The Basic Education of Black Operations and Covert Operations

Covert operations usually fall under the categories listed below- your characters are probably familiar with at least a few of these. Also note that many of these missions types can occur in the Mesh as well as in the morphworld. It’s important to understand your mission type and goal before you can decide how to accomplish it.

• Theft: This was the first covert operation of mankind, that of sneaking in where you don’t belong and leaving with something that’s not yours. The stolen item can be an object, information, or even a person (this is properly kidnapping; see below). Theft involves bypassing or defeating the security around the target and leaving with the target. Give attention to what you have to steal, and how to transport it.

The best theft is undetected. You can leave a fake in place of the original, or try to fake your target into believing you were there for something other than what you stole – the idea is that even if your break-in is discovered, don’t let the enemy know exactly what it was that you did.

• Recon: The second-oldest operation, spying. As a covert op, it means you’re in unfriendly territory. Naturally, gathering the information is important but making sure you’re not detected is nearly as important since the information you collect may be compromised if the enemy knows you were there.

This is generally considered the least exciting covert op, since it means hanging around the same target location, watching and listening. (yes, police call this a ‘stakeout’)

• Exchange: One of the easiest missions, this is simply meeting with another party to exchange something (information, an item, a person) without the exchange being detected. This is also risky, since two separate parties know the time and place of the exchange, giving opposition a larger chance of learning the facts and showing up. The best way to combat this is by restricting the time/place facts to as few people as possible.

• Destruction: Ah, the classic covert op of fame and glory, sneaking into enemy territory to blow the daylights out of something. This mission involves the destruction of a specific target, and is more hazardous than it sounds, since this destruction alerts the enemy that something’s wrong. This (and possible collateral damage) is why timed explosives are so popular. Fire is also popular, but advanced investigation techniques can demonstrate that a fire was arson and not just a natural disaster.

• Kidnapping: A variant of theft, kidnapping is distinguished by the fact that the target item usually is mobile, aware, and can actively resist. Special precautions are required to make sure your target doesn’t run away! Note that if the target actually wants to be kidnapped by you, this is called an “extraction”.

• Sabotage: This involves subtly damaging something. Remaining undetected is paramount, since knowledge that something has been damaged will invalidate the mission. Please note that this might involve adding something to a process instead of removing a vital part These missions are also common in industrial espionage.

• Assassination: Killing a living target can be done close-up or from a distance. In the first case, the trick is to make the killing silent, undetectable or on a time delay to make sure you’ve already made your escape. In the second case, you can be noisy, but you have to have a lead on retaliation – either be moving fast (drive-bys) or be far away so you can outdistance pursuit.

• Infiltration: This isn’t just getting in quietly, this is the operation where you get in and stay there for a long time. These are moles. They have the unenviable job of setting up an alternate identity that’ll bear scrutiny for extended periods.

Infiltrations are set up to 1) gather long term information, and/or 2) position an operative within a target organization for a strike at a later time. The first goal is relatively simple. The second mission is merely a matter of waiting, either for a correct moment for the agent to act on his own initiative, or, more commonly, for an external operation where the mole does his mission of interrupting security, data theft assassination, etc.

Elements of the Covert Ops Mission

Each and every covert mission is different. No matter the similarities, covert operators must think of each mission as a new experience. This keeps them from getting stale and complacent or worse yet making incorrect assumptions.

There are a few hard and fast rules for every mission, though. These are less rules of how to behave on the mission than rules on how to approach each mission, an outline of the steps that should be taken before going into any assignment, no matter how trivial and easy that assignment might seem.

1. IDENTIFY THE OBJECTIVE: This is usually done when the mission is assigned. The team is given information on what it’s to do, where the target is, the time parameters, etc.

2. RESEARCH THE OBJECTIVE: This is where the team’s intelligence personnel swing into action. Even the best-intentioned employer seldom gives the team the complete story on the objective; after all, most of these missions are on a “need to know” basis. Often, certain useful facts are left out: such as the actual importance of the objective, etc.

Most people think all a team needs for this is an InfoSec Operative. Sadly enough, this is a waste of a good combat hacker; who is more adept at breaking into systems than in combing archives for what may well be public information. In short. what the team needs is a good intelligence officer: or a good detective. Subtlety is paramount, because asking obvious questions may well reveal the mission before it ever gets started (not to mention that if it gets back to your employer; it might jeopardize your relations with them … this process does indicate a certain lack of trust).

The benefits of this stage are more information on the physical layout of the target, some due as to your employer’s motives, and the first early warning of a double-cross, if any.

3. GATHER EQUIPMENT: Take only what you need, and only what you trust Those are the watchwords of covert ops. Sure, there’s a temptation to pack for every contingency, like the White Knight, and be bogged down. Instead, pack for your mission, and only your mission.

When you’re choosing equipment, go with what you know. There’s no quicker way to create a problem than trying to go into a clutch situation with unfamiliar equipment If you’re going to change equipment, take the time to completely familiarize yourself with every aspect of its operation, from use to cleaning to repair. Make certain that you have enough in the way of spares to repair vital equipment Anything else can be abandoned if it breaks: remember that! Equipment, no matter how personally attached you might be to it, isn’t worth your life. If it doesn’t work, it’s just dead mass, and you can always buy more.

Environmental equipment (special gear for specific environments like Arctic or Jungle gear) is always a problem. If you’ve just been issued the equipment, becoming familiar with it becomes even more of a priority. If used improperly, a failure with environmental equipment can kill more swiftly than the enemy.

4. RECONNOITER THE OBJECTIVE: Hopefully, you’ll reach your operation location in time to do some nosing around first No matter what you’ve found out about your objective ahead of time, there are always inaccuracies, and the only way to find out the real story is to check it out first-hand. If your old information is too far off from the facts, start watching your back.

5. FORM PLANS: Only the most nebulous of plans should have been made before now, because. as certainly as the sun comes up in the east. you’ll find information at the objective location that’ll scrap previously-made plots. Only after you’ve gotten the real story will you have enough information to make real plans. Always have one or two back-up plans, because if you don’t, the main plan is certain to fail. And don’t forget to include escape routines in these plans, for both orderly withdrawals and unexpected retreats. Above all. remember the old military adage of KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The simpler the plan, the fewer variables that there are to go wrong.

6. EXECUTE PLANS: The time for planning is past Just do it And be prepared to improvise, because no matter how simple the plan <see>, something will go wrong. There is, after all, an enemy who will being doing his best to prevent you from doing what you intend to do. Don’t underestimate him.

Key Term: INSERTION: This is getting to the target area. Like stealth, the whole idea is to remain undetected; if you’re detected, abort Insertion can be fast, via aircraft or other vehicle, thereby minimizing the time the team is vulnerable in the operation area <the>. On the other hand, a slow insertion through careful infiltration may be required to sneak into carefully-guarded areas.

7. WITHDRAW: After the objective is achieved, bug out as quickly as possible. No sense in hanging around, neh?

Key Term: EXTRACTION: AKA “Getting Out of Dodge,” extraction is getting away from the operation area (the corporate term “extraction” is a euphemism for voluntary or involuntary kidnapping). There are two ways to do it: fast and slow.

Fast is the classic method, where you either acquire a vehicle or have transport coming for you. The idea is to leave the operation theater (being defined as the area limited by the operation radius of immediate pursuit! swiftly, to avoid pursuit Bugging out to grab an AV or chopper, swimming back to the submarine, peeling out in cars or trucks; all these are fast extraction.

