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TGLS · 01-10-2019, 05:44 PM

Question 43 [STG]
How hard is it to thwart "big brother"?

Answer 43 [STG]
Surprisingly easy. I'm quite a bit bigger than him now, so I can tell him to stop hitting himself.

Oh, you mean global surveillance. Right, that's pretty hard, and by hard I mean expensive. Good cryptography is hard to get these days; special, hard to acquire hardware is necessary to make any kind of difficult to break code. One time pads remain the exception, though pseudorandom generators are useless. Most devices are programmed to be always listening, even while "off". The only way to be sure is to keep it unplugged and remove all batteries, or writing your own drivers for everything.

The need to pay for things is another challenge for privacy conscious individuals. Bank transactions are easily tracked by banks (obviously), governments, and corporations. Old cryptocurrencies have become trivial to mine, and thus have lost most, if not all of their value. Newer ones, like bashcoin, are tracked primarily their specially licensed equipment. Physical money still exists, but physical cryptocurrencies can be tracked by license numbers, and physical banknotes are only of interest to collectors. Private payments are either by cash transfer cards encoded from unlicensed cryptocurrency encoders (sometimes the foolish just trade ones made by licensed encoders around a bit first), or more rarely, by commodity metals.

Spy equipment has become extremely sophisticated. Laser microphones are exceptionally effective, with a range of over a kilometer. The smallest audio bugs are about the size of a grain of salt. The smallest video bugs are the size of a Skittle. They lack data storage for more than a few seconds or radio transmission beyond more than a hundred meters. Audio bugs can only be removed by a thorough scrub down. Some hotels have special "privacy" rooms, that are built into a Faraday cage, and have heavy scrub downs daily. They can also provide painstaking searches of guests. Some of the less reputable ones have bugged most of their rooms.

Question 42 [CTY]
What city or location in this setting deserves a bit more focus?[snip!]

Answer 42 [CTY]
Rolling 1d3... 2. That means Mu-sigma.

Question 44 [CTY]
Public transportation. What is it (light rail, subways, buses, ferries)? Is it overcrowded, underused, inconvenient, efficient, etc.?

Question 45 [CTY]
Social classes. What's the breakdown like? Is it pyramid shaped, wide in the middle, or flipped? Are living conditions especially good or poor for particular classes?

Question 46 [CTY]
Crime. Is the city awash in it? Are there any particular areas of concern? Does organized crime have a particularly strong presence?

01-10-2019, 05:44 PM	#41
TGLS Join Date: Jan 2014	Re: [GAME] Incorporate a Cyberpunk Megacorp Question 43 [STG] How hard is it to thwart "big brother"? Answer 43 [STG] Surprisingly easy. I'm quite a bit bigger than him now, so I can tell him to stop hitting himself. Oh, you mean global surveillance. Right, that's pretty hard, and by hard I mean expensive. Good cryptography is hard to get these days; special, hard to acquire hardware is necessary to make any kind of difficult to break code. One time pads remain the exception, though pseudorandom generators are useless. Most devices are programmed to be always listening, even while "off". The only way to be sure is to keep it unplugged and remove all batteries, or writing your own drivers for everything. The need to pay for things is another challenge for privacy conscious individuals. Bank transactions are easily tracked by banks (obviously), governments, and corporations. Old cryptocurrencies have become trivial to mine, and thus have lost most, if not all of their value. Newer ones, like bashcoin, are tracked primarily their specially licensed equipment. Physical money still exists, but physical cryptocurrencies can be tracked by license numbers, and physical banknotes are only of interest to collectors. Private payments are either by cash transfer cards encoded from unlicensed cryptocurrency encoders (sometimes the foolish just trade ones made by licensed encoders around a bit first), or more rarely, by commodity metals. Spy equipment has become extremely sophisticated. Laser microphones are exceptionally effective, with a range of over a kilometer. The smallest audio bugs are about the size of a grain of salt. The smallest video bugs are the size of a Skittle. They lack data storage for more than a few seconds or radio transmission beyond more than a hundred meters. Audio bugs can only be removed by a thorough scrub down. Some hotels have special "privacy" rooms, that are built into a Faraday cage, and have heavy scrub downs daily. They can also provide painstaking searches of guests. Some of the less reputable ones have bugged most of their rooms. Question 42 [CTY] What city or location in this setting deserves a bit more focus?[snip!] Answer 42 [CTY] Rolling 1d3... 2. That means Mu-sigma. Question 44 [CTY] Public transportation. What is it (light rail, subways, buses, ferries)? Is it overcrowded, underused, inconvenient, efficient, etc.? Question 45 [CTY] Social classes. What's the breakdown like? Is it pyramid shaped, wide in the middle, or flipped? Are living conditions especially good or poor for particular classes? Question 46 [CTY] Crime. Is the city awash in it? Are there any particular areas of concern? Does organized crime have a particularly strong presence?