GURPS Shadowrun

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If anyone wonders, as a typical (in at least some respects) middle-aged American I would be unlikely to do my own dirty work unless a known hacker with a suspicious box was in the same room with me.

How are you identifying this known hacker, and how is his box suspicious if the only thing that makes it different than the one you're carrying is some illegal programs?

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I might even give him a verbal warning although if decks are truly concealable and operated by wireless neural link I could not _safely_ do even that.

Well no, no more than you could safely warn a man with what you suspect to be a gun in his pocket pointed at you.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

In such a case though I'd probably get away with it as self-defense, much the same as if I'd shot a mafia hit man with his hand in his pocket holding a suspicious bulge.

If this hacker was on some kind of wanted list, probably. If your excuse is "he had a computer on him" you'd probably be going to the looney bin. Unless he was SINless and you weren't, in which case they'd probably agree he was a threat, make a note in your file for your corporate boss about paranoia, and you'd be free to go. Or if he DID have brainhacking stuff on his deck (and wasn't licensed to carry it) and you just got lucky.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So cyberdecks that function as death rays don't get policed as illegal instruments used in economic crimes. They are policed as if they were terroristic weapons and all raids to apprehend a suspect hacker are carried out by a Homeland Security SWAT team who probably do my shooting on sight for me.

You do realize that in 2075, everyone is carrying a cyberdeck, don't you. It's how you broadcast your SIN, interact with stores, social media, gridguide.... NOT carrying a cyberdeck is a sign you're a societal outcast.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You also don't get on an airliner or into any secure building with any electronic device that might in any possible way be concealing a cyberdeck. You hope that the security of the time is not only better but faster and more convenient to deal with than today's too.

Unlikely. They probably just have a couple people with guns on the plane and a fairly high quality firewall defending it. If it registers an attack, it traces you and you get shot by the air marshals. Unless you're very, very good.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So, a technology capable of producing this extreme level of danger is extremely unlikely to produce a situation where the technology is universally adopted and everyone takes moderate precautions according to their personally evaluated threat level.

Instead this is a technology that very, very probably gets stomped on with hobnailed boots even if you have to issue those boots to stormtroopers.

I think that's a very large stretch. But if it works in your games, whatever.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

So if I was setting up a cyberpunk setting I'd make sure that "cyber" part still left the users being considered as "punks" who potentially threaten no more than the bottom line of giant, faceless corps rather than direct and immediate threats to the life and safety of human beings within visual range of them.

.... unlike people with guns?