Slow usually means leaving the immediate operation area and fading into prepared cover roles in the general area, lying low until you have an opportunity to leave the operation theater. A favorite of spies, moles, and other h espionage agents

Surveillance Impediments

STEALTH IS WEALTH

The art of covert operations is that of accomplishing a mission without being detected until it’s too late. The perfect covert operation is never discovered at all. The trick 1s to avoid being identified as an enemy, either by masquerading as something else or by not being detected. Guile and stealth are your friends.

The classic method of infiltration is stealth. Sneaking past your opposition has the advantages of requiring less information and preparation on your target than infiltration by impersonation.

It’s not as easy as it used to be, though-not only do you have to watch out for live opponents, but electronic sensors can detect the pressure of the most careful footstep or the passage of a solid object through atmosphere; they can see in the dark and hear a mouse fart.

Stealth requires that all clothing be as noiseless as possible. All equipment must be strapped down and muffled. Given electronic sensors, a full set of passive sensor receptors is essential to detect active sensors before they detect you. Finally, the best way to bollix a sensor setup is by telling the control computer that the sensors detect nothing (don’t forget that InfoSec Operatives!).

Impersonation means convincing your opponent that you’re a friend. This is the method of choice in the post-TITAN age, since it avoids the problems of sneaking past hard-to-avoid sensors.

Impersonation is tougher than it sounds. Most installations feature security that can perfectly identify each and every person working there. In many theaters, identification usually relies on relatively simple measures-IFFtransponders, security checks (nanotattoos, DNA scans, passwords, voiceprints, gait recognition, Brainprints), and visual recognition. If you acquire the proper appearance and are able to pass the security checks (possible with proper sleeving, cosmetic surgery, or InfoSec assistance), you can practically waltz in and out. Military installations are particularly susceptible, since most of them have lots of people running around in uniforms which can be stolen or imitated. (Be sure you choose someone your size when you mug a victim for his uniform). The biggest danger is that of encountering someone who personally knows who you’re supposed to be (or knows everyone in an area and might recognize that you don’t belong).

DEFENSES

Every installation has some defense, even if it’s only a doorlock. The main defense types are covered below, along with how to defeat them. Most installations won’t have too many different types of defenses, because they’re expensive and get in the way of doing what the installation is set up to do.

STATIC DEFENSES

Static defenses are those which don’t actively hurt intruders. Instead, they detect intruders or keep them out by increasing the difficulty of crossing (i.e., walls, fences, razor wire). To most special ops teams, detection is harder to overcome than mere barriers.

The best advice is to get into the security computer that controls all the alarms and sensor reports. From there, you can dictate what the opposition’s gadgets detect This can be tough, because often installation security AIs are internal networks, and not accessible from the Mesh so you’ll have to be able to access an on-site terminal.

Total Information Awareness (TIA) is a catchphrase often thrown about in surveillance circles. Let’s be clear about something right up front: there is no total information awareness. You will never be able to access and monitor all the information that is present in an environment in a given timeframe, no matter what people may want you to believe—at least not in the heat of the moment, when it matters most. In most cases, there is simply too much data. Even with AIs, multitasking, and cognitive mods, dealing with the sheer volume of information available via surveillance networks is a major problem. Good spynet operators learn to filter out the chaff, to pay attention to the feeds that matter, to bounce between the data inputs most appropriate at any time in a dynamic situation, and to maximize their analysis by correlating data sets from different sensor feeds together. It’s a tricky balancing act. Just as important is knowing what information you’re missing—where are the gaps in your sensor network, what types of scans are unavailable, and what may have been disabled, tricked, or otherwise nullified.

No matter how good our surveillance technology is, it will never be perfect at detecting criminals, terrorists, or enemies—or in stopping events before they occur. Its use as a deterrent is limited. While sensors are beneficial in emergency response situations, even here they are vulnerable to interference and the impediments caused by general chaos. Where spynets really thrive, however, is in piecing together the data of what happened afterward. The omnipresent spimes and overlapping sensors in any habitat are a fantastic forensics tool, and the various lifelogs and personal sensor recordings of individuals often help piece any confusing elements together.

What this means for people in our line of work is that it is often impossible to avoid getting caught on record to some degree, despite your best countersurveillance efforts. If you’re careful and smart about it, however, you can avoid getting tripped up before an op is complete. The real challenge then is bugging out and getting clear before the trail you’ve left can be used to track you down. The best operatives learn to minimize their trails as much as possible, do what they can to confuse and mislead follow-up investigations, and get out quickly, cutting all ties to the op and any IDs used.

It also means that Operatives need to learn to use spynets to the best of their capabilities. When monitoring or pursuing a target, knowing the tools you have at your disposal and the tricks for using them effectively can make the difference between a successful op and a slaughter.

SENSOR NETWORK ADVANTAGES & LIMITATIONS

One of the largest advantages to modern surveillance systems is remote sensing—the ability to capture information on a target, whether an object, area, or phenomenon, in real-time without needing to be in physical or intimate contact. The capabilities of some sensors to measure and record across long distances (from a few meters away to watching from orbit or across thousands of kilometers of space) and/or through barriers means that targets are often unaware that they are being monitored. Combined with miniaturization and wireless mesh capabilities, many sensors are small enough to avoid detection and the surveillance operators can be far away. When a closer look or actual physical contact is necessary, the use of near-invisible nanoswarms or microbots enables a spynet to unobtrusively acquire the data it needs. While most people assume they are under a certain degree of surveillance in urban areas, the actual extent to which they are being watched is easy to disguise. Likewise, the ubiquity of sensors and spimes means that even if a particular spynet falls short of its needs, there may well be public or private sensor systems the surveillance operator can access for their monitoring requirements.

Despite the integration of sensors into nearly everything, from highly sophisticated spimes to nanobots, morph implants, and other smart objects, a device’s sensitivity, resolution, and precision can still be limiting factors. Different sensors are simply going to have differences in range and resolution depending on the magnitude of the target (astronomical, transhuman scale, or cellular to atomic size) and their own dimensions. It is important to have the right tool for the surveillance job.

While breakthroughs in computing, energy selfsustenance, and nano-engineering have produced sensors able to resolve signals several orders of magnitude higher than those built in the decades before the Fall, the ubiquitous distribution, networking, and correlation of collected information remains the true boon to modern panopticon technology. Sensors or the operators using them can easily verify or enhance their own measured data with information supplied by other meshed sensors in measurement range. Since sensor data can also be easily stored, shared, and archived, it is a simple matter to cross-reference the “historic” data of other sensors in the same state as the one used as a reference. This is a common procedure to validate results and reduce background noise in an area scan.

The interpretation of sensor input is another potential liability with some surveillance devices. Since the actual users rarely possess the scientific understanding to analyze a sensor result from an advanced device properly (for instance, the virtual model of a full morph body scan involving terahertz exterior and high-resolution X-ray/magnetic resonance tomography interior scans), interpretation is instead carried out by specialized AIs. These automated programs correlate sensor readings with databases of reference scans to provide an analysis.

