Records of extraterritoriality.

I recall seeing in one of the books a comment about the difficulty of knowing when you are in an extraterritorial jurisdiction.

Would any soveren country (eg ucas) not require any corporation to register its extraterritorial locations to facilitate compliance with jurisdictional boundaries if nothing else. And even if this document is not available to the general public it must be available to law enforcement personnel some (most) of witch are corrupt to some extent thus it would be easily purchasable.

If this is not the case why not? If it is what cost/availability would it be?

Edward

The sovreign countries cannot legislate onto the extraterritorial land, but they might set up signs warning about the impending exit into non-national property.

You'd expect those on the roads into such places. If you cut through the electric monoweave fence, KOed the para-guard dogs, and already banished one of the guard elementals, you probably won't see one of those signs.

For extraterritoriality to apply, per the terms of the Business Recognition Accords (which means, some really corrupt government may exempt megacorps for all that trouble), the extraterritorial area have to be clearly delimited and display sign at every entrance indicating the name of the megacorp whose territory you're entering (I guess with a very good lawyer, you could claim you have no idea of who blasted that portion of the wall, you enetered without seeing any sign near that hole).

On one hand, they got a story about corporate security planting a sign 'extraterritorial' next to your warm body before the cops arrive. That one would imply they don't have to register it with the administration for extraterritoriality to be effective. On the other hand, the airspace above a land owned by a megacorp is extraterritorial as well, up to 1,200 meters. The civil air authorities need to know that somehow, and I don't think it would be considered as viable that they have people scouring the country searching for new signs indicating extraterritoriality. And there have to be something preventing anybody from putting a sign that says "Ares" on their door while they are not related in anyway to this megacorporation.

Also, a megacorporation can only claim as extraterritorial a portion of land it is owning or leasing. Such transaction over land has to be registered by the authorities (with the possible exception of a megacorp selling extraterritorial ground to another megacorp), so the governement knows about all the potentially extraterritorial area, if it can't track down (or rather, track up) the ownership chain. but there is Dun & Bradstreet for that.

With that in mind, I'd personnaly assume megacorporations must register the places they want to be extraterritorial, and the government has a database with them all. And if it's not public, there's probably a site on Shadowland where people are asked to submit the new extraterritorial signs they noticed in their neighbourhood.

I agree with what Nath posted, but will add the following:

Keep in mind that this "registration" is almost certainly electronic, in some fashion A matrix record of some sort most likely. That means its almsot certainly meat for the beast known as Corporate Deckers.

My bet is the Corporate Court holds these records.

And for the shadow deckers too. Imagine what a mess you can organize if you can catch the messege that notifies some zone as extraterritorial and erase it before it reaches the government node. Or hack the database where such info is stored (Zurich-Orbital would probably have a second copy though). Then you can rally in and allegate a corp attacked you outside its boundaries, and the cops won't be called in either... nice if done correctly, but probably very tough to be done correctly.

In my game there really are signs on the walls that say "Welcome to Mr. Lee's New Hong Kong™"

There are not always signs where you are.

If your driving into a large agricultural site there is probably a sign on the way in saying welcome to aris agracorp but if you take back rode ther will be no sign.

The civil aviation authority must e aware of any extraterritorial airspace within its jurisdiction (and wether the corp has seeded control of it back to the civil aviation authority as they often would). Of cause the civil aviation authority matrix node will have more IC than a cold snap in an Antarctic winter.

Edward

For a host of reasons (many of them legal). there would almost always be some sort of registration of extra-territorial enclaves with the "host" nation, with copies sent to the Corporate Court. For smaller corporate zones in dense urban settings, this could even include some sort of surveying data / GPS references. In most cases (IMO even rural settings), there would be some sort of sign or automated notification that one is entering a new jurisdiction. Even the pre-9/11 country roads connecting the Canada and US heartlands had large signs saying "Welcome to X, kindly visit the customs office in the next town".

Law enforcement staff would need access to this information but it might be pre-programmed into their car computer or nav unit (could a decker stop police pursuit by hacking into the cars and activating the extraterritorial jurisdiction warning ?). It might even require them to call their station to ask for a check on a specific location, so that a copy of the data doesn't sit in every police car.

Corps would obviously not declare very secret facilities or those engaged in activities which violate international agreement or extra-territorial conditions. In those areas, your only notification would be the instant and lethal security measures.

I would have expected even the highly secret facilities to be listed as extraterritorial, complete with signs and registration. Of cause there is a farming facility above ground and the elevator to the secret lab doesn’t go any hire than the third basement level in the old mine they are using for there research facility.

