If a runner was looking to carry the equivilent of a police scanner to listen in on Lone Star dispatch, what gear would he need, and at what rating? How would that rating compare to KE or corp security?

In the equipment list there is a scanner, you can get a rating 10 scanner for 1 thousand Nuyen. I'd recomend getting that, and probably a Broadcast Decryption in case they are encrypted. A rating 7 BD is 24k, while the Rating 8 is 40k.

This of course depends if this is a starting character or not. If he is, just get the rating 6. It's just that the better the rating, the higher your sucess would be in finding the frequency against the transmitter.

According to the New Seattle sourcebook, they usually have rating 3 comm and radio's. An Elite Officer has Rating 5 comms.

Thanks

No problem, this actually reminded me to go grab some of this equipment as well.

According to New Seattle, LS patrol officers' scanners and radios aren't encrypted, are they? And because the network is limited by the lowest level of encryption in the network, it all has to be open. So all you really need is a high-level scanner to pick up the channel. However, I'd imagine there'd be some comprehension problems listening to the dispatch. If the character didn't have police procedure, they might have trouble making sense of the dispatcher. An untrained character might be able to pick out addresses, but the codes wouldn't make sense (verbal and numerical codes, not encryption). I'd imagine KE would be on the same level, while corps could have encryption out the wazoo, depending on GM.

The only thing a runner needs to pay attention to is when they start repeating the adress/location of the runners to know that they have a few minutes to get away before the Star shows up.

But how then would they identify what channel they've got? A fire dispatcher and a Doc Wagon dispatcher and an LS dispatcher and a KE dispatcher are all reciting vehicle codes, incident codes, and addresses. There's a lot on the airwaves in a big city.

Now he here is a wrench to throw into the whole batch our county up her just north of Seattle is using a cellular network for dispatching it is done on via computer and GPS location so the closest officer get the call so we may have to have the Decker hack the network to monitor it or just quire and ls car hehehe the is easy enough right

LE communications are always coming up with new ways to foil the massive numbers of scanner-watchers out there. There are even some areas now where dispatcher traffic amounts to:

"<Unit>, <type of call> in your beat (or zone). Check MDT (Mobile Data Terminal) for details."

This would probably not be the case for obvious hot calls, like shots fired or burglary in progress, but hopefully most times LS is called out to your location during a run it is a simple Suspicious Person/Activity or something similar. That type of system can make communications much harder to intercept.

Easy peasy, pop a LS grunt a little too close to the barrens, retrieve his radio (from the skull) and copy the settings.

It's still better than the warning you'd get with sirens in the distance, this allows you to know ahead of time that it would be a very good thing to leave now

By the time the sirens are audible, they already have drones in position and have your photos.

Most governments sell off specific frequencies to firms for their sole use and this information is published in the public domain. A scanner would be little use in this case as you would already know the frequency being tramsmitted on.

The problems you'd have would be

1. Transmitting on one channel and recieving on another (standard practice for most off the shelf/commercial radio kits). You'd only hear half the conversation.

2. The signal in 2060 would be at least digital so you wouldn't hear any words just a string of bleeps indicating 0 or 1. You would then need the right hardware/software combination to demodulate them. THIS IS NOT ENCRYPTION.

3. Most commercial radios transmit simultaneously multiple channels on the same frequency (Time division multiplexing) so you'd need to filter out all the extraneous data.

4. A lot of signals in data are constantly transmitting hold bits even when the pressel isn't key'd this means that even when the guy is transmitting you'd notice no change in traffic on the radio network. So you wouldn't know if he'ed called for help or called you in etc.

5. Voice proceedure. A lot of radio communication involves verbal shorthand unless you can recognise what this stuff is eg " hello 0 this is 12e we have a 1236 on blue4 over" you're going to be none the wiser.

Intercepting the frequency isn't a problem, it's designed to be heard.
Understanding the information you're recievincan be a nightmare.

The standard radio communications devises would include demodulators including dealing with Time division multiplexing hold bit filtering. As well as any other hardware needed other than encryption.

The knowledge skill police procedures and security procedures will give you the radio sort hands used in 90% of cases, a quick decking trip will give you most of the rest, some especially paranoid sites will have a know soft link installed in every guard allowing them to insert a new site procedures know soft every day, if this is the case the data will not be on the matrix and your only hope is to steal the chip from a guard, de ware however, there is a hard wear recognition system in the chip, if your not using an approved know soft link you will be hit with rating 10 deadly black death.

Edward