I didn't want to derail the other SIN thread, so I'll pen my own.

Understandably, we focus alot on the runner aspect of SINs, why we need to create fake ones to 'stick it to the man' and breeze past locations. But then I started thinking, how do non-runners handle it.

Given how it happens nowadays, and the increase in...well..temptations...in the 2070s setting, how do high muckitymucks or even sorta-high-up-on-the food-chain types pull off the shenanigans of illicit behavior? Going to the strip club, hooking up with Candy and her friend Mindy, secret rendezvous at the loveshack?

Its a given that you have to have a commlink active in a Medium or higher rated zone, but if you're Mr. Corp VP and you don't want record of your visit to Mistress Naughties House of Pain, how do you do it? You can't go hidden, as you'll raise a flag. But I don't really see every badbadboy/girl running around with fake SINs either.

On one hand, I guess this is why corps probably offer their own in house 'entertainment' to those they feel deserve it, so at least records of naughtiness sorta stays 'in house'. But obviously there's a criminal empire that runs on smut and blackmail, so high up enough people still go off the reservation.

Paying with certified cred is easy, it'd be like using cash instead of your credit card at the stripclub/brothel, but given the focus on all-commlink all-the time, how do 'normals' pull off covert stuff? Is it just impossible by the rulesetting without them using their own hacker connections?

Money money money money.

Monaaaay.

If a mucky-muck needs something done, he bribes somebody to do it. They don't get their hands dirty, that's what shadowrunners are for.

He doesn't want record of his visit to Mistress Victoria? He bribes someone to erase the backtrail. Enough money and power will get anyone to turn their head.

Or he hires some runners to extract his favorite bunraku girls to his house in Outremer for the weekend.

Would he even have to? With the resources at Johnny McRichMan's disposal, he can just pay the Yaks/Mob/Whoever to bring them up and keep contractors out of it.

Well, if he goes with independent talent, he doesn't have to worry as much about his former associates blackmailing him about his involvement in shady activities. The big syndicates, you don't ever really stop dealing with them, once you've started.

Well I suppose, but independent talent could do the same thing...Well, I suppose if he did and they tried, then he can just hire more talent to have them removed.

A never ending cycle.

Well connected and with disposable income gets you into a lot of doors with people looking the other way. Not only that, but when you have power and money you can get the temptations to come to you on your terms.

Also, I see it a bit as "working as intended". It's things like this that provide for runs in the first place. Runs like "Get dirt on Mr.X" or "Remove the dirt on me, MR.X"

I would imagine that, among other things, Mistress Naughties House of Pain doesn't show up on their customer's SIN as that. Kind of like I'd imagine porn doesn't show up on a credit card as "Giant stack of pornos!!!" Maybe it just shows up as MNHoP or something even less likely to get noticed, like looking like some kind of entertainment channel purchase, and a visit there just registers as something innocuous on any sort of tracking stuff as being bar or restaurant.

That, or maybe it goes on a SIN as privet data that can't be accessed by corps and such. Government could still look at your SIN and tell that you really like big butts () but the local stuffer shack isn't going to start suggesting "Bootylicious 5, now with bigger butts!" whenever you go for a soycaf.

don't forget legit banks allow thier clients to have one time IDs too for some transactions

But anyone who wants to know what you've been upto can just do a scan of cameras/hotspots nearby and see what you've been upto that way.
No record of you at the whorehouse...
...But there is a record of you getting a taxi to that location, and a record of you leaving - as well as cctv of you, probably face tagged.

Hey leave Candy and Mindy out of it. I can assure you they are upstanding ladies. (wink wink)

Except the books go through great length to explain how difficult that is, otherwise shadowrunning would be impossible if people could just pull all CCTV footage of you out of the matrix without trouble. Most of that stuff is going to be on private or corprate databases that won't share, the taxi fare won't say where you were going or were picked up from, only roughly how far you traveled based on how much you paid.