If they don’t register it then they will have to explain why they killed the dock wagon HRT that was coming in after the shadow runner that got shot.

That is actually a good point. Dock wagon wont go extraterritorial without permission so thay must maintain a listing. And the logical place to have it stored would be in the map soft in each vehicles auto nav. Easy to acquire.

Edward

They have to make it clearly defined, or the AAAs would be at war. Say you have a Crashcart contract, you venture into a secret Mitsuhama zero zone but one which they forgot to put up all the legal signs and the various small prints. You get shot up, you decker friend on overwatch sends out the distress call on your behalf, there is nothing preventing Yamatetsu from sending in a tank battalion in to save your ass (and securing whatever is in that place for Yamatetsu) because there is nothing saying that place is Mitsuhama property "please keep your hoop off the plascrete".

And the best thing is if Mitsuhama tries too hard to convince the rest of the AAAs that Yamatetsu step into its territory, then Yamatetsu can bill Mitsuhama for shooting on Yamatetsu property (if those tanks were properly labeled).

That's just simply not true in every case. While I agree that in 90% of likely scenarios that fits the bill-those 10% do not.

First an area like this simply won't be easily accesible. So just randomly shooting people is not a likely possibility. Why would they need to shoot anyone unless they had clear and present danger? Nonlethal security techniques are available, even against determined Shadowrunners.

None of which would apply to the general public anyways. Joe Average doesn't know it's there, and doesn't care.

Secondly Shadowrunners are expendable assetts. WHY would a corporation send ina Tank Battalion to save you? Even if you were a company man I don't see justification for that sort of response. Its plain and simple over kill.

Look the CIA and the KGB killed agents for years. Informants and intermediaries killed each other like flies. We knew it happened, they knew it happened. How often did the Big Red One roll on Berlin to rescue CIA double agents?

It becomes a question of diminishing returns. Going after your Shadowrun team just isn't worth it. You are deniable. You are expendable. No one will miss you at the company christmas party.

Also business isn't just shoot 'em at the OK corral here people. Negotiating for valueable personel, or even extracting them is preferable. Extractions can be done with out a shot being fired.

You gusy are looking at this from the view point, in my opinion, that your runners are some how more important than they really are.

No. As long as the area isn't clearly marked, anyone can go in and they would not be breaking the law as the AAA isn't claiming extraterritorility for the area. What I am saying is that if there is a firefight in the area and the runner gets shot up, the AAA cannot claim extraterritoriality, by law they must turn the runner over to the police/Lone Star.

And besides, if the AAA doesn't claim that area, it gives the security provider in that area the excuse to secure the place and anything in it.

And what I am saying is that changing that label (Keep in mind this doesn't necassarily have to be a traditional sign. Clearly marked by 206x standards is quite likely different than looking at this from a current legal perspective.) is a simple process, that could easily be done in nanoseconds.

Look I agree that most areas would clearly benefit from clear marking, even blatant marking of what it is, and whom it belongs to.

In some cases this would not fit. In the case of deniable operations (Black bag scientist exsist to people.) it's a simple operation for MegaCorporation X to simply change the records. Evidence is easily falsified. The "cops" are a Corporation as well why would they even care as long as it didn't affect their bottom line?

Now you may think Lone Star might move in on this area-well thats assuming they even know what it is once they get there. (who's to say you didn't just die in random street violence? Crime scenes can be rigged/cleaned/trumped.)

Some areas do not benefit from this labeling. When they need it, it is a simple change at that level.

Add in the army of lawyers any megacorporation can bring to bear and why would any security provider take the chance on anything but the most blatant exceptions?

That's assuming said security provider doesn't have a friendly relationship with said Corporation, and doesn't stand to benefit from asissting in said cover up.

I think it's very safe to say that if an area needs to be secret enough, no amount of "They didn't mark it" will make a difference.

Also keep in mind scope here people. I am not saying every inch of extraterritorial property would reflect this-only a small percentage of property and facilities would benefit from this.

Shore a dock wagon HTR team wont willingly go against corp security THAT IS WHY THEY WONT GO EXTRATERRITORIAL. If a client’s alarm band goes off and they have reason to believe it is a dangerous situation (I don’t know how they know this other than super platinum members with bio monitor wristbands) and there map doesn’t show the aria as extraterritorial they will assume it was not corp security (as corp security has no powers in the UCAS or any other country) if it is in fact a highly sensitive corp facility then security will have a choice between attacking doc wagon (bad for publicity) or risk having outsiders see there dirty laundry. Same problem with local police.

