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The Castle: HQ for the Jovian SCI

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Sun, 2012-09-30 19:51

Friend Computer Friend Computer's picture

The Castle: HQ for the Jovian SCI

The Castle is the space station in orbit around Ganymede where the Jovian intelligence agency snoops on their citizenry, and as much of the rest of Sol system as they can get information on. It's a security nightmare to get in to it, much like the TSA cranked up to 11. That's basically the whole of the writeup in the book, and I'm needing it a bit more fleshed out for my campaign. I've got some ideas, basically setting the place as an attempt at perfect security and surveillance with the huge problem of not using much automation. Workers would end up with an endless mountain of work to do, and internal security would simply not have the workforce to effectively police the place. Furthermore, given how encumbering that level of security theater gets, and how much bureaucratic red tape there would be just to get up and take a bathroom break, I expect there to be a brisk black market just so people can actually get their jobs done. Panopticon is an excellent source for the security gear and an idea of what sort of surveillance the players' characters are used to living under, but I don't have as much of a feel for the place as I want to. I'm trying to come up with things like black labs, and what sort of research would be going on in them, levels of security clearance and how they are enforced, how much sentient automation do they end up having to use and how do they justify it? Character ideas for NPCs would be extremely welcome, as well as ideas for threats for the players to face. I've got the main story threat, I'm just looking for "they forgot to file a report accounting for their firearm's failure to prevent them from shooting an officer, and now internal security wants a word" types of threats.

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[img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/titan_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://boxall.no-ip.org/img/pro_userbar.jpg[/img] The Computer wants you to be happy. Happiness is mandatory. Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by death.

Sun, 2012-09-30 20:55

cglasgow

So, it's like Black Mesa then

So, it's like Black Mesa then? A ridiculous amount of security checks, retina scans, armored doors, and oversight of everything, and not a bit of it did any good when the X-Threat came and kicked in the door? :)

Sun, 2012-09-30 23:24

Friend Computer Friend Computer's picture

I can use that. I'll just

I can use that. I'll just swap out the alternate dimension filled with monsters for a simulspace in one of the black labs filled with monsters. Maybe I'll have the system where they keep all of the forknapped people start printing a few out? That could work.

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Mon, 2012-10-01 07:05

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Hmm, suppose the people who

Hmm, suppose the people who set it up were *smart*? A bureaucratic nightmare is easy to achieve, but if you are actually serious about getting stuff done you will want to have serious security and efficiency rather than endless retina scanners and security theatre. One obvious trick is to have the Castle as the official HQ and allow it to be the natural labyrinthine chaos most slapped together organisations in the military-political complex tends to become. And then have the *real* HQ somewhere else... quiet, unobtrusive, efficient. With a cover as the Jovian Republic Pension Accounting Office's off-site backup system. But it might be interesting to actually think about how to make *good* security. Reading http://www.ne.anl.gov/capabilities/vat/seals/maxims.shtml gives a few ideas. * Instead of ultra-tech security, make the backbone simple - so no reliance on advanced nanotech, AI or quantum whatchamacallits. You will want to have Guardians and metamaterial shielding, but they better be impossible to reprogram - and you do not assume they will be perfect. * Communications out are blocked or heavily monitored, with anything going in or out stored to offline backups using low-tech systems that are hard to hack. * The security runs in depth: even if you are in through the airlock doesn't mean you are now immediately fully trusted. * The system is intended to document things going on inside the Castle, but not in such a way that a clever intruder could use the gathered surveillance to snoop everywhere: information is compartmentalized and local, and if you want to put it together you have to do it somewhat manually and leave a clear audit trail. * People are trained to look for security problems and report them. They have a fairly clear idea of who is supposed to be where doing what. * Regular assurance checks check that the security is up to spec - including that the assurance checks out. Red teams do occasional infiltration missions, documenting their findings (and their superiors take them seriously rather than seeing them as embarassments) * Recognize that occasionally mistakes are going to be made and that sometimes enemies are more devious than you. So you ensure that somebody stealing, destroying or altering your data or operations does not impact overall function (always have offsite backups and independent teams working on the same thing) and that it gets documented so you can prevent it from ever happening again (plus you can hunt the perpetrators down - there are fun options of tagging data with subtle information patterns that might be detectable). Imagine what it would take to make the standard PC team completely fail their mission against the Castle. Then repeat it for nonstandard PCs teams. Then implement it.

