How do people play organised crime in their games? How up to date and organised are they? This question stems mainly from a couple instances in the film Collateral and this story.

At one end you've got a couple bent cops that were on the Mob's payroll and did, or at least tried to, the odd hit on people. Fairly traditional and low tech - although the infiltration of OC taskforces is good. In the film though it's the other extreme - when the cabbie gets into the club to get another set of dossiers the main drug guy gets pissed about how he lost the results from their counter-intelligence operations or something along those lines. They're smart, high tech with a lot of capabilities, have extensive files on the targets and have keys to their buildings or information on how to gain access. Not surprising really considering how the modern day drug cartels drafted in freelance western security specialists or the ex-intelligence types woring for the Russian mobs. But anyway.

So where do you play the different syndicates on things like this? Cutting edge security opertions that surveil the police and Feds back as much as they watch the bad guys, Fat Tony that does all his business the old fashioned way in the back of his social club or something else somewhere in between the two?

I say it depends on the Family itself, as I feel the various Organized Crime Syndicates ar much more based on a sort of Cult of Personality phenomina than any corporation could be.(To an extent.)

Some of my Families are on the cutting edge, others are definitely last century. Their effects vary as well. Sometimes the classics are more than enough to get the job done-in 206x there are times where it isn't though.

I like playing up some of the tradtional generalizations just for the hell of it-the Yakuza are generally more tech savy, the Traids more magical-etc...

The cartels are a separate beast from my POV. If you've ever see Traffic, they aren't exagerrating when they saw that these cartels have better intelligence/counterintelligence operations that the U.S. government does at sneaking things across the border. It's also why I don't find it hard to believe that when they got together and stopped killing each other, drug lords could form Aztechnology, take over Mexico and turn it into Aztlan. The Ghost cartels would have to have the will to do anything it took to survive against megacorps which peddle drugs (what's that link in TUS: "They only had to be willing to do what the other guy wouldn't.")

However, the syndicates in SR are too well-organized for me to take seriously, especially the Mafia. I think that the only way the Mafia would make it into the 2060s in any appreciable form (or any OC syndicate for that matter) would be to invest a great deal in counterintelligence, develop political capital (e.g., the "ambassador" to the UCAS FedGov), and ensure that there is never anyone like John Gotti around. I have no doubt the UCAS would be willing to tolerate a certain amount of organized crime, if for no other reason than their fixers can probably trust a mafioso on their end for something illicit for their Senator client to at least keep a certain amount of discretion. But while the idea of a criminal underground community is certain to know who not to screw with, most civilians should think the Mafia died off in the 20th century.