Everything I have red about doc wagon suggests that they are reliable and honer there contracts. If the signal gets out (and it uses standard cell phone signals so blocking it would block employs cell phones. Not something you want to do all the time and jammers require a permit and you cant set one up at in a metro aria without people noticing it and complaining) bribing doc wagon into ignoring it will be expensive.

Changing records after the fact is very difficult. Remember how hard it is to make a fake cred stick. It would be that hard to edit extraterritoriality records after an incident. And if the survivors swear blind there map said it was UCAS territory then the investigation could be very detailed.

I am not saying a corp. couldn’t pull it off. Hell I am certain they could but it would cost them lots. If they build a large and official high security facility for some purpose they announce that will make them money and put there ultra secret lab within the official extraterritorial then they wont have to worry about such possibilities.

I also like toturis comment about implications for corp cold war. They don’t even need to wait for some runner to do it at random. They can hire runners to do it. I am shore crash carts records would be able to locate a teem of shadow runners that all have contracts and a reputation for needing them. send them in on some pretence of a mission and then send in an unusually large contingent to “rescue some of our best clients and it isn’t our fault that doing so required flattening half your facility you should have had signs to designate extraterritoriality so we would have known our clients where not in a tenable legal situation”

In short if it isn’t your country you want it to be almost imposable to find. If there is enough heat coming on your ultra secret facility that it cant survive on its own you drop it. A corp shore as hell wont claim extra territoriality for a site they weren’t wiling to have as a secret facility in one of there other sites AFTER somebody knows there is something untoward going on. They will try to protect it at arms length and when it gets to hot they will salvage what they can and erase all links to the parent corp.

There would be almost no middle ground between “its ours their is the sign” and “I am afraid I have know knowledge of that facilities existence”.

Edward

While I agree that it makes sense to establish ultra-secret facilities inside run-of-the-mill corp enclaves, I share Paul's view on the ways corps can operate in the 2060's with regards to legal communications and the handling of records.

First, megacorps should be as sensitive as nation states when it comes to each other's territory and enclaves. Like with nations today, being found guilty of intruding onto another's turf is not only major embarassment, it's a potential motive for escalation and / or hefty compensation fines dished out from the international community (in 2060, from Zurich Orbital). Without that sensitivity, you remove one of the main premises for shadowrunning. So forget about corporate backup / involvement of any kind if a run turns sour. In fact, in such cases the sponsoring corp could deem that the best way to prevent exposure is to eliminate surviving runners.

Second, in the 2060's the entire legal system is online and in real (and really fast) time - Gibson's Burning Chrome provides an example. A corp's expert legal system could probably connect to the Justice Department of a host jurisdiction and obtain a preliminary injunction against various people and activities in a matter of minutes, if not seconds for simple stuff. Various other financial, managerial and accounting operations can also be accomplished in the blink of an eye.

To use the current example: sure, DocWagon has no idea the distress call is coming from a runner in an Ares zero-zone. But then DocWagon Central Dispatch gets a notarized transmission from Ares Legal Services, before the chopper has even reached cruising altitude:

"Your craft is headed for a facility that became the property of Ares 3.24 minutes ago, and was declared & recognized as a corporate enclave by the UCAS 1.51 minutes ago. 45 seconds ago we have initiated a full-scale enquiry of alleged wrongdoing at the site under previous ownership. Furthermore, we will shortly forward evidence that the distress signal you are responding to originates from a SINless felon using a false identity to obtain DocWagon services, which voids any legal obligation on your part." Anyone still waiting for medical help from the sky ?

Even if there was an outside enquiry later, Ares would have ample time to move, hide or destroy evidence. Granted, it might not be that simple to declare an extra-territorial enclaves post-purchase, but it's a mistake to evaluate the issue with the reaction time and resources of today's bulky bureaucracies (public and private).

Yeah, right. Like the Courts in the UCAS are going to have hours beyond 9-5 in 2060.

If there's money to be had in it, I'd imagine they will.

Reduced court fees using the new, 24 hour AJM!
Guilty pleas only. Not valid in all areas. Judgments may vary.

Pinel. I like your comments. They where uncharacteristically well reasoned for something found on a public bulletin board. I had been assuming thay would be doing it illegally. I was probably wrong.

The only question becomes dose Ares want to admit that the facility was there’s. they weren’t wiling to take out eth extraterritoriality last week. They weren’t even willing to grant the site extraterritoriality under the guise of an invisible subsidiary.