Remember that a big part of SR is "Yes, there is info on X out there, but you can't get to it because of arbitrary reason Y."

Yeah, but in that case you've already been targeted and are being watched. I don't think ANYONE in that case can avoid having blackmail material stick to them, unless they aren't doing anything incriminating to begin with. At which point, fabricate some. Maybe the sod knows it's fake, but I bet he'll care if OTHER people think it's real. Point is, anyone being watched specifically 24-7 won't have much of a fighting chance.

Now if you're dealing with after the fact there's info bualkanization to deal with, and much of it may not be publicly assessable. 10 hacker rolls later you'll have it, but you have to go through that first and that's why not everyone is getting blackmailed all the time. Just not feasible to everyone, so only to people you have reason to go after.

My guess is that they have fake commlinks/SIN's/Credsticks set up by the corp. On the id it's Mr John Smith or Watanbe Tanaka and the cred is good. the people in the illicent love nest doesn't care if they're with the CFO of horizon or "that guy I saw on the news" so long as the credit is good. IOt's their gravey train, and anyone who does try to blab to the paparrazzi the only evidence they have is a perfectly good record of Tanaka-san and not the honorable Senator like they claimed.

Excuses about how difficult shadowrun would be, and that's why something doesn't happen, is very sad - it shows the game can't stand on it's own, having to use hand waving and "because it has to be that way or the game doesn't work" to survive.

That's why you have to be good, not just some tosser with a bit of cheap 'ware and a crap attitude.

Why would public space cctv footage be owned by a company - unless you envision that all space in a city is actively owned by a company [in which case they'd have to maintain it] ??
And so what if cctv footage is held on someone's datastack - some people do this thing called "hacking" to access computer networks, without permission

The taxi doesn't have to say anything, traffic logs for automatic taxis would - unless you envision people driving taxis, people open to bribery and blackmail ??
Depending on how cities are set up, traffic monitoring gear provides all the info you need, as far as which car went where.

I'm sorry, but how many public CCTV cameras have you ever seen? None? Because they don't exist? All CCTV cameras are going to be owned by someone or something. They're going to be the bank's, or the stuffer shacks, or the governments, or whoevers, but there aren't going to be random publicly accessible cameras all over the place.

And sure, you can hack into a corp to get the five seconds of footage they have on the person, and then have to hack into another corp to get the next five seconds. I'd also be willing to bet that the camera footage of an area around any of these smut places is going to be as closely controlled as possible by that place to prevent specifically what you're talking about. They don't want no repeat customers because every one of them gets blackmailed because it is so easy to find footage of these high rollers visiting.

And sure, you can maybe figure out where a taxi was (If you first hack into a couple databases) but you still have to figure out which taxi was being used (I'm sure the credit info would just say 'taxi service' as opposed to IDing a particular taxi) among the thousand and thousands of them in the city.

Here is the problem you have: Either data is obfuscated like that, or it is literally impossible for anyone to do anything illegal ever. Sure, your runner might be all 'pro' and everything, but that doesn't matter if the corp he just hit can just watch all the CCTVs in the city and track him to his hideout. Disguises are pointless if they can just watch you constantly as you make your way to your safe point.

Who to say that companies don't routinely have a low level ai follow people around, following via cameras ??
How hard or expensive would it be to set systems up to record and follow anyone who approaches or leaves location x ??

Remember how cheap SR v4 has computers and software, all nicely linked via wireless networks

Remember how ubiquitous big companies are, and how easy it would be for them to get access to data to pretty much anyone, unless there's a reason for that data not to be available - horsetrading, personal relationship, plain ol' hacking for data...
...Remembering how easy it is for players, and therefore non-players

I can imagine that video and audio footage from unsecured sources probably isn't very trusted - because it's so easy to fake or manipulate [how much do you trust pictures in the media in the realworld, considering how much has been shown to be photoshopped - or just faked ??]

