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Old 12-08-2014, 04:41 PM   #1
Mcoorlim
 
Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Chicago
Default Cost of a fake identification

Sifted through my books for a bit and couldn't find this, but the situation is basically characters in a TL9 cyberpunk game trying to buy different "quality" fake IDs with cash...

Ones good enough to pass a casual visual inspection, ones good enough to pass a quick biometric scan, and ones good enough to support a false identity for months at a time.

Any ideas for "generic" monetary costs for each of these, assuming a "typical" TL9 cyberpunk setting?
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Old 12-08-2014, 04:55 PM   #2
Peter Knutsen
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Default Re: Cost of a fake identification

I don't know...

If you own Shadowrun, any edition, you can see what they do (most editions have different ratings for fake IDs) then convert from nuyen to GURPS $.

Or you can see it as a bribe. Making a fake ID is dangerous, so probably the equivalent of bribing a fairly skilled person with a week's worth of income. More for a very good ID, 2 week's income for a very skilled person. And so forth. The cost of the bribe includes the risk someone (usually not the forger himself) has to take to steal the necessary materials, although for TL9 there may be no necessary materials to steal, of home-fabrication can produce most types of materials.

GURPS already has an item quality scale: Cheap, Good, Fine, Very Fine. You could say that each costs 4 or 5 times as much as the previous, maybe $50 for Cheap, $200 for Good, $1000 for Fine, $5000 for Very Fine. Although $50 as a baseline might be very wrong, maybe $200 or $500 is more appropriate. Or if you want to emphasize the rarity of really good fakes, you could use a x10 cost multiplier per step. But note that I am not sure what the base cost should be. The base cost is rectally extracted, wheras the cost progression is the result of a fairly good thought process.
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Old 12-08-2014, 06:05 PM   #3
patchwork
 
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Default Re: Cost of a fake identification

Something that only needs to pass visual inspection should be dirt cheap. Peter's price scale seems perfectly appropriate, maybe even too high - the TL9 equivalent of a photoshop wizard with an amphetamine habit to feed works cheap.

The price of something that stands up to biometrics depends on who's keeping the biometrics; is it really just a checksum on data encoded in the ID? Is it checking a centralized database maintained by a ruthless and reasonably competent government? Is it checking the public database of a major corporation (which is just as secure as the creepy government's, but is far more vulnerable to spoofing and man-in-the-middle because the person checking the ID is probably unfamiliar with the database she's checking)?

The first is still a week or two's wages for a skilled professional, and someone with the necessary skills and a history of poor decisions shouldn't be too hard to find. The others...well, the work is still easy, but that insurance premium you're paying for just went through the roof. Something that will hold up for years should cost year's salaries for a low-level clerk; reduce price based on how long the ID has to last before it gets purged.

A complete alternate identity that would stand up to a minor investigation by a professional - if available for cash instead of points at all - is a matter of redundancy. You need a credit score not with one agency but with all of them, and the scores and entries have to broadly match up. You need purchasing histories with multiple companies that add up to something like a normal life (or at least the life you're putting on display). You need health records. The people who can construct such a thing are either governments or megacorps themselves, or else professionals who build an identity for a years, and, when it's "ripe", sell it to someone who physically resembles the part and seems able to pull off the act. As such, the identity was crafted to serve the artist's needs, not the recipient's...one tailored to the recipient would have to be ordered years before it was actually needed...
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Old 12-08-2014, 07:00 PM   #4
dfinlay
 
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Default Re: Cost of a fake identification

This is way too dependant on setting to say.

Are IDs just paper cards? RFID chips? Implants? Encrypted passcodes? Biometrics?

What is the severity of punishment for being caught making one? A fine and a slap on the wrist? jail time? execution? Torture and elimination of one's entire family?

More setting intel is needed, but I could see the base line cheap ones being anywhere from $5 to 1K and the very high quality ones anywhere from around 1K to 100K or more for a fully constructed background hacked into all the relevant databases and with people who will swear to have known you (maybe even mind-hacked to have).
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Old 12-08-2014, 08:44 PM   #5
dcarson
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Default Re: Cost of a fake identification

For a really secure alternate identity you start off with a good one and live it in a quiet way for several years. A normal check will see real events that can be proven and accept it. _Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe_ by Robert Asprin, George Takei has future ninjas who have cover identities going back generations. They live under multiple identities growing up so that you can find fifth grade class photos with them in it.
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Old 12-08-2014, 09:30 PM   #6
Xplo
 
Join Date: Apr 2006
Default Re: Cost of a fake identification

Quote:
Originally Posted by patchwork View Post
Something that only needs to pass visual inspection should be dirt cheap. Peter's price scale seems perfectly appropriate, maybe even too high - the TL9 equivalent of a photoshop wizard with an amphetamine habit to feed works cheap.
I don't think Peter's scale is too high at all. As far as I know - which isn't very well - fake IDs good enough to get you into a bar run in the $100 neighborhood in modern day America, and they tend to have all sorts of weird security features: fluorescent ink, embedded holographic watermarks, etc.

Heck, in the future, some sort of encrypted RFID tag or PAN device might be common; people might not routinely present ID, just carry it. Of course those aren't necessarily expensive, but if you also have to embed the tag in a physical card with visual security features that pass a basic inspection, that's a little more than a Photoshop job. Although the guy doing it will probably still be a tweeker.
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