Finally I believed that doc wagon was wiling to deal with the sinless. You would be issued a doc wagon sin witch can only be used with doc wagon and pay in certified credit.

Crimsondude 2.0. in sprawl survival guide page 42. Legal Beagle comments on the fact that for arraignments at least the courts in the UCAS run 24/7 via telipresence.

Edward

The reason they'd establish extraterritoriality is to prevent an external investigation. If it's important enough to keep hidden, it's probably important enough to break cover to maintain security at.

~J

Depending on the place and the laws in place, for example if a secret SK facility was broken into in the AIZ, SK is not going to be able to claim extraterritoriality after the fact, if at all.

Not to mention once you break cover-you move. Most of your proprietary data is easily moved via matrix in a data packet escorted by heavily armed deckers. Immediately download at your new secret site, or a relatively secure transfer point. Remove from Matrix, and begin the task of quietly shifting resources again.

Messing with the Mega's should never be an easy task. :evil

What is Lowfyr going to do? Buy up Switzerland? The Swiss has the Corp Court and the Zurich Orbital calling it home. One has all of the AAAs backing it and the other has almost all the world's resources...

Saying a corporation can change records is a pointless argument. *Both* sides can do that, so courts (even corporate ones) have to set standards defining rules for what is admissible. And even the fast legal process can't prevent some scenarios resulting from "hidden" installations that'd try to gain extraterritoriality only *after* problems start:

"Our new heavy recon/strike UAV prototype, undergoing a test flight, was fired upon at 18:23:42, as recorded by both the robot and UCAS AWACS plane flying nearby. Attached are records of relevant test flight data, stored into Zurich-Orbital's protected databanks in real time, and verified records from AWACS's sensors and communications equipment.
The records also contain repeated verifications of the airspace's status. Note that at 18:20:17, when the UAV first detected a radar lock-on, at 18:20:18, when it switched into lock-while-scan mode, and at 18:23:00, during the last periodic check before the incident, civilian authority confirmed the whole area UCAS territory. The area became a property of Mitsuhama at 18:23:02 and was recognized as a corporate enclave at 18:23:38. The robot, following a pre-programmed path, began to leave the then-corporate airspace at 18:23:16; it began to return fire at 18:23:44, i.e. 2 seconds after it was fired upon. The change of area's status was registered into air traffic control's database at 18:23:51, i.e. 9 seconds after the robot was fired upon.
We intend to seek compensations for damage to the UAV prototype, compensation for the financial loss resulting from such interruption of the research program and compensation for the ordnance the robot expended while it defended itself."

Or:

"The footage sure showed Renraku's employees using what I'd call heavy firepower. It will get worse. Now we can see Dr. Mortensen and two more unidentified men leaving the building. Here they come - four hellhounds. You can hear explosions in the background - assault cannons, I'm told. The runners had a sniper somewhere, so the hounds... It is already over, that was damn good shooting. Still, you can see one of the runners is dead and Dr. Mortensen lost his left arm. Even now he remains in a DocWagon intensive care. Notice the time - 22:46. I remind you, the whole place was recognized as a corporate enclave at 22:48 - 2 minutes *after* this."

About as much as a soldier from the '40s knows about modern military operations.

~J

I just hate it when so-called "real work" keeps me away from a good discussion...

Crimsondude, even today police officers can obtain warrants outside of working hours, and foreign diplomats can talk to a senior official in the host country on a 24/7 basis (and vice versa). For the really iffy stuff, even ambassadors can expect to be pulled out of bed in the wee hours and summoned to the nearest Ministry of Foreign Affairs building, whether they had time to shave or not. Is it unreasonnable to assume that the reps of extra-territorial megacorps can obtain similar or better access, especially when you factor in the Matrix, expert systems, VR and telepresence ?

As was pointed out by many, shifting or acquiring extra-territoriality for an existing site depends on a lot of variables: where the facility is, what the relationship is between the megacorp and the national government (the plot line in Tsimshian comes to mind), and especially the reason why the facility wasn't declared in the first place. In some cases, having runners merely expose an undeclared corp facility could bring so much trouble to its owner that it could be a mission objective in itself. And sometimes declaring an enclave after the fact might be so dangerous that the stereotypical red button will be used and the entire facility will turn into fist-sized bits.