The drawback is that this system tends to give simplified answers to what are otherwise very complex processes. There is often room for interpretation in the results provided, given the limitations of AI skill and knowledge programming. To reflect this, many scanner systems provide a confidence level rating with each result. An infrared lie detection scanner, for example, rarely admits 100% certainty that someone is lying. To counteract this uncertainty, many modern scanner systems incorporate multiple different sensor types and use analytical techniques to minimize false positives and negatives.

SENSOR TYPES

To make the most of a spynet, you want to know the capabilities and limitations of the sensors at your disposal. Some sensors are ideal for certain situations and terrible at others; they may require fixed positions and be useless for mobile operations, or they may work best when integrated with other sensors. Here’s a breakdown of the state of sensor technologies.

THE VISUAL SPECTRUM

Cameras recording the standard visual part of the light spectrum remain a mainstay of surveillance systems. These are ubiquitous, incorporated into common spimes, public infrastructure, and other “everyware” devices. Thanks to advances with lens design and digital resolution techniques, even tiny cameras can produce highly detailed three-dimensional images and recordings. The camera lenses present in many spimes and devices are so small and unobtrusive as to be quite difficult to spot, though automated lens detection systems can locate them by laser reflection. Flat camera systems use multiple micro lenses networked together, with a central processor combining the inputs into a single high-resolution image. These allow flat surfaces to be covered in small imagers that are even harder to detect visually (but still apparent to lens spotter systems).

When combined with augmented reality, networked cameras can provide visual feeds on objects the viewer cannot physically see through. This is especially useful for traffic systems and navigation, where drivers and pilots can use the views from linked cameras to see what is going on beyond barriers and obstructions.

Higher-end camera systems can be equipped with quantum ghost imaging technology, enabling clear pictures to be taken through visually obstructive conditions such as clouds, smoke, fog, dust, and haze. These systems are common in military, gatecrashing, and search and rescue operations, enabling visual sensors to get a clear image of a situation despite explosions, heavy weather, and other impeding factors.

One common tool for area surveillance is superwide camera systems. Aerial and even orbital drones are often equipped with these sensors, providing continual coverage of an area by hovering or regular overhead fly-bys. A single super-wide camera can provide detail on an area up to 300 square kilometers in size down to 0.1 meter resolution. These cameras are also common in the upper infrastructure of dome habitats and the axis points of cylindrical and spherical habitats.

A drawback to visual camera systems is that they are sometimes vulnerable to high-resolution holographic displays, especially at a distance. These sorts of hyper-real illusions are easy to spot with combined systems, however, as infrared or other scans will likely show the hologram as false. On the positive side, camera recordings can be slowed down to analyze situations at a slower speed, revealing information that is often missed at real-time speeds. This is especially useful for measuring micro-expressions and other visual tells indicative of deception or emotional states.

QUANTUM DOT CAMERA-DISPLAYS

The cutting edge of camera systems are quantum dot camera-displays (QDCDs). These fullerene arrays of quantum dots have the capability to both detect and emit light, simultaneously acting as high-resolution camera and display. This enables the creation of displays that also watch the viewer. The real value of QDCDs is that they can be applied as a paint-like film on just about any surface. This means that any wall, object, or device can be transformed into a combination sensor systems and visual display. Because QDCDs do not use traditional lenses, they are invisible to lens-spotting devices. QDCDs can also detect the infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths.

THE HIGH ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

Many common camera systems are also capable of detecting infrared wavelengths in addition to the standard visual spectrum. This allows the cameras to function in low-light/night-vision conditions. Unlike the monochromatic displays of old infrared systems, modern cameras see infrared wavelengths in color, much like standard vision with appropriate lighting. Infrared thermal-imaging is useful for detecting heat sources, including the residual heat traces left behind by someone recently sitting on something, walking through an area, or handling an object. The greater the temperature difference between the heat-emitting source and the environment, the easier these heat traces are to detect. Thermal imaging of the blood flow in the face, particularly around the corners of the eyes, is a component of lie-detection systems. Thermal infrared is also helpful when combined with standard visual systems, as it can see past fog, smoke, and light particles that might obstruct standard visual wavelengths.

Terahertz scanners are less common, but still see widespread use, especially at security checkpoints. Terahertz imagers have the advantage of being able to see through walls, clothing, and other material, though not as effectively as radar or x-ray/gamma-ray frequencies. Unlike these other wavelengths, terahertz sensors tend to be smaller and more portable. Though they function better as active systems (emitting t-rays), they can function as passive receivers at close ranges. For this reason, passive terahertz scanners are favored as a form of undetectable portal scanner. The drawback is that terahertz scanners will not detect contraband implanted within biological bodies, as t-rays do not penetrate skin.

Active radar systems are commonly used for air/ space/ground vehicle traffic and habitat/ship defense systems, and are sometimes deployed to detect small surveillance drones. They are less common in habitat and personal surveillance systems, due to their poor resolution and decreased effectiveness against lessreflective biological targets. Because the wavelengths they operate at are large, radar systems are portable but cannot be miniaturized to even hand-held sizes. Radar sensors are thus visually obvious and also detectable as actively emitting systems. The deployment of quantum radar has increased the effectiveness of radar systems, particularly in battlefield or cluttered conditions. Using entangled beams to take advantage of the low attenuation and high range associated with a long wavelength and the high resolution associated with a short wavelength, quantum radar does not have to compromise between range and resolution. Quantum radar is also more effective for image processing/recognition and detecting concealed targets.

Inside urban areas and habitats, security teams sometimes deploy a trick known as variance-based radio tomographic imaging, particularly when they want to see inside an area without using an active system like radar that might trip a passive sensor and alert the target they are being scanned. This trick takes advantage of the wireless nodes that are ubiquitous throughout a given area. By measuring the transmission and reception of the common radio signals on opposing sides of the target area, variations in the waves can be detected that indicate someone or something moving in the observed area. This allows observers to map the positions of any movement inside, thus detecting what room someone might be in or if anyone is even in the area at all.

THE LOW ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

Similar to infrared, many common camera systems are capable of recording the ultraviolet spectrum as well. Aside from people and designers who happen to like decorating their selves, clothing, or designs with ultraviolet artistry, the main use for UV sensors is to detect security tagging. Some security systems, particularly anti-theft set-ups, are designed to mark a target with dye that is only visible in ultraviolet, making them easy to track and spot. This is a common trick also used by physical surveillance teams that are tailing a target—marking them with UV paint to make them easy to spot in a crowd or to catch a particular pattern via image recognition in a habitat-wide scan.

Active x-ray and gamma-ray sensors are less common, except at security checkpoints. While useful in portal systems to detect weapons, implants, and contraband, portable versions of these devices tend to be restricted due to potential health risks from radiation exposure. Nevertheless, security bots are sometimes equipped with backscatter x-ray imaging systems and set to patrol or monitor key areas of habitats, randomly imaging passersby. Radiation sensors are also a common feature in habitats, both to prevent transportation of weapons of mass destruction and to verify the habitat’s integrity at keeping out solar radiation and cosmic rays.

AUDIO SENSORS

Microphones that capture audio frequencies in standard human hearing ranges are almost as ubiquitous as cameras—in fact, the two are often combined. Audio input can be checked against online databases, instantly identifying the source of a sound. Multiple microphones can be used to triangulate the origins of a sound. If gunfire or yells for help are heard, the source location can be pinpointed for further investigation. More sophisticated audio sensors allow conversations to be isolated out of a crowd or similar noisy environment. Similarly, laser microphones can detect audio and conversations taking place inside a room by picking up the vibrations of the sounds in glass or aerogel.