And this is why runners aren't just criminals in a future punk magical setting. They're EXCEPTIONAL criminals in said setting. They can do what others can't. They will do what others won't bother to, and they will continue to run while the others fail. It's why 9 out of 10 runners die their first year of running, it weeds out those who don't bother like most of the populace.

I mean, ask yourself, do you have copies of your birth certificate, important legal documents, and some money tucked away in a safe deposit box? You should. We all should. Who actually does? Not all of us that's for sure.

Shadowrun holds up just fine as a Black Trenchcoat game.
It's the Pink Mohawk no consequences games that don't hold up outside of Z-zones/Barrens.

To run in High security areas you need to be on the ball, you need seriously talented hacker access.
And you need to be careful.

Fake SiN's probably need to be easier for high grade hackers to procure. Because you need them.

Of course it could be because my ideal 'run' is hours of legwork, several small runs to setup favorable conditions, and then 20 minutes of intense terror and lethality.

A good run, is a run that goes as smoothly as possible with as little splash.

Actually, I live in the UK - known to have a very high percentage of cctv.
Most is not owned by anyone, because it's in public [so it is owned by whoever owns the city] - which means it's not owned by companies - in a shopping centre it's owned by the company that owns it.
Some places have publicly accessible cctv, so members of the public can watch for crime and report it.


We have cameras that can track left, right, up and down - I imagine such cameras still exist in the future.
Since cameras near each other are close by, it would be sensible to assume they're owned by the same company.

Or maybe you just hack satellites, and use their high definition cameras to track your target.
Or you have someone put a tracer on them if you're really interested in someone - oh yes, these are rich people and people might be interested in them
You access their anti-kidnap stuff they have installed, or their docwagon bands [which might have to broadcast their signal 24/7 to be useful]


The issue would be who owns the taxi - access their records, which they might have to keep for legal reasons, and you got your info.
You have access to the chap's telecomm number ??
You can track him quite nicely - like you can in the realworld, put a phone number into a website and locate it [or hack someones mobileme account and locate them that way]


People get away with ding illegal things by being clever, by using their resources, by thinking ahead...
...So how does someone in a wired/surveillance world get to do things ??

He gets a cab and drops off somewhere normal
He walks, wearing a hat and a coat
He pays using cash [if he can get it] or untraceable creditchips
He buys disposable phones
He hires someone to stand overwatch, their software changing the cctv footage in real time
He doesn't walk around like an idiot, with a big sign that says "I'm doing something suspicious, by desperately trying not to be noticed"
He arranges events to distract
He arrange [what appears to be] duplicates
He blends in, so the police don't notice him, so the girl doesn't tweet about "the bloke with the heavy coat and jangling sound as he walks around"
He doesn't fire unsilenced guns, because police drones will triangulate the shots and find him
He doesn't fry his RFID chips, because a black hole of data is suspicious, and people look for them [because criminals do it]

Watch Enemy of the State, for ideas.
The Net might also be good

The thing about companies and revenge, isn't anything to do with knowing who you are...
...There's numerus notes about companies keeping files on people and blackmailing them...
...A multibillion dollar company can always find you, if they want to

They don't come after you because there's no percentage in it, they might to use you another time, they might bide their time and strike when you're doing something else, they just pass the info onto someone else - and so forth.


Now it's late and I'm tired and I'm off to bed...

Okay, so how does a 'pro' runner operate when every corp has 24/7 surveillance of nearly every inch of the city? How does such a runner even make it inside the building when everything is being watched all the time? A hacker can only mess with so many cameras at a time? How does your pro get past the door with a camera on the other side, disconnected from the matrix, that is wired to set up an alarm as soon as the door opens?

How do you communicate with your team when the local IC is running constant extended scan checks for hidden nodes and a sound recognition software is running on hidden microphones throughout the building to pick up any odd noises?

After the run is over, how does he prevent an AI running along the ultra camera network tracking him right back to his safehouse?

