| From: | David Hinkley <dhinkley@***.ORG> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Runner's Attitudes |
| Date: | Wed, 2 Jul 1997 23:38:47 +0000 |
> From: TopCat <topcat@***.NET>
> Subject: Re: Runner's Attitudes
Having followed this thread for some time, and at the risk of
inflaming things even more. I feel the urge to add my two cents
worth. The nature of this post is such that I have lost track of
which comments are made by whom (it is late, or is it early) so I am
making comments where I feel the need.
[SNIP]
> At 11:24 PM 7/1/97 +0100, Paul wrote:
> >>You see, when corps say things like "Darn, the runners got outside the
> >>fence, guess we can just forget about them and a few million nuyen worth of
> >>research and resources, huh?" I consider that pretty apathetic. Don't
you?
> >If I'd seen anyone suggesting that, I'd agree it was pretty apathetic.
> >Interestingly, I've never claimed it, so why you persist in attributing
> >it to me is a mystery.
>
> Then why would a corp let a runner slide when any given shadowrun will cost
> a given corporation millions of nuyen in the big picture?
Because you don't dump good money after bad. Not if you want to
continue making the big profits. You do analize the run and patch your
security breaches. Once it is clear that the runners have passed
their boody to their employer, there is no profit in killing them.
There is little deterant value, because to claim credit for getting
the team that ripped the corp off the corp has to admit that it was
ripped off. From the point of view some runners this proves that the
corp is an easy target (because the runners 'know' they are better
then that other team).
> >I don't subscribe to the notion that, in the extreme, a corporation will
> >spend multiple millions of nuyen in hunting down and destroying a few
> >petty criminals. Most shadowruns don't involve that sort of cost to the
> >target, why throw good money after bad?
>
> Here's where you're wrong again. As I've explained before, market share and
> confidence play a huge part in stock value. If your research is stolen and
> a competitor can now take a chunk out of your market share, it'll cost you
> millions easy. Then the fact that it was stolen and nothing could/would be
> done about it would lower shareholder confidence and your stock would
> plummet. That's the way the world works now and it'll be worse in SR.
The best way to protect market share is to stonewall, admit nothing,
deny everything. As to your compeditor, you target him with a run of
your own. To hunt down a team requires that word be put out on the
street that you want them, that admission that you were hit will hurt
you more then doing nothing about the run.
> As to a shadowrun not being worth that much, if it isn't worth that much, it
> isn't worth it for a corp to go through the effort to get runners to go
> after it. Unless of course a given corp really wants that office clerk's
> shopping list or the janitor's favorite plunger for personal reasons. If
> someone wants something bad enough that they'll hire runners, that given
> thing will be worth HUGE nuyen.
>
> >If you have cost the corporation ten or twenty million (and that's a
> >_big_ run), then you can expect a pretty savage hunt. If your run simply
> >planted some evidence that meant John Doe got knocked out of the running
> >for a certain promotion, and Richard Roe got the post instead; why is
> >the corporation even going to get involved? Why is it even going to know
> >there was a problem?
>
> Because runners broke in and tampered with official files. Of course, in my
> worldview the runners couldn't get that done without being seen somehow
> unless it was a truly *pitiful* corp. Think of how your particular employer
> might react if someone came in, changed some records, and left. Would they
> be noticed? Would the systems show that file "x" was changed/planted at a
> time when nobody should have been in the office and the backup looks far
> different from what's there now? I know at any job I've been at they would
> and that's right now, not in the ultra-paranoid 2050's.
In real life (among other things) I am a college educated security
professional. After the break in a carefull examination of all
records, paper, electronic and video would be made. The first task
being to identify if it is an inside or outside job and how it was
done. The second part is to fix the security problem that permited it
in the first place. The first part to determine the direction of the
investgation.
If it looks like an inside job the the goal is
identifing the "who". As you want to prevent him from doing it again,
and to identify what else he has done. If he has stolen valuble
stuff,(not information) the goal is to get it back. If it was
information that was taken (i.e. copied), where it went. Currently in
the United States industrial espanoge and the data gained from same
is illegal and creates a tort (the lawyer's favorate) so identifing
the company that got the info is important, possibly more important
then punishing the thief.
Outside jobs are handeled differently as the assistance of the
police (who generally do thier own investgating) is required. Most
internal efforts are devoted to pluging the hole.
> >Runners _will_ be pursued if there is a case to do so. Sometimes that
> >will simply be "log it, file it, if we see them again we do something
> >about it: they didn't do enough damage to be worth wasting resource on."
> >Other times it will be an all-out manhunt and damn the cost, because the
> >corporation cannot afford to show weakness on this issue.
>
> If runners don't do anything then it was a waste to hire them in the first
> place.
That is not always the case. Consider the cost, and disruption from
an internal investgation that attempts to identify what the runners
"took" or were trying to take. Add the distrust it breeds when the
suspected target is something so secret that no one outside the corp
knows of it.
[SNIP]
>
> >>They won't, it's silly to let them get away.