One drawback to audio surveillance is that it is easy to mislead. It is quite difficult to distinguish between a real sound and one previously recorded and played back, unless some other sensor system is able to record whatever created the sound as it did so. Voice analysis is also not perfect for identifying individuals, as people do not have unique voiceprints (especially synthmorphs). Voice analysis is, however, used to measure stress and response spaces in deception scanners.

Ultrasonic audio sensors are rarely used for surveillance purposes, except when incorporated in motion detection systems. Infrasonic audio pickups see more widespread use, particularly in monitoring the shell of habitats and ships. Audiosensing fiberoptic cables are often seeded the length of a security perimeter. These are capable of detecting the seismic signature of breaches in a wall or other barrier, and can also identify the acoustic signature of footfalls or moving vehicles a short range away.

CHEM SNIFFERS

Modern chemical analyzers rely on a mixture of spectroscopic and direct compound recognition methods, including ones biomimicked from human and animal olfactory and taste organs, to identify chemical components. The primary use for these sensors is in portal security systems to detect firearms and explosives, though this use is declining given the number of weapons and threats available that these sniffers will not detect.

More sophisticated nanotech chemical detection systems are placed throughout the ventilation systems of habitats and ships. These monitor air flow and quality, triggering alerts when sufficient quantities of smoke or other toxins or pollutants are detected or if the air composition strays from breathable levels or becomes too oxygen-rich (creating a potential fire or explosion hazard).

Some habitats have taken to using genetically engineered plants with special proteins that react in the presence of certain chemical concentrations. Around security checkpoints, these plants will turn white when they detect traces of certain explosives in the air. Others are designed to transform bright red if the atmosphere becomes dangerous (too much carbon monoxide or oxygen).

Some chemical sensors are specifically designed to sniff for alarm pheromones emitted by biomorphs. These chemical triggers are produced in sweat when a person is scared or worried—say a smuggler who fears being discovered or a terrorist on their way to commit mass murder. These primarily appear at customs checkpoints and the portals of highsecurity installations.

BIOMETRIC SENSORS

Biometric sensors measure the unique characteristics inherent to individual biomorphs such as fingerprints, palmprints, retina patterns, and DNA, among others. These systems have fallen out of style given that they are only useful in identifying biomorphs and not synthmorphs or the ego within the morph. Though also once common as an authorization method in security systems, this has been abandoned due to the ease of acquiring biosculpting and genetic mods that could circumvent such measures.

The biometrics used today tend to be systems that can scan and recognize identifying features non-invasively from a distance. These include laser retina scanners, portal-based x-ray skeletal scanners, personal body odor sniffers, and cameras with facial recognition software. Some security installations and customs checkpoints still deploy entryway puffers that blow skin flakes and loose hair into an analyzer for DNA testing. Nanoswarms are also sometimes used for this purpose.

One biometric system still sees common use: gait analysis. Gait analysis has been found helpful in identifying people even after they have sleeved into synthetic morphs, assuming it is a bipedal walker, like most cases and synths, and not using some other propulsion method. Gait scanners can even be deployed by overhead drones or orbital spysats, as gait can be measured and recognized based on the shadow a person casts.

SMART DUST AND SCOUT NANOSWARMS

Nanobot scanning systems are more common than many people realize. Their effective invisibility, combined with their ability to “touch” and sample the target directly yet non-invasively, make them an ideal scanning system. They typically are set to linger in a confined space (programmed boundaries) where they are replenished by a hive and discreetly analyze anything that passes through. They excel at acquiring DNA samples, identifying morph types, and investigating chemical residues.

Smart dust nanoswarms can also be instructed to catch a ride on passers-by, thus acting as a “bug” on the person or thing’s activities for the duration of its existence. These spy swarms have the ability to video, audio record, and even monitor radio and mesh activity. Some are set to transmit a steady stream of data back to their source, but the more discreet versions maintain radio silence and only transmit bursts of information at staggered intervals, to better avoid detection and interception.

MESH SURVEILLANCE

Anyone with mesh inserts or an ecto—which is essentially everyone—leaves a data trail everywhere they go, tying their mesh presence to their physical activities. Most people do not obfuscate this activity, making it a trivial measure to track them online. Those who stealth their signals and/or engage their privacy modes may still be tracked, albeit with more difficulty. In some habitats, stealth/privacy modes are illegal or a sign of suspicion; users who engage them may end up bringing more attention to themselves by doing so.

Social networks add an extra dimension to this data. Not only can you track people quite easily, you can map out their relationships with others and gather intelligence on whole groups of linked people. The reputation award and strike interactions between people are also illuminating, linking people together at particular junctions and giving a sense of the progression of their relationship.

Some habitats and voyeurs make a habit out of intercepting and sniffing wireless transmissions. Security services may do this as preventive measure, scanning the intercepted traffic for keywords that might indicate criminal or suspicious activity. Voyeurs do it to get a taste of others’ lives, snooping on their affairs from afar. These interception measures may be countered with the use of VPNs or encryption, but in some jurisdictions these defenses are illegal or restricted.

Many people make their lifelogs and X-casts available to the public mesh, providing a real-time stream of data directly from their own sensorium or surroundings. These feeds are often monitored by others, so that if anything should happen to the person, others would likely know about it instantly.

OTHER SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS

There are many other sensors used to monitor the activities in a given place. Each of these is more limited, but still sees occasional or specialized usage.

Enviro Scanners: All habitats, from the lowliest tin cans to the largest O’Neill cylinders, are littered with spimes designed to collect environmental information such as air pressure, gravity, oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, and temperature. Plumbing systems measure water quality and recycling efficiency. Infrasound receivers, pressure and strain gauges, radiation detectors, dynamic photoelasticity scanners, gas and other olfactory sniffers are used to oversee the integrity of the habitats’ interior and exterior. Space habitat exterior sensors monitor the solar weather and scan for approaching objects (micrometeorites, debris, vessels) through the entire EM spectrum. Planetary habitat exterior sensors and satellite systems are meshed together to assess weather phenomena (storms, electromagnetic disturbances, seismic activity, rain) that may pose a threat. These safety and early warning systems are designed to trigger alerts if they start to degrade and fail beyond the capacity of their maintenance bot, repair crews, or self-repair nanoswarms.

Lidar Systems: Lidar systems are also nearly universal in the major public areas of habitats, as well as high-security areas. Lidar is particularly useful for developing real-time, comprehensive, three-dimensional maps of an area and noting any changes that occur to the positions of people and objects in that area over time. Lidar is also incorporated into stress and deception scanners, as it can remotely detect respiration and pulse rate.

Metal Detectors: An old and dated standby of security systems, metal detectors are still useful for detecting contraband and implants at checkpoints. Due to limited range, these are usually deployed as portal-based systems or hand-held wands to run over a person’s body. Though they are useless against nonmetallic objects/implants, they can provide data on the mass and type of metal when they get readings. Nanodetectors: Common in high-security areas, these scanners suck in air to detect the presence of nanobots. These are especially prevalent at custom and ship entrance points, to deter against TITAN nanoswarm remnants from the Fall.