Face it, the reality is that it is unbelievably easy to make running impossible within the rules of SR. It is easy to set up so many defenses that setting off an alarm is impossible to prevent, even as soon as a few seconds within entering the compound, and then if the corp really has the CCTV access you imagine, it is impossible to stop them tracking wee wee wee all the way home.

Not much at all, I agree. But you still have to know what you're looking for. The AI idea is good but AIs as written tend not to understand the physical world and what people do on it too well. And and Agent? Well, I get recognition software.... but intention software?


linked=/=access Just because my 'link gets it's e-mail feed routed from the connection from the stuffer shack doesn't mean I have access to the camera feed there. Have to hack. Have to work for it.

If it's ALL part of your own network that's a different story. But I think also places that blackmailed on a even semi-regular basis would get a reputation for it, and you could know to avoid them. Anonymity and the matrix, post some reviews, tell some stories.


Yes, anything publicly available. What's publicly available? Camera feeds? Not likely. One, you make it all publicly available then you immediately lose the blackmail potential, it's already out there. Two, anything on you do or anything embarrassing on your property recorded by your own camera... would you want that to be public in a SR world? I think not. Three, it diminishes the security aspect when potential criminals know where they will be observed and where they won't.

Private data is just that, private. Is it out there, sure, but again through hacking. Maybe you can do this in some cases, but most companies take it personally when another company hacks them to get some info, like a camera feed. Sounds like you'd be inviting trouble onto your company with this one, is it worth the risk? Certainly not worth the risk to do preemptively, so once again we're back to having a specific target. When you know this person is worth the effort it's more likely to do this sort of thing.


Also, blackmailing as a policy is just plain stupid. Will lots of people keel over and do what you want, of course. But you'll also get someone who doesn't play ball like you want. All it takes is one VP who gets a blackmail threat to turn to a group of runners for half the price to just kill the person behind the threat. All your arguments that make blackmail so easy then get turned around to making it easy to find the offender. Blackmail makes the most sense when you specifically want something from an individual you've selected, or when the info falls into your lap. Constantly looking for materiel to use for it is not a wise move.

Karoline, I'm not on the side of the discussion you think I am.

Which means they are owned by the government, which means you have to hack the government or go through tons of red tape to get access to them.


Which is only helpful if you're actively watching someone, instead of trying to look through old footage to find them. And sure, some cameras can be moved by remote control, but plenty are in fixed positions that have to be adjusted manually.


Which would fall under "I'm doing something suspicious, by desprately trying not to be noticed"

Good luck getting that, when you need it in order to get to the places you need to be to get it undetected. And how does he get these things in such a way that they can't be detected? He'd have to pay for them somehow, which would be traceable unless he is buying untraceable money with untraceable money.

And then the purchase is traced and connected to the disposable phone.

Too bad there are likely tons of camera that would have to be modified, and all of them would have to be hacked into. The hacker would have a hard time breaking into the dozens of different nodes and erasing everything without setting off alarms, and if he could, he would likely charge more than you could afford.

In which case he is simply easily tracked just like every other Joe Average

Cameras are really hard to distract, what with their simply recording everything that goes on in front of them regardless of distractions.

Which would be difficult to do without setting off some kind of alarm.

Gotta think signal to noise ratio. Office theft is one of the hardest crimes to stop simply because if you don't know when it happened how are you supposed to efficiently figure out who made off with the stapler? Even if the whole building is wired to the gills you'll have far more footage of bullshit than you'll have footage of smoking guns. Was Sheila up to something nefarious or was she just retrieving the post-it notes she gave Bob on Wednesday? Now, imagine you're Lone Star and instead of an office building you're watching the 'plex.

Why would AAA corporations have access to CCTV feeds? they wouldn't.
They would on their extraterritorial, but they wouldn't outside of it.
Lonestar would have access to the cameras for the zones where they provide security and law enforcement.

The UCAS version of CIA/NSA/FBI would have illegal access to all that kind of thing.