This is partly correct, there is much positive benifit from causing
the runners to disapear during the run. No bodies, no public reports,
just nothing No one knows anything, they left on a run and never
came back. And if you caught one alive you interigate before the
disapearance. (currently is not an option as the legal risk is too
high, but with SR's corprate extraterritoraliy it is another matter).
If some get away the benefits of this tactic are greatly diminished.
As to hunting them down after they have passed on the spoils, for the
reasons I discussed above, it is more often then not better to let
them go.
>
> >It's also silly to go bankrupt hunting petty criminals.
Most definatly.
> You still have no concept of the amount of cash that goes through a given
> megacorp. Microsoft is nowhere near the level of a megacorp (I think that's
> in CorpShad) now and look at the absolutely staggering amount of cash they have.
Megacorps are large because they do not waste thier money.
> >The response will be in proportion to the damage done,...[SNIP]
Except where the human target (i.e, security chief, department head)
takes such personal offense at the runners action, that he becomes
obsessed with 'getting' the runners. Then al bets are off, until his
boss figures out how much money is being wasted on this hunt. At this
point the hunt will stop and he may or maynot be seeking new
employment.
> If the run would do no damage, the run would not be contracted in the first
> place. People don't just hire runners for fun, they hire them for
> industrial espionage. Damage will be done in myriad ways and severe amounts
> from any run and backlash should go into the very high 6-digit range easily.
> Seven-digit would be more common and much higher being very possible. See
> the overall picture and it becomes quite clear.
People hire runners to do things that they think would benefit
themselves or their company. Tasks like theft, assaisnation,
sabotage, as well as industrial espionage. And which it would be best that that
they not be identified with. Part of what they are buying is
plausible deniability. To them runners are just a tool. The target of
a run should be more intrested in the employer, rather then the tool.
[SNIP]
>
> Try breaking into a local corporation's office building sometime. The corps
> here use everything from cameras to pressure sensors to keypad/keycard locks
> to guards to animals to motion sensors and I'm sure some things that I,
> myself, have not had the privilege to see as of yet. Those places are
> secure and at a rather minimal cost. There's no way that I or anyone could
> walk in there unnoticed, change a computer file or plant evidence, and get
> out without being noticed and pursued. That's 199X technology and 199X
> degree of paranoia and 199X degree of corporate resources devoted to
> security. Now expand this to 205X...
First, no security system is perfect. There are always holes. This is
not to say that identifying and exploiting them is easy because it is
not. Security is not cheap and good security is down right expensive.
And money spent on security equipment is an expense that does not
demostratively effect the bottom line. Statisticly perfect security
and no security are identical, no data. The question being is there no data
regarding break-ins because no one tried or you didn't catch them?
Further it has three different sets of costs.
The first is the capital cost of the system (not cheap because of the
limited market for the equipment), the second is the on
going costs (good people cost serious money, and 168 hour a week
operations run it up fast) and the last(and possibly the most
important) is the loss of operational effecency with in
the plant. Security managers are in a constant struggle with
production managers over security procedures. And in the struggle the
production manager has the advantage unless the security manager can
prove the need. Even then a cost benefit analysis is made. Further
even if you win the struggle. The result may not be increased
security. Locking a file in a large vault, that takes 15 minutes to
open, may actually reduce the security of that file. As the people
that use the file would quickly grow tired with the delay in getting
it. They would then find a way make the process easier (i.e. not
locking the vault, making a copy, hiding it during the work day) all
of which would reduce the security. And as the people do not work
for the securtiy department, the security manage often can not get
them disiplined, that task goes to their boss. Who will consider
other factors (the individual's value to the department) before
taking displinary action if any.
I think that there will be three main changes in 205x. Equipment and
good reliable people will cost more money. Because of increased
paranoia the securty manager will get his way more often, not all the
time or even most of the time, just more often. And the caliber of
skill needed to penitrate the security system.
[SNIP]
> >> I think you see corporations far too much from a Wal-Mart perspective
> >>and not from an extraterritorial entity perspective. Corps create and
> >>manipulate the shadows, not the other way around.
No the shadows exist because the Corps, as a general rule do not care about that segment
of
the population which, by their standards, is niether productive or
consumers. With in this segment a second economy exists, an economy
that includes criminal activity as a major componant. Runners exist
because there is a market for their skills.
> >Corporations exist for one single solitary purpose: to make profit.
> >The shadows are there as a tool to that end. Not as an end in
> >themselves.
You are right about the purpose of a corporation. The shadows are not
a tool but rather the result of this one track search for profit at
all costs. Runners are tools.
> If the corps didn't want the shadows, they'd be gone. If the corps need
> something from the shadows, it's at their fingertips in seconds. Profit is
> the biggest driving goal (both on the streets and in the boardrooms) and
> through industrial espionage, more profit can be gained. If it couldn't
> bring profit, it wouldn't happen. If it isn't worth millions to a corp, it
> isn't worth bothering with.
By 2057 the Shadows have become so established that it would be
extremly difficult eliminate. Not to say very costly. And this factor
limits the efectiveness of a corp in the shadows. Money as the means
of getting things is only effective if the reciptant belives he will
live to spend it.
[SNIP]
David Hinkley
dhinkley@***.org
