“He who controls the spice controls the universe.”
In a fully mesh-networked world, where huge amounts of data traverses massive networks every data, whoever controls that information has all kinds of power. And that’s where the trouble starts.
With so much information, knowledge and understanding of data control and handling is an important resource. From the Bureaucracy’s Department of Communication to the street-pounding data collectors and couriers, movement of information is safety is important to all levels of society.
The Bureaucracy and the corporations have both inside talent and hired consultants forming teams of white-hat security construction specialists to build safety into their mesh systems, grey-hat groups to test those protocols within house, and black-hats to attack rivals.
The tools of the trade are many, but rely heavily on the use of solid state Decks for data handling and housing of various AI programs.
All black-hats worthy of the name, and most other serious data warriors, will work using custom-built, carefully tuned Decks with any serial numbers painstakingly removed. Any and all information is a weapon in data warfare, so removing any and all identifiers to an individual user is necessary, unless you want to be caught.
Transfer of data over a mesh network always leaves a trace, unless you have the time to unpick individual lines of code to remove them. As such, data couriers work to move volumes of information across the physical world instead.
Some carry in an inaccessible partition inside their cybernetic implants, some literally carry the data in a storage device. It’s not unknown for the very secretive to encrypt their packages and transfer them as DNA inside a courier, though in some instances said courier’s body has caused degradation of the information stored so it’s not a preferred method.
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