Remember, Ares is going to have to jump through paperwork hell to get access to lonestar information.
Knight Errant is competing with Lone Star. Single and Double A's would be unlikely to swing any useful information from anyone unless there was a very obvious crime and a multi-jurisdictional task force was put together.

Honestly, all the multiple jurisdictions and nasty in fighting actually work for the Shadowrunners.

But outside of the barrens and Chicago and the wilds, they need to be smart.

Which is basically my point. Data obfuscation happens, and that is why a person can reasonably do something like go to a sex club without being instantly blackmailed.



Once again my point. These things don't happen or SR would be totally unplayable regardless of how 'pro' you are.

Just because there is one instance of something possible does not lead to that thing happening in all cases at all times.

Yep, there is tons of data and it could all be found and looked at.

Go for it, spend your time looking at it. At the end of the day someone has to work with it and decide what to look at and what to do, and that persons time is not an infinite resource.

I don't have time to look at every dumpshock post to see if I should ban someone. But the data is all there.... that doesn't help me.

I think you're just not thinking 'pro' enough.
cctv and Facial Recognition software an issue?
Nano disguises
Illusion spells
Adept powers
Plain old disguise abilities.
hats and sunglasses
keeping your head down, knowing where the cameras are.
using drones to hack cameras directly
Technomancers are supremely good at dealing with cameras. They don't care if wifi access is turned off.

gait recognition software a worry?
alter your walking gate.
DNA scanning at crime scenes an issue for you?
genetherapy that makes your cells destroy their DNA information after 6 hours
genetherapy to change your dna, or to make your cells not have a dna marker.

If you look at all the books, there are solutions to all the 'problems'
but certainly you can't be a halloweener troll who carries around a Panzer cannon into downtown Seattle and expect to get away with it.

My dwarf hacker.. his 'distrinctive clothing'
An off the shelf drab brown suit that doesn't really fit. In the meat, he looks like your typical wageslave.

Also, SR is a world where money talks.
Bribes and favors go a long way.

A lone star contact who keeps an eye out for info about you, and does what they can to distort it, and make it dissapear. Or a slow hacker contact who for the right set of favors make some of your records dissapear, make evidence vanish.

Shadowrun is completely playable at that level. Though not for starting characters.
But then starting characters should not really be messing with AAA corps, and HIgh Society/Security Seattle/London/NYC/wherever.

They're in Low Security and Barrens. They're in Chicago, or South America, or in the wilderness.

But if you're getting paid a million each for a data run on Horizon's Headquarters in Downtown LA. I hope you brought your A game.

except you're not an Agent, or a set of agents running on a dedicated nexus.
I doubt anyone is comparing Wuxing SiN information with UCAS with CAS with Ares SiN information.
I doubt many people have access to all that stuff. (Though i bet some deep dark black agencies come close.)
But certainly inside Seattle? Lone Star, Seattle Metro Government, etc.
If you do something illegal on your fake Wuxing SiN and it gets recorded, then certainly someone is going to do some information requests to Wuxing Security and Human Resources. How much they get will depend on politics, personal relationships between Lone Star and Wuxing security officers, etc. It's not a guarantee, but the possibility is there.

Hey, You're more than welcome to run a low consequences Pink Mohawk game. But for those of us who like a more cuthtroat realistic game. It's fun to think about all the implications of the technology that exists in Shadowrun.

Makes me VERY glad I took the Erased (10 pts) quality.

I just really question if it's actually very realistic. Even an Agent needs to have an idea of what it's supposed to be looking for to begin with. In all honesty, surveillance footage is useful largely as a way of convicting rather than of catching. It's easier to confirm an identification so that the jury will believe you when you say you found the right guy than it is to take some picture and figure out who the heck it is with little else to go on.

Really though, it's all a matter of degrees, and I think it's really tough to say just how well such measures could actually be implemented. I would certainly never argue that modern measures in SR4 are completely useless, after all. I just don't think they're as insurmountable as many of my players have suggested they would be in the past. I actually think tagging technology would be a more pernicious enemy than the camera systems. There's reason to believe that the corps don't always have to go by the book to find you and wring some information and possibly your life out of you, after all. It's just finding you without too much fuss to begin with that's their real problem.