If your going to transfer your propriety data and key personnel out anyway (and the data probably has an off site backup so you don’t even need to transfer it out) then what is to be gained by claming extraterritoriality. If you claim extraterritoriality everybody knows you have something you want to hide. If you just relocate immediately and eliminate evidence at the old location everybody knows somebody s hiding something big.

If you’re going to move the facility anyway what to you gain by declaring extraterritoriality? The price of the general-purpose hardware located on site?

Edward

I completely disagree. (I'm sure thats obvious. )

A primary reason would be operational security. By "hiding" a facility deep in beneath several shells, and layers allows you to claim at least some distance from the project itself-which is useful in the case of plausible deniability. It also is extremely useful for the operation if it is covert-something that is supposed to be off the books, and not a Corporate X product. ("We would never experiment on Metahumans, especially not on homeless Ork women. We're Corp X and we care.")

In order to achieve this in 206x, where the Matrix makes a plethora of information available almost instantly you need to hide in plain sight sometimes. "No secret research facility here-just us accountants. Really."

By not labeling the facility as extraterritorial you reduce its apparent value. After all why would anyone store anything of value in area they didn't completely control right? It's alot like laying a gun on the table and saying it's really a cigarette lighter, or a prop. "It's not really that." Or distracting people from looking at the gun int he first place. Sleight of hand, and deception on a much larger scale.

As for why they would claim extraterritorality after their cover was blown-well soem data can obviously be moved, and even continously backed up. Some may not. Some valueable thinsg may not be able to be moved so easily. "Sorry Mr. Johnson Wuxing doesn't ship Steroid addicted cybered Dzo-na-Qua's overnight. Can we intrest you in third class freight?"

Obviously I was talking about the ones that are!

...and if theres anything that modern day computers tells us, it's that security through obfuscation SUCKS, and is good for neither security nor obfuscation. ALl it takes is a bored decker or a curious person to track down that ownership data. The Matrix is a dangerous thing.

Why all the focus on being high tech? If a corp gets caught with their pants down, they can always pin it on a patsy.

Sargasso. That is why I think they would not claim extraterritoriality. It makes it that much hard to pin on a patsy. Of cause you could claim. We just discovered a recently acquired division was up to no good. We are moving in to clean up the problem. Of cause that still isn’t as good as nobody ever suspecting you had any involvement at all (and a Decker would need to trace threw 20 different glacial systems in holding companies and actually find the apropreat records to work out the ownership records. Imposable if your not looking for it and insanely difficult if you do.

Edward

No, holding companies are legally declared, it's public info. That's the problem.

The level of declaration required for your holding companies varies with jurisdiction. Eg today people use holding companies in Singapore because Singapore dose not require ownership to be disclosed at all thus you would need hack the companies privet records of who owns them (they need to know who to answer to and where to send the profits).

You could register a company in your extraterritorial jurisdiction but everybody would suspect you of owning it but it shouldn’t be too hard to find a suitably pandering national government or 3.

Edward

Also, there are companies which are de jure subsidiaries, and then there are de facto subsidiaries.

~J

When it comes to extraterritoriality, you'd have to disclose proofs of ownership to benefit from it. If that wasn't the case, anybody could put a sign on his door claiming the place is owned by Ares and extraterritorial...

Which could be a real funny way to mess with someone...

I was just rereading SoNA and came across the listing in the CAS section for ERLA, the CAS bureau that governs extraterritoriality. The CAS seems to be the only government with such a department, but I suspect msot have something, if less formal.

Indeed. Like it says, CAS is one of a few countries on Earth with such an independent agency devoted specifically to dealing with AA and AAA corps.

In the UCAS, for example, because the federal government is such a mind-numbingly shocking group of political fiefdoms, relations between the extraterritorial corps and the FedGov is likely to be spread across at least the Departments of the Treasury (specifically, the IRS), Business, Information (I assume, since I have no idea what the Hell it does), and probably State and Justice. Not to mention the fact that with the exceptions of a few federally chartered corporations and foreign (foreign foreign, as opposed to foreign domestic) corporations, corporations are chartered by the states, and otherwise register with the states in which it does business (this is glossing over a lot of things that are irrelevant for this discussion), and property taxes are assessed and collected at the local level of government.

And unless the UCAS FedGov somehow managed to preempt all local and state involvement (which is noty likely nor, AFAIK, canon) it's probably not going to change much.

On the DocWagon thing, they WILL go up against corp sec, just not on corp ground... if you can drag your bleeding carcass to the street outside the facility, the HTR will gladly cart you away... SIN or no SIN, although I usually don't call them untill off extraterritorial land...