Organic Sensors: A few sensor systems are grown rather than constructed. These modified versions of biological sensory organs are upsetting to some (particularly bioconservatives), but they are as effective as a biomorph’s senses—sometimes more so, when used en masse. These organs are linked by biological nerve strands that extend thousands of meters through the walls to a cyberbrain interface, literally servings as a habitat’s eyes and ears. Organic sensors are typically only found in biohabitats. They require a biological system of nutrient feeding, sustenance, and waste removal.

Pressure Sensors: Built into the flooring of entrances and junctions in many habitats (those with gravity at least), pressure sensors are primarily used to track the passage of heavier synthetic morphs, bots, and vehicles or to keep a simple head count on how many people are in a particular area. More sensitive versions can detect the footfall patterns of specific morphs.

Proximity Sensors: Portal-based proximity sensors detect the electrical fields of those passing through (even that produced by biological skin). These do little to identify an individual, they simply mark the passage of a person or machine.

DATA CORRELATION

The vast amounts of data accumulated on individuals and their activities online can lead to quite interesting results when correlated. Seemingly unrelated and non-interesting pieces of data can piece together into amazing revelations. The value of cross-indexing data is not just in understanding people more thoroughly—it also brings to light new relationships and activity that might otherwise have gone undetected. Additionally, many sensor systems collect ancillary data outside of their prime purpose, which often gets archived regardless of relevance. The x-ray scan of a person at a security terminal may have found no trace of contraband, but it may also have recorded a potential health issue that was outside the boundaries of its programming and so remained unreported. Later analysis of the x-ray scan in conjunction with other medical data could turn up unexpected results.

PROBABILITY MAPPING

Probability mapping is the analysis of patterns of activity over time in order to model and predict likely future events. Transhumans are creatures of routine. Many people take the same routes to work at the same times every day or go to the same few restaurants or clubs with periodic frequency. Traffic through an area swells and thins at predictable rates. Criminal activity tends to focus around specific areas at specific periods. When you take the vast wealth of data available on the people in a particular habitat over years and feed it all into a quantum computer and group of AIs with potent pattern recognition algorithms, these systems can build models that are eerily accurate even with a nigh-infinite number of variables. Police units in the large Martian cities use these systems to identify hot spots and direct police units there to deter expected crime. Travelers access traffic AIs to determine the route most likely to have the least traffic. Anyone looking to monitor someone else’s activity can use similar AIs and input to build a substantial predictive itinerary for that person’s daily routines.

BEHAVIORAL PSYCH

Probability surveillance easily crosses over into the land of behavioral psychology and profiling. While standard data surveillance tells a great deal about who did what and where they did it, behavioral tracking takes the same concepts to a whole different level. A surveyor well-versed in the intricacies of psychology sees the tells of data and forms a complete understanding of the way a person thinks and operates. The products we buy, the information we access online, the people with whom we associate, the places we frequent—these are just the beginning of the story. In a cafe, the table one chooses to sit at tells something of their personality. If one walks quickly to the cafe, but slowly to work, it says something else. Bed times, air conditioning levels, games played, these things are signals to a behavioral tracker. When combined with input from biolidar systems, stress scanners, analysis of our personal chemistry, and recordings of how we interact in different situations in our lives, a much deeper profile can be built. Lifelogs and X-casts are a virtual gold mine for these types of analyses, especially when measured over long periods of time. Some scientists swear by the discipline, advocating the universal assignment of numerous profilers to keep detailed case files on every transhuman in their habitats.

PRECOG SYSTEMS

The unholy territory where probability and behavioral surveillance combine is colloquially known as “precog.” Precog systems are used to predict a person’s actions based on their sociocultural behavior, ground state abnormalities (people tend to change their standard MOs before committing a crime), interaction profile, mesh activity, and numerous other factors. Though far from perfect, these systems are sometimes accurate in gauging the likelihood of anti-social or criminal behavior. These predictive systems are not only applied against individuals; precog analyses are also used to gauge the potential momentum and activity of mass groups, particularly in situations of unrest or civil disturbance.

Though “precog” analysis systems have had a marginally effective success rate in predicting crimes when implemented under real conditions, their use has raised a number of social and legal issues. While the primary function of precog systems is to predict and prevent crimes before they occur, legal action against the potential criminal before the activity has been initiated rests on very thin and dubious moral authority. Most jurisdictions do not condone the arrest and conviction of people for crimes they have not yet committed, no matter how trusted the precog analysis. Some political systems advocate altering the variables of the situation to produce a different, more acceptable outcome. This can include issuing warnings, offering free counsel, or taking the suspect into “protective” custody for a temporary period. Some go so far as to enforce psychosurgery or restrictive limitations such as home confinement, restricted travel, or mandatory accompaniment by a robotic guardian. Many see these measures as simply giving the potential criminal warning that they are being watched, encouraging them to go about their crime in a more clandestine manner or switching to other criminal behavior. Instead, these jurisdictions pursue policies of aggressive surveillance and containment, monitoring the suspect and intervening before they can act, but only once they have crossed a legal threshold for culpability. The most restrictive authorities simply treat precog results as fait accompli, and move to capture and punish the potential offender as if they had committed the crime they were predicted to commit in the future.

PSI SURVEILLANCE

It’s worth noting that while some asyncs are known to have the ability to detect other life forms, read thoughts, and so on, there is no known (or at least widespread) method of employing these on a large scale. The mental effort expended to exercise these sleights is usually too draining to engage in on a mass basis. They are, however, useful for specific targeted surveillance instances.

Likewise, there is no known way to identify an async in a crowd or to detect the use of async abilities in an area. This allows asyncs to operate largely unhindered and undetected, should their identity and nature remain unknown. The use of psi jamming devices can of course impair their abilities, but only over limited areas.

Counter-surveillance Techniques

Now that you’ve learned how sensor systems work and what their capabilities are, it’s time to take a look at how to avoid, bypass, fool, and otherwise subvert these systems for your own ends.

PRIVACY FOR THE WICKED

One thing that people in our line of work quickly realize is that it is not only important to practice operational security when on a mission, it’s a good idea to keep a low profile as a matter of course in your daily life. The less info there is on you out there, the less can be used against you. If you practice the bare minimum of enhanced privacy precautions on a daily basis, it makes it that much easier to keep the routine going when it counts. One mistake is all it takes to ruin an op.

To that end, every Operative should be in the habit of operating in mesh privacy mode. This might make some aspects of your life inconvenient, when friends, families, and services cannot quite as easily locate you on demand, but it helps you maintain a low profile. If you must lifelog, don’t share it publicly— archive it in encrypted storage, and back it up. Forget about X-casting, you may as well ask Ozma to open an office inside your brain. Likewise, stealth your signals, fake your mesh ID, and use anonymous accounts, VPNs, and encryption. You never know when someone may take a closer interest in your affairs, and the worst time to find out that someone has been sniffing your comms for weeks is right in the middle of an op.

The drawback to covering your tracks like this on a daily basis is that it sometimes makes you look like, well, like you’re covering your tracks. People who engage all of their privacy functions sometimes stand out in a transparent society. It may make people suspicious, thinking that you’re up to something. If you’re only encrypting your communications with certain people, it sometimes makes it look even worse, like you’re collaborating—and it also pinpoints who you’re in cahoots with. So if you’re going to push ahead with enhanced privacy, do it across the board, in all aspects of your life. Create a cover for yourself while you’re at it. If you build up a reputation as one of those old-fashioned “privacy nuts,” people are less inclined to think you’re up to no good—they’ll just think you’re weird. If you have a good reason for the enhanced privacy—such as freelancing for a client on a top secret hypercorp project—even better. Then you have justification for protecting your affairs.

