN get's wiped or they're declared dead or something, well tough shit. Plenty of people live without a SIN....you're just one more.

But FDR promised our social security number would never be used for identification purposes... *thrusts fists in the air* Roosevelt!!!!

Yeah, that lady really looked cut out to turn to a life of being an undercover assassin ;P I have to admit, once my house is paid off, I wouldn't mind 'killing' my wife off so she can become a high-powered, globe-trotting assassin who makes lot of secret money and buys a house in the Bahamas where I go visit when I'm not earning my paltry government salary. I'll have to talk to her about that. If only she were an identical twin gymnast porn star ninja...


Seriously though, in my game there is one SIN per person, no matter who creates it. Technically an entity capable of creating SINs could sell legitimate SINs for money, which would be pretty sweet. That single SIN travels with you where ever you go, and if by some chance you get a second one, legally you're supposed to tie it back to the first.

remind me, are there fingerprints or dna data attached to current day social security numbers?

No. At least not yet. (Cue RealID Card...)

I have to imagine there are cases where they are. To qualify for my government job, for instance, I needed a background check, a social security number, and to have my fingerprints scanned, which would imply to me that there's a database somewhere storing all that together.

It's kind of unlikely if you have never been fingerprinted.

If you have, then yes. This includes fingerprinting for the military, a job, gun permit, etc. It all ends up in IAFIS.

The identifiers IAFIS uses for reporting matches seem to be:

"1) FBI Number

2) State Identification Number (SID)
The SID is an identifying number assigned to the subject of record by the state in which the arrest occurred. Enter SID numbers with no more that ten alphanumeric characters, which includes the state abbreviations.

3) Social Security Number (SOC)"

Plus name and birthdate. All the various names and birthdates, as criminals change these like most people change socks.

DNA is typically only in the database for people arrested for felonies. And I'd assume that it uses similar identifiers, but I can't find the users guide for submitting samples to see. I am uncertain if the samples the military takes from enlistees are filed in the database or not.

The samples taken by the military from enlistees can, by law, only be used for identifying corpse-chunks left behind by nasty explosives mishaps and other things. It is in a database but, to my knowledge, isn't connected to any other databases.

so thats the "real" problem here, that nothing thats part of the person ties the number to said person.

therefor, when a person is declared dead, it becomes a war of words about some person or other belonging to the number or not.

but then again, trying to id someone have been a issue for all of human history.

its not without reason that a girl was more or less required to be a virgin until married up to present day chemical birth control.

it was the best way to tell if a child really belonged to the father...

but then, who ever came up with the idea of tying the bloodline to the male side of the family in the first place didnt exactly have a practical world view...

As far as I'm concerned, the UCAS set up SINCentral as the main housing of all SINs, other countries and megas contracted with them to be able to issue SINs and track people entering their borders and doing business with them respectively. The people at SINCentral, realizing they essentially held all the cards, then busted away from the UCAS government (by offering to lower fees to megas who backed them). Then, in order to better profit from the situation, they began contracting to different agencies who actually worked the monitoring and distribution of SIN data. It's this last part that causes there to be discrepancies (because not all agencies will admit they didn't have the money to buy the latest updated data or upgrade their systems to an "authorized" level of safety). SINCentral still exists, but it's in their favor to make more money by contracting out, allowing for loopholes, and giving corps the ability to make some people appear or disappear.

The "actual" identifier that AIFIS uses seems to be the FBI number. This is what the fingerprint record appears to be actually linked to, that is the primary key. As people can use multiple SSNs, names, etc these are not suitable for use as a primary key.

As the cops often solve cases after the perp is dead, the people running the database don't really care if the person who has these fingerprints is dead or not. What matters to them is that the fingerprints probably belong to FBI number A and that FBI number A is tied to the following other data....

Nobody outsources a critical service that is required to be reliable to an organization that is untrustworthy. Your customers will cut you off at the knees. See the example of what happened to CardSystems. They went out of business 3 months after their customers found they were violating the user agreement and facilitating fraud. Corporation compliance offices and government regulators have no mercy for people who steal from them while being paid to perform a very sensitive and security critical function.

SINs, as I see them, are not a central truth database. They're basically just a government anchor for other data. Your SIN has some fairly basic information about you, like your legal name, gender, some general details akin to what you'd find on a driver's license, if you're a federal criminal, and your picture. Then, data such as a driver's license, permits, tax records, and bank information is then tied to that number, both in terms of hard copies and what you keep on your comlink.

