Mesan Alignment - Back on Balance

tlb wrote:I have said elsewhere that I think the Detweiler Plan has failed and now the Onion core is going to have come up with a new one. The failure point was letting the SLN become so obsolete that the League could not fight the challenger from the Havenite Quarter to the point were they both collapsed. Instead the League was a pushover. The SLN had to be brought up close to the Haven standard before it could fight.

I think one immediate error was expecting Haven to conquer Manticore in the aftermath of Oyster Bay and they never contemplated that the two would become allied instead.

I agree with you in the end result.

I think this deserves a thread of its own. Let me write down what I understand and create at topic.

Jonathan_S wrote:Agents are harder, because they have to do their work out in the real world. Bbut in theory scientists, R&D types, etc. could have location linked safeties on their nano-tech. They can discuss blacklisted subjects when they're within preauthorized locations (or potentially locations broadcasting an "don't worry, it's okay" signal of some sort that the nano-tech picks up) but say that same exact sentence at home or some other unauthorized area and *oops*.

They might also get "pings" from being around others with nanotech, keeping them safe.

Peregrinator wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Agents are harder, because they have to do their work out in the real world. Bbut in theory scientists, R&D types, etc. could have location linked safeties on their nano-tech. They can discuss blacklisted subjects when they're within preauthorized locations (or potentially locations broadcasting an "don't worry, it's okay" signal of some sort that the nano-tech picks up) but say that same exact sentence at home or some other unauthorized area and *oops*.

They might also get "pings" from being around others with nanotech, keeping them safe.

I mentioned awhile ago, If I were to build such a system, I would include the safe "ping" in the handshake preamble of every piece of Mesan Wireless technology.

why?

1st, the preamble is a standard tech in wireless digital handshakes - it is the item saying I'm here, this is my name and this is what I do. All Digital wireless techs do a variant on this - all you need to do is add a very specific identifier to the preamble - maybe the nth value and the nth +5 value is always 1 on every Mesan hardware. Something otherwise normal, but random enough that it would be hard to reproduce unnaturally. It could be as simple as the MAC addresses - Part of any Device MAC is the Company's registered MAC name, all Mesan MACs could be in the same region, meaning they all start with the same, recognizable values.

On Mesa, on a Mesan ship, or around other Mesans, a person would be saturated with pings from Mesan WiFi, Cell towers, Bluetooth, RFID, etc. Even just a Mesan Cell phone in the agent's pocket would be enough for the ping in the preamble to reset any timer or lock down the 1st trigger.

2nd, The first thing you do to a prisoner (any prisoner) is take away any devices or hardware on them. The next thing you do isolate them from the outside world. In the 40th centuary, this would include outside signals (forex, Honor's eye and prostethics would make great 2 way communications devices), so any prisoner areas would be shielded from any RF radiation. So no ping would be heard by embedded nanotech.

Obviously, you would want a timer that would reset periodically if no ping is heard, or make a multi stage trigger, with the lack of the Mesan preamble just part of the trigger, or else you would lose agents every time their significant other want to go on a nature hike "with no outside distractions".

Peregrinator wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Agents are harder, because they have to do their work out in the real world. Bbut in theory scientists, R&D types, etc. could have location linked safeties on their nano-tech. They can discuss blacklisted subjects when they're within preauthorized locations (or potentially locations broadcasting an "don't worry, it's okay" signal of some sort that the nano-tech picks up) but say that same exact sentence at home or some other unauthorized area and *oops*.

They might also get "pings" from being around others with nanotech, keeping them safe.

That's dangerous. Once your enemies clue in that the nanotechnology is listening for something, they'll look for that something and may find it. If it's other people with pings, this will also let your enemies find people with active nanotech far more easily and with less permanent consequences. And if you happened to have any two defectors, they could readily talk to each other while you listened.

[quote=Theemile]I mentioned awhile ago, If I were to build such a system, I would include the safe "ping" in the handshake preamble of every piece of Mesan Wireless technology.[/quote]

Same problem: even if your enemies can't find out what it is that the nanotech is looking for, they have access to Mesan technology. And they have access to Mesa itself now. If any Mesan technology, not specific Alignment technology or those specially configured in Alignment sites (which were nuked), then Cachat and Zilwicki can interrogate anyone now without fear of them dropping dead.

On the other hand, if it's not any technology, then you have a long timeout before your field agents begin dying once burned and disowned; half a year or more, for example.

This is something where the KISS principle applies: the more complex you make it, the more ways for it to fail there are or for your enemies to turn it against you.

It's extremely difficult build GHz scale RF electronics as biological constructs. And then that set of frequencies of RF is generally strongly absorbed by water and the fluids that make up your body.