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Mon, 2012-10-01 13:07

cglasgow

As an expansion to "People

As an expansion to "People are trained to look for security problems and report them. They have a fairly clear idea of who is supposed to be where doing what.", consider that in Eclipse Phase virtually everyone carries an unsleeping electronic 'person' with them at all times -- their muse. In secure areas (not necessarily Jovian), employee muses might be required to load a 'Security Awareness' skill package that uses their experience with their designated human to form a clear picture of how that human's routine workday goes and what the co-workers in his workspace usually do, just as your muse is trained to learn your household routine to where it can set your alarm clock and fix your coffee the way you like it without you even needing to tell it anything. And so muses are set to report to the security AIs any suspected deviances from that. If employee morale re: 'my muse is narcing on me!' would drop too much, just set everyone's muse to keep an eye on [i]everyone else[/i] adjacent, and not their own person. ("As part of our unwavering commitment to occupational safety, Cognite announces that the new WatchGuard 1.5 muse upgrade package is available free to all employees. Remember that WatchGuard only reports suspicious actions adjacent to you that may be possibly threatening, and has been scientifically tested to show that it does not report on your own actions, or operate at all when unloaded from your mesh/ecto's primary executive memory. (Note: Unloading WatchGuard from primary executive memory during working hours on Cognite work sites is a violation of regulations and may be subject to disciplinary action.) Cognite: Because We Care.") And to prevent spam, the muse would not (save in the most blatant cases, such as 'my human's vital signs just zeroed out due to gunshot wound in the thorax, please send medical assistance and security response team') report directly to security managers, but instead simply serve as a first line of 'hey! you want to pay a little extra attention here!' to the dedicated security AIs that normally watch the internal spimes. So, every time your muse rolls its 40- to go 'this could be funny!', all it does is send out a little ping to the security AIs or infomorphs watching the cameras... and so the random camera scrawl ceases being random and instead aims a camera right at whatever your muse was looking at. Several pings from several muses all in the same area notches up the threat assessment iterator even more, and maybe a live operator is notified to spend a few seconds of his attention giving this a quick look-see. A whole shitload of muses going 'ping ping ping ping' gets the security manager an urgent signal from the mesh going 'probable bad shit going down in sector XYZ, investigate immediately'. And so forth. tldr; You know how forums give you a 'report spam' or 'report this post for TOS violations' button to push? And how mods usually take a look if they got one hit on a post, definitely take a look if they get more than one report, and rush right over if an entire thread suddenly lights up with report-report-report on multiple posts? Apply that same line of reasoning to muses, only they've been given a 'report this location' button to push in real-time.

Mon, 2012-10-01 16:10

nezumi.hebereke nezumi.hebereke's picture

Friend Computer wrote: much

Friend Computer wrote:
much like the TSA cranked up to 11.

Originally I thought you might mean NSA, but on reading further, sounds more like TSA after all. If you are authentically looking for broken security, definitely go with the 'we must control everything' mentality. For example, currently many places ban cameras. That includes cell phones. But in the Republic, that includes muses and cybereyes. Strip people (digitally) naked, then force them to do work. Bog them down with a hundred hours of training a year (security awareness, privacy awareness, role-based training, records and forms, continuity training, emergency response training, COTR training, constitution training, etc. etc.) then set unreasonable deadlines. Really, Paranoia is the example of a lot of this. Given your signature, I expect you're already familiar with it.

Mon, 2012-10-01 17:15

Prophet710 Prophet710's picture

Arena's premise reminds me of

Arena's premise reminds me of ARCHIE from Rifts. An alien intelligence that made a massive brain for humans to revile and fear and try to kill, and the AI itself that was locked away in a side cabinet in a maintenance closet.

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"And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this Earth with envious eyes. And slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

Mon, 2012-10-01 19:41

Friend Computer Friend Computer's picture

Arenamontanus wrote:[...]

Arenamontanus wrote:
[...] have the *real* HQ somewhere else... quiet, unobtrusive, efficient. With a cover as the Jovian Republic Pension Accounting Office's off-site backup system. [...]

I do love this idea, and I also love the trope of bosses at the top not following the rules for everyone else, so I put them together. Following the maxim that two can keep a secret if one is dead, Director McFarlane personally oversees any, and all, work that needs the utmost secrecy. His primary fear is that his workload will increase to the point where his forks will faction.

Arenamontanus wrote:
But it might be interesting to actually think about how to make *good* security. Reading http://www.ne.anl.gov/capabilities/vat/seals/maxims.shtml gives a few ideas.

Thank you, this is an excellent resource. I may be printing out copies for my players to peruse.

cglasgow wrote:
In secure areas (not necessarily Jovian), employee muses might be required to load a 'Security Awareness' skill package that uses their experience with their designated human to form a clear picture of how that human's routine workday goes and what the co-workers in his workspace usually do

I'm torn between having Jovians not use muses, or taking a page out of Wraith and having muses played by other players at the table.

nezumi.hebereke wrote:
Really, Paranoia is the example of a lot of this. Given your signature, I expect you're already familiar with it.

I wasn't going to call them Troubleshooters, even if they do tend to find trouble and then shoot it. One of the ideas I had for how Security Council Intelligence could keep up with monitoring their populace in realtime hinges on the Jovian belief that forks aren't real people. The Jovians routinely gather medical and behavioral data on pretty much all of their citizens, so it seems to follow that they wouldn't have much trouble putting together something approaching a beta-fork (probably alpha-fork level for anyone under intense scruitiny). They could then run these forks in predictive simulspaces where the forks are run through scenarios to see what would cause their loyalty to break. They would run the models for a short time, then roll them back to baseline and do it again. Anywhere else in Sol system this would count as murder on a horrific scale, so the SCI would probably keep knowledge of it restricted to higher-clearance analysts.

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Mon, 2012-10-01 20:28

cglasgow

I found a mention in Rimward

I found a mention in Rimward that visitors to Jovian space from other polities are required to unload their muse while they are there... and use a Jovian-issue muse that [i]does[/i] totally narc on anything they're doing to the Jovian authorities. So, precedent totally exists for them doing that in their own secure areas.