In addition to data balkanization and SNR issues, there's the fact that the services Mr. Legit is availing himself of know he doesn't want his activities becoming known. For the most discreet establishments (which are the ones high-rollers would patronize), it would not surprise me if they have a staff or contract hacker whose job is to hack the local cameras and keep them hacked. They might even offer video interception/editing as a premium service.

None of those actually help if the corps has acces to all thousands of cameras that saw you and can comp thought all that data in no time with agents.
So thats where you "we want our game cuthroat" fail, if you go by the assumption that i lined up there, you can't do anythink to stop them from tracing you all the way back to your save house.
Yeah you avoided 15 cameras and you hacker hacked an other 15 in that one corner of the street, but you still got recorded by 50 cameras.

Also there is that wonderful piece of gear in Arsenal (pg 59). Yup, I'm talking about camera neutralizers. You're a big shot and don't want anyone knowing you're going to THOSE places. For 1500 you can make it so that NO camera* in the area works. Spend more for mini drones carrying Camera Neutralizers** and you are "invisible" for blocks around.

* == a rating 6 camera neutralizer has 12 dice to detect a camera (threshold 2) and take it out.

** == if you're that damn rich and/or paranoid you can spend the money for something like 10 drones with camera neutralizer and a gun with SnS ammo.

They take up sensor capacity 5 which means you need at least a small drone and then it can't have any other sensors unless you upgrade capacity. Small are from the size of a toaster to a small dog (+4 to +6 concealability), becoming less and less subtle in actually getting to the camera and taking it out.

But that's the point, isn't it? That the data is balkanized, that people and corps do not work together on the low or high level, and that there are like a million factions.

The reason you can easily get from point a to point b without everyone knowing your every move is simple: money. It takes quite a bit of it to install cameras and a similar amount to keep them running. Then you have to account for the perceived privacy of those with a SIN and rights and so forth, different privacy laws between nations and the Megas, so on and so on.

I've worked with enough security to know that there are always more cameras than there are recordings. Half the time, cameras are there to intimidate and persuade someone to not do something illegal. A real expert always manages all the same, even with things you might think are impossible. I'll take a modern day example, from a luxury store: drapes come in all shapes and sizes, and a few use massive poles to keep them up. Some can get as long as ten feet. In that particular company, they complained that someone was walking away with their ten foot poles, once a week. They checked the inventory every day to be sure that it matched with sales, kept an eye on the poles, and knew it had to be done in the day.

Yet one disappeared every week for four months. Then it stopped. Guess the fellow decided that had all the window dressings he needed.

A ten foot pole is not easy to miss, by camera or by eye. Security always lags behind the experts.

It's always an easy argument to say "Ah, the setting will just explode if you actually use it", rather than finding a means for it to work. If you want realistic with what they give you, it is easy to see holes in security.

reminds me of a story where some online porn company would fail to supply after getting payed, ordered by court to replay, and did so in the form of a mailed checks with their company clearly visible. I do wonder how many of those actually got cashed.

That's actually rather hilarious.

Mm, one other thing. Most businesses get around this in a very easy way as well: they are fronted. Olga's Teahouse is a really good example, as is a massage parlor I remember being mentioned. Silver Screen Dreams? I forget the name. Anyways, you'd just be seen getting tea or getting a nice back rub. The tea gets surprisingly expensive there.

Though with RFIDs in everything, if you're a normal joe who doesn't know to scan/erase tags, it becomes easier to track employees that steal supplies. The guys in the IT department probably steal stuff like crazy though.

And the nice think about that is that they're probaply also selling actuall tea that costs as much as upstairs servises, so noone can find anythink wierd in your bank statements, you just happen like good tea.

Heh, yeah exactly! The middle manager can even say that it is a great way to reduce stress.