My personal point of view is that once you have an id that has valid biometrics you are done. That's your permanent ID. You can't ever get another valid biometric ID (from anyone who talks to the issuer of the original) or use another biometric ID wherever the original is valid. It will always produce the original ID if they run the biometrics.

However, not many places actually do do that, or can do that. They verify that you match the biometrics on the card, not you match the real biometrics that are stored in the main database. This is for reasons of cost and security. Only a very few places are allowed to run those checks. So don't get arrested and booked.

And don't ever burn your real biometric ID. It makes air transportation, border crossing and several other things kind of painful.

One could assume that every one gets one SINs, that is updated when needed. Nationality would be listed amongst various bits of information, along with metatype, age etc., and used for cross referencing identification. This, of course, doesn't mean that there aren't loopholes. No system is without fissures in it's construct.

Typo correction: One could assume that every one gets one SIN....

The one SIN system has problems too - who do you trust to be the orginating authority? It cannot be someone you might ever have a disagreement with, because if it is, they can just wipe all your identify infomation out, set it on fire, and spit on its corpse, and now no-one on your team can identify themselves. Plus does anyone in tibet or china actually have a sin then?

If there are multiple copies that actually have the capability to be different, you can very well end up with my multiple ids situation

It's really rather weird. Especially when you consider how fake SINs interact with the system.

A rating 6 fake may/should/might get you onto a suborbital, something that requires biometric identification. But even if it doesn;t, you use thumbprints to authorize basic purchases. So when I buy an R6 'fake' (or even an R1) why can I actually discard that identity? It should always remain traceable. Heck, they should be able to cross reference with their own database once they figure out that I'm faking and find ALL my ids. But they cannot, so the question is why not?

The only reasonable explantion (and this isn't particularly reasonable, but its all I've got) is that everyone and there dog is an issuing authority, and won't disclose their databases to outsiders. So when lonestar asks if this person is who they claim to be, all they can do is send a bundle of biometrics and name infomation to Horizon, and Horizon returns with 'yes' or 'no' - and nothing else, not wanting to help lonestar.

This neatly prevents lonestar picking up DNA and running it through everyone and their dogs database, because they need a name otherwise no-one will talk to them. If they have a name (say they have a list of people who went into the area) they can just ask everyone one after the other (thats only about 100 requests) until they find the issuing authority.

This allows you fakes easily - you just invent a new name, a hacker fradualently issues a fake from some arbitary issuing authority (say, some NAN council, or australia, or really whatever.) and then you re-use the same biometrics.

It's sort of the only explaination I can see for fake sins, and sins, and biometrics working. I'm open to suggestions however

I've always thought that SINs are an abstract method of identity. What I mean is that there are so many places that a person can be from and so many unreliable agencies out there that the only way to verify if someone is who he says he is is to follow the data trail his life has left behind. So running someone's SIN is like running his name through a search algorithm, if the computer can generate enough hits specifically enough hits through large agencies such as banks and stable government beuracracies then that person and his SIN is real.

A patrol car with a weak computer and only a few minutes to work will generate only a few hits even with a legitimate SIN so a low rating fake SIN may work. A powerful computer will be able to generate mountains of data in a few seconds so only a high rating fake SIN will be able to fool it.

So even if a SIN started off fake the more you use it the more "real" it becomes. This SIN will track where you live, work, shop, play, etc. If someone is trying to track you down using a fake SIN and all of the data trail of that SIN is fake then that person will most likely not find you. That's why a real sin is a disadvantage. This SIN can be used to track down people you know, places you've been, even your family members or friends and ultimately you.

In my games a SIN is similar to a passport. The concept is universal. If it's issued by Ares, it's still valid for MCT, Horizon, the UCAS, CAS, Caribbean League, etc... Like a MAC address from LinkSys is the same as one from NetGear, D-Link, etc... Just one more universal standard.

Yes, the military does keep DNA on record of all it's members supposedly for identification of remains. But as that article points out, if that's the case why not dispose of them after departure from service? And why would you let them be used for any other purpose? Well, there are a set of rules in place to be able get your hands on DNA data from that database. Currently they are fairly stringent, but I'm sure that will slowly change in the future to become easier and easier.

As for being "dead" it really only effects government programs to the degree of being a "life altering event". Most companies keep their own records and don't have access to the SSN database except for external queries and background checks. IF you owe Visa money they will still come after you even if the SS administration says your dead! "I WANT MY 2 DOLLARS!!!"