http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08...31&from=rss

For as long as there have been "teh internets" there have always been info warriors. I swear there's a whole sub-sub-genre in the techno-thriller market of hacker soldier fiction. And just because I'm feeling cruel witness the horror that is Scott Bakula in Tom Clancy's Net Force!

....I'm not screaming. I'm not even upset.

Warriors sure, but soldiers organized in a corp? I've read a couple admittedly pop history of hacking books, and a history of military computing and none mentioned anything like this. I think there is a very qualitative difference between individuals and groups based on personal trust acting as "info warriors" and soldiers who take orders from a state and act in it's interest

SR always needs more venerable old military projects to act as lore in the game world. Where, like, 2 people survived.

So then where would civilian agencies fit on that scale (i.e. NSA, NRO, etc.)? One doesn't need to be a member of the armed forces to take orders from and act in the interest of the state.

Or to even act as a target of an adventure. D&D has it's guidebooks for epic level adventures. Are mobsters and corporate executives the top of the SR foodchain?

This pretty much has to happen. Just consider that crime online has revolutised itself and is now organised into mafia esque syndicates.. but the cops are incapable of acting in a way that would enable them to reach out and touch the problem.

Crime prevention and law-enforcement are the purview of the police. Virtual crime and fraud are the jurisdiction of the FBI in the United States. Unfortunately, as money is placed into the coffers of the military for wartime activities it is usually pulled from domestic services.

The idea of a military hacker brigade operating from the soil of any nation creeps me out a bit as there were some pretty solid reasons for the establishment of Posse Comitatus. Probably why the whole notion of a "Screaming Fist" fits so well into the Shadowrun dystopian mythos.