I swear, after every ending, I'm happy.

You bring up valid points about authorities just following the cameras back to you.

There are a couple of points:
Firstly, I doubt seriously that there are absolutely no blind spots in the cctv coverage. That 1 tv picks up where the other left off. That's /expensive/. London has mad crazy cctv coverage and even they don't have that blanket of a cover.
Secondly good runners have escape routes, escape plans. They picked out a spot outside of cctv coverage where they stored a change of clothes, maybe a change of disguises. A spot where the mage can change the illusions running on people.

The rigger has a get away vehicle he picked up and modded (or had modded for him). chameleon skin, personal armor, concealed armor, grid link, grid link override. You get away from pursuit, even temporarily, and you change the broadcast ID of your vehicle, you use chameleon coating to change the color/appearance, and you turn gridlink on, blending into the traffic as perfectly legitimate vechile.

Your escape route takes you through low or no security zones, which allows you to get lost in the sinless masses. The amount of CCTV and Drones able to track you is going to be entirely dependent on the communities monthly security contracts to Knight Errant or Lone Star, or DPD, NYPDinc, or whom ever.

Extraterritorial disputes will be your friends. It's not as "omg shadowrunners can't work in SR" it's that Shadowrunners are high end professional criminals who can do things noone else can.

A good example for Seattle is the ability to duck into the Ork Underground and hop off the grid.

Oh, this reminds me, I just recently saw something on Discovery about how they are currently working on software that will automatically track a person (in real time) from one camera to another. They already have it working, and showed it tracking a guy through the city (I think it was London, but not sure). The guy was disguised too (Concealing hat, his face fairly obscured, etc. I didn't actually recognize that he was the guy that had been giving the interview and they literally went back and forth between showing him being tracked and him giving the interview).

Now, it had a few requirements like having to take a special picture of the person beforehand, but I'm sure that that could get worked around given the quality of facial recognition.

You are right though, not everywhere is going to be covered, but once again, that was kinda my point. Even those 'pro' people are relying on the fact that everything isn't as well covered as it very easily could be, that companies don't have thousands and thousands of copies of agents running around watching everyone who ever gets within 100 feet of anywhere important, that facial recognition/gait analysis/voice recognition can be easily fooled by pulling down a hat, walking a little different, etc.

Sorry i confused you with Synner667, that point was based on his take on the world where those trying to track you have acces to all camaeras around the city,which is most likely number in thousand providing a seamless coverage of the whole town.
Buts that not really a problem in the sixht world thanks to extreme data balkanization.
You dont even have to duck into underground, ducking through propertives belonging to multiple different corps should be enought to lose those trying to trac you through cameras.

Well the problem with that is two fold:

Cross Jurisdictional cooperation
warrants/subpoenas.

Sure, you ducked into a warehouse owned by Toys'n'stuff, do some prestochango and move out again.
That will work for getting rid of your immediate pursuit.

But the investigation afterwards.
Lonestar approaches Toys'n'stuff because their last camera had the runners approching said warehouse.
First, they ask nicely.
"Hey can we take a look at your cameras."
"we have proprietary information. No"
"Well, we're looking for these guys. Can you check your intenal security?"
mm, let me see that. I'll have our guys look.

The guys look.
"Boss we found those runners, looks like they pulled a switcharoo.. and went out the southern entrance."
"okay, put the pictures with any closeups in a packet, and give it to the lonestar detectives."

Now, lets say they're not that friendly.
Lone Star starts talking about 'response time' 'monthly security dues.' etc.
Or if that doesn't work, they go back and get a court order for the information.

Now, Toys'n'stuff might delete that stuff, but they don't have a reason to.

Unless of course, Toys'n'stuff is a front for the Yakuza or the Mafia, or other such things. In which case their cameras might not work at all, or only record to the super secret node, and be 'broken' for public view.

Unless Toys 'n Stuff has extraterritoriality. Then the 'Star is kinda boned.