Sometimes a better option is to live the double life. Maintain a public presence, keep up a good transparent front, and very carefully practice your private biz in complete stealth mode on the side. This takes care and practice. Disposable ectos are essential to this sort of lifestyle. This also means having contingency plans in place for new communication channels when your secret lines and routines get accidentally or intentionally compromised.

If you need to spend credit without linking it to your ID, crypto-cred is your best friend. Cryptocred services are accessible around the solar system,making it easy and convenient to make completely anonymous purchases. Crypto-cred is growing increasingly popular in the inner system; many hypercorps take advantage of these services to make it harder for their competitors to keep tabs on them.

PHYSICAL PRIVACY

All of the methods above are useful for concealing your mesh activities, but they do little to protect you from physical surveillance. Maintaining privacy in public is quite challenging in an environment of ubiquitous surveillance. There are some options, however. In habitats where such things are acceptable and legal, personal privacy shrouds are an occasional sight. These smart fabric garments effectively block most sensors, preventing the person inside from being identified. Shrouds are growing increasingly popular in socialite and celebrity circles, as they foil the efforts of stalkers and voyeurs.

If you’re seeking a bit of in-person conversational privacy, many establishments offer private rooms that are scoured of listening devices and other sensors. Many private residences, business offices, and secure installations have “cleaning systems” at their entranceways that scour anyone entering of electronic snooping devices, including bug zappers to disable nanoswarms, specks, and similar hardto- spot spyware. Otherwise a set of access jacks and a fiberoptic cable are ideal, as external sensors can’t monitor mental communications (barring a cyberbrain hack). Line-of-sight laser communication systems are also good for countering eavesdropping, as tight beams are difficult to intercept, especially when used at short distances.

It is important that mesh privacy and physical privacy be practiced together. Using a fake mesh ID is pointless if you are running around with the same morph that your real name and mesh ID are linked to; eventually someone is going to correlate surveillance footage and mesh activity and link your face to the fake mesh ID. If you’re just seeking temporary privacy, this is not a big deal, but long-term data forensics is likely to uncover such poor practices.

LIVING THE LIE

Fake identities are standard fare in Covert operations. Handlers will often provide cover identities for operatives, but you are encouraged to have your own on hand. You never know when things will go awry or when old enemies may catch up to you. It is best to have multiple IDs at your disposal so you can burn and dispose of them as needed.

PURCHASING FAKE IDs

A good fake ID is more than just your brainprint with a new digital code stamped to it or a new nanotat ID for your morph. Though bare-bones fake IDs are cheap, they arouse suspicion by the fact that there is no history or data trail attached to them (though this can often be explained away as being a newly instantiated infugee). The best fake IDs are completely fabricated personas with detailed histories spread across multiple archives and habitats. They also come with pregenerated credit accounts and reputation scores in various social networks, so it doesn’t seem as if your identity suddenly sprang from nowhere just a few days ago. Criminal cartels that specialize in fake IDs can be very thorough with these backgrounds. They use multiple methods, from hiring people (or employing forks and AIs) to establish the transactions and data trails for multiple IDs over years to gaining backdoor entrances into linked databases and using these to insert new identities and carefully proliferate them to other archives. They take full advantage of the fact that habitats and polities do not collaborate on ID checking; many IDs in fact originate from shady habitats like New Sicily that seem to have an inordinate number of legitimate new citizens spring from nowhere on a daily basis. Rep scores are carefully established over time via sophisticated puppetnets, with thousands of fake IDs serving as an echo chamber with each other for the establishment of credible rep histories. The anti-counterfeiting algorithms employed by social networks prevent these fake rep scores from being elevated too high, but they do provide a starting point so that your new persona isn’t a complete unknown without clout.

A NEW LIFE FROM SCRATCH

After the Fall, countless infugees survived only to be locked away in cold storage, isolated to simulspace prisons, or enslaved in indentured data farms. Even a decade after the Fall, new infugees are being revitalized and re-instanced in new morphs. Many of these have no data trail or historical records attached to them, as this information was lost during the Fall. This is the perfect opportunity for anyone seeking a fresh start. Dump your morph, clean up your data signature, darkcast to a new location, and introduce yourself as a refugee from the Fall seeking asylum and a new life. Unless you make resourceful enemies, it’s not likely the deception will even be called into question, let alone researched. The trick is in picking a habitat that is open and friendly to new infugees and asks few questions. Though this is easy to find in autonomist space, there are inner system stations that are just as receptive.

Earning a new ID this way requires some finesse. Infugees rarely have resources at their disposal, so for your cover story to be consistent you may have to spend some time as an infomorph, perhaps taking on minor jobs to earn credit or reputation. There are ways around this—some infugees brought credit accounts with them or are restored to find inheritances waiting for them, tucked away in the mesh of other habitats by relatives that died during the Fall. With some careful pre-planning, a backstory like this can be established. Otherwise, this method can be time-consuming to pull off successfully.

TRADING IDs

Alternately, some infugees are more than willing to trade their backhistories and identities with someone else if the price is right. If your rep is low and you’ve made some enemies over the years, the prospect of surrendering your established identity may not seem so bad given the credit you would earn. Many infugees have lost everything—their friends, their relatives, their lovers, their homes—and have no qualms about surrendering their old identities and starting anew.

Reassigning IDs in this manner is not difficult, especially with the right underworld connections. In autonomist areas, it is often quite easy, assuming both parties consent to the switch and all of its ramifications. This option is a good one for sentinels who have real IDs—or even fake ones—that are essentially compromised. It is, of course, not recommended in situations where the traded ID may cause severe complications for the new owner. If you happen to have racked up some arrest warrants in the Morningstar Constellation, however, that is likely to be unimportant to an infugee who plans a new future in the Uranian autonomist colonies or, better yet, seeks to try their hand at gatecrashing and extrasolar colony life.

STEALING AN ID

Stealing identities is always an option, especially if you only plan to use the identity for a short period and the original owner of that ID is far enough away and low profile enough to be unlikely to catch on soon. A sifter who has spent the past decade hammering rocks on Mercury is unlikely to notice that you’re using their ID to maneuver in the tunnels of Extropia without too much attention—at least until you start triggering lots of flags or otherwise drawing attention to yourself. Even if you rack up some arrest warrants, legal torts, fines, and reputation strikes, you are unlikely to do lasting damage to that fine sifter’s life as they should be able to easily and quickly deny responsibility—though you may cause that poor soul some unfortunate stress and inconveniences.

Various criminal networks excel at stealing ID information and selling it through black market channels, particularly the ID Crew. Purchasing a stolen and disposable ID of this type is often the best option for quick and dirty operations.

FAKE ID COMPLICATIONS

Operating under a fake ID is not always as simple as it seems. The drawback to using a fake ID is that you cannot rely on your own carefully built-up reputation and network of friends and colleagues. It can sometimes be tempting to take advantage of two identities at the same time, so that you can operate with some pseudonymity and still fall back on your rep, but you run the risk of linking the fake ID to your real ID in these situations. One mistake and the carefully constructed persona you’ve been operating will be useless—possibly endangering your real life ID in the process.

