I know having a SIN can mess a shadowrunner up. Having a SIN means his DNA, fingerprints, picture and other identifing marks are accessible by anyone with a good computer skill and a deck, or some sort of security. But how do I exactly use this a PC flaw. He insisted on having one, but I told him alot of SRs have the SINs deleted. What do I look for as a GM to hinder the character? This may seem bad but he thinks he god cause he knows the rules better then me. A rules lawyer if you will. Just looking for reason. BTW any tips for handling rules (and lawyers).

Meh, I don't think it's a flaw that comes up everyday. It's only when the unexpected happens that it begins to unravel the dual life. Say, for example, that the character is at a restaurant when a mafia or yakuza enemy spots him or her and decides to finish it right there. Or course the character is able to defend him or herself and escape the enemy, but is now on camera as having killed, shot at, or used illegal to quasi-illegal to dispatch the threat. The investigating police collect evidence (like DNA from the soup spoon or simply asking for the store's records) and then have a few questions for him or her. Even if cleared of wrong doing the enemies know his or her real name and can track the SIN across the globe. Even more than that, however, is that unless one alters the real SIN data, any fake SIN is all but useless since none of the data can actually match the character.

First off, SIN's are never "deleted" people just get fake ones and use those till the real ones are of little use. If a character does have a SIN it means he can purchase items legally. However if he is ever caught doing something illegal, such as a shadowrun, Lone Star will know his mothers maiden name, who his 3rd cousin is and where he eats lunch on Tuesdays. Not to mention the aforementioned DNA, fingerprints, and photograph.

So if your runner doesn't have a fake SIN also... he had better be good at covering his trail, wearing gloves, hairnet, unmarked guns.... forensic police do really well at their job.

Tracking Him...With the PC using his real SIN thou. Does that mean anyone with the power, can track him down via SIN credstick. Use the credstick to put here in certain locations of a crime scene. I have read somewhere about deleting SINs before, I think the spawl survival guide gives a story that someone does so but i don't remember rules for doing so? are there rules for deleting to SIN or an appropriate cost for doing so?

Well, it came up recently in our game...

A high-profile trid composer was murdered in a very photogenic fashion by a pair of bombs in his garage. The neighborhood camera recordings were looked at for the 24 hours prior to the bombing, and a PC's registered car was one of those flagged as 'not usual traffic'. So they looked up the registration, got his name: looked up his file:

He's an ex-arena brawl player dumped for drug problems years ago.
Lives in the barrens of all places as a squatter, known address out of date.

They decided to go looking for him.

My personal theory is that ANY SIN, fake or the one you got at birth, becomes a liability if you use it often, because then the authorities can use it to build a profile on you or even just find out where you've been recently or right now.

The trick is to routinely switch between SINs, so that if the law somehow figures out Joe X's SIN is actually one of your identities, they won't have a complete picture.

Sorry, I meant the governing bodies don't delete them, I am more than sure they can be deleted. Everyone loves an audit trail, especially governing bodies.

Of course, if they don't have a SIN to erase, it makes cleaning up the accident that much easier.

I find it unlikely that LS will turn up a DNA match on your SIN unless you have been suspected of criminal activity before. Given the population of the UCAS, it would be unlikely for them to run a full database search just because they got a DNA sample or a fingerprint. They would need to narrow it down somewhat before they could do that effectively. It is much more profitable to let the occasional difficult crime get written off as being committed by a SINless lowlife than to solve every single crime where the only thing you have to go off of is a smugged fingerprint and a skin scraping.

They probably search against their database of prior arrestees and against the specific suspects in the case.

Bit, since you're often the champion of the SINless - do you recall what the canon references are for the details on SINs versus the SINless?

-Siege

I'd have to go home for the page numbers. In a nutshell the sinless in the UCAS are "Probationary Citizens" with limited legal protection. They have no right to vote nor hold office, yet they are provided an attourney in the case of the crime and are fully protected by the constitution. They are the rough equavilent of a resident alien, or better, someone without a legal SSN today. They cannot rent an apartment or sign up for utilities without issues. They are not officially counted in cencus, ect. They are residents but not full citizens.

I'm just always on this bandwagon, because the SINless are not "non people" like the opinion is so prevalent, thewy just have greatly reduced rights. Killing a SINless is still murder, ect ect.

I know, which is why I asked you.

-Siege

And alot of AAA security areas are harder to access (or at least move around easily) without a SIN. Watch those police check points...

Especially in the 2064 SR universe, I imagine databases are not as shared as they are today. Especially based on who's asking for the information. I rather doubt the LS database is always open to a KE checker, and vice versa. Good luck getting anything outta a db related to Aztechnology.

Do people who come from places that don't use SIN, get assigned one when they enter UCAS territory? Ways around this?

Remember the old west?
Traveling from one state to the other meant eluding the laws of the one you just left and abiding by the laws of the one you were just entering.
No federal law mattered to you back then because there wasn't a national Social Security system for tracking people or a strong unified federal government.

Well, now days, people can go sovergn if they really want to.
It's completely legal to do so.
It also means that you will be cut off from the government perks completely except areas that you can prove in court to be absolutely needed for your personal survival (ie. cash)
You lose your US citizenship and you become only a domecile of the state you live in and a citizen of the state you were born in.
You only fall under the laws of the state when you become sovergn.
You lose the ability to use most banks, jobs are harder because you can't fill out tax information that comercial businesses need to hire you, lones are tough to come by because the only credit you have is your own assets since you no longer fall into a federal income bracket.

This would be something akin to what you would experience in not having a SIN legally.
You would be thrown in Jail now and then because police do not understand sovergn or SINless in anyother respect than illegal. Then you would have to explain to the court who would then release you if you actually are legally SINless (sovergn), and so on and on....

Illegally SINless is much like people illegally getting rid of their SSN today.
It's not really that easy, and it's pretty dangerous to do, and if you screw up then you are in some pretty nice trouble.