Fake IDs are also vulnerable to brainprint matching. If you happened to rack up a slew of heavy criminal charges on your last visit to Elysium, then even if you return under a fake ID, you may be nabbed. This is because your brainprint will still be the same, even if it is attached to a new ID. Brainprints are not always checked against similar prints in the system, but security and customs often doublecheck new arrivals against the brainprints of their most wanted or most recent criminal elements, exactly to foil this kind of thing. Luckily, brainprints change over time, so this becomes less and less of an issue, but a match still might be close enough to raise flags. Matching brainprints are not always uncommon given the proliferation of forks, but this is not necessarily an escape clause unless the fork happened to predate the criminal activity.

Some stolen and traded IDs run afoul of synchronicity. You may be in the middle of an op when you suddenly run across an old friend of your ID’s previous owner, forcing you to scramble for a cover story without triggering suspicion. Though rare, these sorts of situations have a habit of popping up at the most inconvenient times.

AWARENESS

When it comes to countering physical surveillance, the first step is to be aware of it. It can be incredibly helpful to know exactly what type of sensor coverage is present in a particular area. An intersection that happens to only be covered by a few visual-spectrum cameras and microphones, for example, is an ideal place to try and stage a holographic illusion that would be foiled if other sensors are present.

The easiest way to catalog what sensors are at work is to simply ping the local public mesh. Most sensors, including private ones, will acknowledge their presence online. This will not list out any sensors that are operating in private mesh mode, but you can sometimes find these by searching for stealthed radio signals. If your primary concern is accidental viewing by a publicam voyeur, then knowing where those cameras are placed is half your battle.

Active sensor systems are easy to detect because they are transmitting signals. Radar, microwave, lidar, x-ray, and gamma-ray emitters are trivial to detect with the appropriate receiver. Nanodetectors will let you know about any lingering spy swarms. Passive cameras can be detected by lens-spotting systems that use lasers to illuminate an area and detect the reflections from the lens. If you really want to know what’s in a room, drop some smart dust and pick up the readings later. Nanoswarms are one of the most effective methods of cataloging all of the sensors in an area.

BLIND SPOTS

How do you move around in an environment of total surveillance without being seen? You find the blind spots in coverage—or better yet, make your own.

The process of ghosting—moving between gaps in the sensor coverage—requires a lot of advance preparation. If you know the route you need to take, you can map it out in advance, using the tricks described above to pinpoint all of the spimes and scanners. You want to do this without being obvious, so it may take several passes or a combined effort by a team. Alternatively, you can seek out blank spots in the surveillance coverage and look for ways to link them together.

Some areas are quite intentionally kept off the grid. Criminal outfits that don’t like people poking into their business quite often sterilize a surveillance-free zone around their holdings. Groups like Datacide or the Decepticons go out of their way to create blank spots in a habitat’s watchful eye. Some of these can be found online, if you know where to look or who to ask. Others are sold for a price. Clearing a path of sensors is high-paying biz for both tech-savvy crime cartels and private investigators or freelance security specialists. Some privacy-friendly establishments have secret and scanner-free entrances and exits, made available to favored clients at an affordable rate.

When all else fails, you can create your own blind spots. This involves dropping a saboteur nanoswarm on an area with specific instructions to target surveillance devices. Bughunter bots serve the same purpose. Used together, this is an effective way to clear a zone of unwanted spyware. The main thing to remember is that blind spots don’t remain blind for long. Repair systems and bots will revive or replace disabled publicams and other spimes. New sensors will be seeded in an area by people who notice the lack of coverage. Your clear zone will only remain safe for a short window of time, so take advantage of it while it lasts.

The trick to using blind spots is that your entrance and exit from the sensor-free zone must somehow be disguised. Otherwise you can still be tracked as you enter and leave the hole in coverage. This means that you must employ deception to lose your trail or otherwise trick the cameras before you take advantage of the blind spot.

If you have the resources, and the particular sensors you need to blind are privately owned, sometimes it is a simple solution to buy them out. If you own the scanners, you control when they are on and what they record, and it becomes much easier to fabricate recordings. This option generally only applies to private sensors in public areas, as few people are willing to relinquish ownership of the cameras in their own homes and offices.

JAMMING AND BLINDING

Rather than destroying sensors, it is sometimes easier (and less incriminating) to temporarily jam or blind them. Radio jamming is only effective in scrambling radar, though it will disrupt any real-time feeds that any local devices are transmitting via the mesh. A similar mesh-jamming effect can be gained by launching a denial of service attack against all devices in a particular area or unleashing a batch of kaos AIs. Active sensors can sometimes be jammed or disrupted by tweaking one of the emitters in an area to generate so much background noise that it drowns out the other emitters.

Jamming mesh signals will not stop a camera from recording, but blinding it with a dazzler laser system will. Similarly, microphones can be drowned out with a white noise machine. If the sensor system you are worried about happens to be a person, that’s where prisoner masks (for biomorphs) and disablers (for pods and synthmorphs) come in. Some morphs are even designed with countersurveillance in mind and so come equipped with sensor jamming and blinding modifications.

DECEPTION

When you can’t disable or blind a sensor, your path is clear: fool it. There are many methods for fooling publicams and other scanner systems, though the best option will likely depend on the situation at hand and your specific needs.

The simplest and crudest tools for camera deception are chameleon and invisibility cloaks. While these are effective, simple disguises are often even easier— or trivial if you happen to possess false face nanoware and chameleon skin. Disguises also have the advantage of allowing you to change your looks and pass as other people, which is sometimes more important than simply disappearing. If you are hoping to avoid facial recognition scans, the application of makeup, nanotats, or skin designs in specific patterns is enough to foil the pattern recognition algorithms by breaking up outlines and identifying marker points. This is also where biomorph clones with common cookie-cutter looks come in handy. Some morph models are quite common in large habitats and individuals in these morphs can quite easily be mistaken for each other. A clever team can take advantage of this by all choosing identical common morphs, thus foiling attempts to ID individuals by facial recognition.

The ability to switch morphs is a boon to sensor evasion methods, particularly with pods and synthmorphs, as an ego can evacuate from a cyberbrain quite quickly. Two synths, for example, seemingly passing by each other in a temporary sensor shadow, might actually be pausing just long enough to link to each other’s access jacks via fiberoptics and switch egos. In this manner, an ego can jump to an entirely different morph without leaving a mesh trail or doing so in front of the cameras. Do this several times, and it can become impossible to track where an ego originated with one synthmorph and where it disappeared. Synthmorphs, by their nature, have other advantages that can be used to foil tracking. A small synthmorph or biomorph can be hidden inside another synthmorph as it moves about, until it is carefully released in a sensor dead zone. Likewise, some synthmorphs are easily disguised as robots operated by an AI rather than an ego, especially if you take pains to conceal the cyberbrain within its carriage. The same trick used to switch egos between synthmorphs described above can also be used to pass an ego from a ghostrider module to a previously uninhabited synthmorph or pod—again, without leaving a trail on the mesh. If care is taken, it is even possible for an ego to take over a synthmorph by force. First, the synthmorph must be incapacitated with a disabler, long enough for the attacker to initiate a cyberbrain hack that forces the target ego out into an external storage device. The invading ego then assumes control of the cyberbrain and voila—they are in control of a new shell.

Swarmanoid morphs deserve special mention, due to their ability to scatter into smaller swarms and even individual units to evade detection. Individual bots from the swarm can take separate, discreet routes to a destination, hiding in people’s clothing, underneath vehicles, in luggage, and so on. The drawback to swarmanoids scattering for stealth purposes is that the swarm still relies on mesh communication to remain “whole” and act as a unit, meaning that they remain vulnerable to detection and sabotage. It is possible for individual swarm bots to be given preprogrammed instructions so that it may go mesh silent and act autonomously, but if something goes wrong it will be cut off from the rest of the swarmanoid’s distributed intelligence.

FALSIFYING DATA

Almost all sensors are meshed, meaning they are vulnerable to hacking. A hacker who has accessed such a system can turn off recording, delete data, or replace it with falsified information. Turning a device off or leaving gaps in recorded memory are signs that someone has messed with a system, so the most discreet and effective method is to replace data with realistic misinformation. Simply looping previous recordings is not the best option, as archiving system AIs often scan recordings to look for exactly this sort of tampering. The best trick is to input data that is not just false but actively misleading, so that even if the hack is discovered the investigators may still be thrown off course.

Mesh system penetration can also play a critical role in ID checks. A skilled hacker providing overwatch on an operative may be able to get them through a checkpoint with a bad ID by infiltrating the ID scanner at the key moment and submitting false documentation.

One positive aspect to data manipulation is that it can sometimes be initiated after the fact, to clean up any traces an op might have left behind or to counteract anything that might have gone wrong. This is sometimes a tricky proposition, as data from meshed sensors may be archived in multiple places, so it may entail compromising multiple databases. Scrubbing the data trail left behind or the incriminating information linked to an ID can be a critical affair, however, especially if an operative needs time to extract themselves from a rapidly escalating situation.

MISDIRECTION

If you can’t avoid detection for a crime, why not put that attention on someone else? In a high-surveillance society, it can be quite difficult to obfuscate all traces. Odds are that something will be recorded, and that evidence is going to get someone blamed. The clever operative makes sure that person is never them. This means throwing a patsy to the wolves.

Quite often a patsy will be somewhat aware of what’s going on, but they’re somehow misled as to who is truly involved or what are the exact details of the situation. This often involves scams where the patsy is hired by a misleading source to be in the wrong place at the right time. Other times it means betraying the fall guy at the last minute. Sometimes it involves a ruse where the patsy believes the whole fiasco is an accident and their loyalty and honor will carry them through whatever punishment might come.

The patsy may also be someone who is completely oblivious to the situation’s background—a stranger put in the situation by opportunity. An unknowing bystander makes for a great patsy, as even when questioned they’re unlikely to spill useful information given that they’re unaware of the context. The drawback here is that without some evidence of involvement, they may be difficult to properly frame. As the main point of using a patsy is to distract the opposition or authorities long enough for an operative to get away and/or clean up the trail, an uninvolved fall person may not consume attention for long enough.

On occasion it is possible to hire people as professional patsies. Some transhumans, particularly those comfortable with abusing forks, willingly subject themselves to the legal systems of various habitats, as taking the fall for someone else can pay rather well.

Usually these sorts of accomplices will dedicate beta forks to the task, resigning any likelihood of merging with the fork. Some criminal cartels are known to sell forknapped egos for exactly this sort of purpose.

In the same vein, an operative can set up one of their own forks to take the fall. This is best done with a beta fork that has had all potentially incriminating memories excised. Ideally, they will be sleeved in a morph without a cortical stack, so that if they are killed there will be no memories of the operation that can be confiscated and interrogated via psychosurgery.

THE TRANSHUMAN FACTOR

The weakest link in many security and surveillance systems is the transhuman element. Unlike machines, transhumans are riddled with biases, prone to errors, and easy to compromise. In this vein, the best method for dealing with a surveillance network, especially a large or sophisticated one, is to go after the transhumans that watch over it. Why bother subverting several dozen types of sensor systems when you can just go to the person in charge of that network and apply some pressure via blackmail, bribery, or outright threats? Such people are also vulnerable to misdirection, confidence schemes, or other scams that might divert their attention long enough for your operation. It is not always necessary to go after authority figures; run-of-the-mill surveillance techs are often capable of turning off a system at the right time, modifying data, or otherwise compromising a system within, without anyone being the wiser.

COUNTERSURVEILLANCE TRICKS

These rules detail some of the tricks that may be employed to avoid or impair surveillance.

MAPPING SENSORS

Knowing what sensors are out there enables an Operative to devise countermeasures. There are many tools Agents can deploy to map out the sensor coverage in an area: smart dust, lens spotters, electrical sense— not to mention just looking or pinging local wireless signals.

CLEARING BLIND SPOTS

Sometimes defeating sensors is too risky. In this case, clearing a blind spot or route is an alternative option. Doing this without being recorded in the act can be challenging — but this is also what bughunter bots and saboteur nanoswarms are for.

AVOIDING RECOGNITION

People wishing to avoid recognition of their morph can deploy a number of disguise modifications. Skinflex (p. 309, EP) and synthetic mask (p. 311, EP) are by far the best options, but sex switch, gait masking, skeletal masking, and chameleon skin can also be beneficial, as well as standard Disguise skill. If acceptable to local customs, a shroud (p. 151) provides complete personal anonymity. For biomorphs, one easy way to change looks is a simple hour in a healing vat for facial bodysculpting (p. 326, EP). For those that want or have the opportunity to change their looks, there is one final option for avoiding facial recognition. The pattern-matching algorithms of facial recognition software are vulnerable to certain makeup or visual patterns (via chameleon skin), simply because the patterns foil their ability to make a match. Such makeup or patterns are visibly distinctive, however, and may arouse suspicion— though they are fashionable in some social circles, particularly among some media icons and celebrities that prefer to deter stalkers. When applying such makeup or patterns, apply a +20 modifier to Disguise Tests to avoid facial/image recognition.

SKIPJACKING

Skipjacking is the art of using Infiltration skill to time one’s movements through a place that is under ubiquitous surveillance. This involves using other people, vehicles, and objects as cover, timing the movement of drones and cameras, and similar tricks to minimize one’s profile and exposure to sensors—all while avoiding suspicion. Skipjacking is quite difficult to pull off, especially in areas with crowded sensor coverage, but it may at least prolong detection or add uncertainty. Treat this as a Variable Opposed Test between the skipjacker’s Infiltration skill and the Perception of any monitors. Apply a -30 modifier to the skipjacker, perhaps less if the sensors are fewer or easier to avoid. If the skipjacker succeeds and the monitor fails, they avoid detection. If both succeed, the skipjacker has been detected, but not with absolute certainty.

SECURE COMMUNICATION

Outside of quantum and encrypted communication methods, there are a few ways for individuals to communicate face-to-face without fear of eavesdropping: skinlink, a wired connection between access jacks, or tight-beam laser links or hypersonic communicators.

INVISIBLE DOORS

One trick employed by criminal groups and others wishing to foil surveillance and physical tailing is to use so-called “invisible doors.” These are physical gateways that use the same metamaterials as invisibility cloaks, literally bending light waves around the doorway. When strategically placed with crafty architecture, these can be made to look like a standard corner or alcove—only people can walk right through them. Others are cleverly turned to reflect light, making them look like full-length mirrors. In either case, these portals will not be physical to the touch. They can be detected with radar or x-rays, but are otherwise invisible to the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum.