[Mirikon]

There's also 'implied consent'. As in 'it is implied that by being on premises/at the event/performing the action, you consent to the security measures'. Which is why the Secret Service will do whatever they damn well please when it comes to searching people who are coming to meet the President (though they usually limit themselves for PR reasons).

[All4BigGuns]

If arrested, the characters may still be alive, but they might as well not be. No point in bothering to continue with those characters after that.

[Mithlas]

I think you missed the earlier mention of getting caught not even necessarily being a criminal SIN - sometimes people in Lone Star want things done they can't be connected to, and arresting a skilled shadowrunner is like throwing exactly what they want in their lap. What is the arrestee going to do, say no?

More directly on the thread topic, I think that armor that's not clearly armor is an important factor to keep in mind. We all know walking around in milspec armor is like holding a gigantic "shoot me with heavy weapons" sign, but waltzing around with heavy plate mail through a high fashion mall does almost as much to draw attention. Except where obvious armor is the trending fashion (which isn't everywhere). Blending in is a great power that every Shadowrunner should remember to keep at their disposal.

[Prodigy]

JoeNapalm, you do not need a warrant to use a thermal imaging device (not that police use them anyway). Nor do you need a warrant for a metal detector or even a standard pat down. All you need is PC (probable cause). I imagine with the ubiquitous nature of cyber and armor in Shadowrun, thermal imaging is pretty standard. Heck, dwarves and trolls have it built in. Which is why I totally disagree with the Forbidden tag on Thermal Dampening.

[Mäx]

Well, they would need a warrant for thermal imaging, except in situations where there's no expectation of privacy. Airports, for instance.

Not likely, afterall quite a big portion of the cops can do it just with their eyes, heck for some of them it's natural.
Cops don't need a warrant to look at you now, thats unlikely to change even when the cops get more vision options.

[JoeNapalm]

JoeNapalm, you do not need a warrant to use a thermal imaging device (not that police use them anyway). Nor do you need a warrant for a metal detector or even a standard pat down. All you need is PC (probable cause). I imagine with the ubiquitous nature of cyber and armor in Shadowrun, thermal imaging is pretty standard. Heck, dwarves and trolls have it built in. Which is why I totally disagree with the Forbidden tag on Thermal Dampening.

For the record, I don't just make stuff up and post it:

KYLLO V. UNITED STATES

And my argument isn't that LEOs in SR4 need warrants for Thermal Imaging. It is ubiquitous, and Corp Sec could give two @#$%s about your Constitutional Rights.

My point is that Thermal Imaging can be used to search you for weapons and cyber, and anything that blocks that using miltech, and lacks a legitimate use, is likely to be illegal.

It's not even R. It's F. They probably put some thought into it before making something Forbidden.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Mirikon]

Well, they would need a warrant for thermal imaging, except in situations where there's no expectation of privacy. Airports, for instance.

Not likely, afterall quite a big portion of the cops can do it just with their eyes, heck for some of them it's natural.
Cops don't need a warrant to look at you now, thats unlikely to change even when the cops get more vision options.

I was talking about now, Max.

[Black]

Well, they would need a warrant for thermal imaging, except in situations where there's no expectation of privacy. Airports, for instance.

But Joe is correct that Jail is not a TPK. It certainly means you've failed your mission, and have some nice shiny new criminal SINs, but you're not dead. Heck, with the right 'favors' you might even avoid having the criminal SIN (though you'll likely end up with Records on File with whoever helped you). The megas, syndicates, and national agencies all have a long history of making a runner inside an 'offer they can't refuse'.

They would need a warrant today perhaps... in the US where personal rights seem quiet a big thing.  But in Shadowrun, were so many 'rights' have been trampled by corporations?  perhaps not.  Or maybe warrants can be auto-issued?

[Aryeonos]

It depends on who's territory you're stepping on, and essentially unless you're on city/public property you're trespassing, or at least that's what the reports will say.

Still, something else I'll address, there's a difference (Or there should be) between a trolls ability to see into (Or only, not certain if they have normal colour vision too.) the Infra Red spectrum, and thermography used to pick up heat signatures. Thermography has to be applied using computers to sort out the information into temperatures, and though it's using the same spectrum, one is just black and white high powered night vision that uses the extra spectrum to pick up ambient light, the other is a thermal gradient that can tell the difference between hot and cold visually. Unless the fluff clearly states the contrary I'm fairly certain that's how it works.

[spoiler]

Active infrared night vision, as opposed to thermographic and hyperspectral imaging.

Hyperspectral imaging, picks up (broadly speaking) radiation from Infrared through the colour spectrum to Ultra violet.

False colour digital image processed thermography, takes the varying intensities of infrared light and processes them into colours that are easy for humans to understand.
[/spoiler]

[JoeNapalm]

Well, they would need a warrant for thermal imaging, except in situations where there's no expectation of privacy. Airports, for instance.

But Joe is correct that Jail is not a TPK. It certainly means you've failed your mission, and have some nice shiny new criminal SINs, but you're not dead. Heck, with the right 'favors' you might even avoid having the criminal SIN (though you'll likely end up with Records on File with whoever helped you). The megas, syndicates, and national agencies all have a long history of making a runner inside an 'offer they can't refuse'.

They would need a warrant today perhaps... in the US where personal rights seem quiet a big thing.  But in Shadowrun, were so many 'rights' have been trampled by corporations?  perhaps not.  Or maybe warrants can be auto-issued?

Again, my point was not that a warrant would be needed in SR4 for a search with Thermal Imaging. Quite the opposite - Thermal Imaging is ubiquitous in the Sixth World, and therefore would likely NOT require a warrant.

I only mentioned the current, real-world, requirement to highlight how useful Thermal Imaging is for seeing people, weapons, gear, etc., thus making tech to counter it illegal in SR4, where Thermal Imaging is a common tool to detect such things.

Heck, in this world, car window tint is restricted by various states!

In summary - Thermal Dampening is military tech that is very useful for hiding people, gear, weapons, and cyber, and has no legitimate alternative function. Why would it be legal?

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Aryeonos]

Because then a huge majority of clothing and household materials would then require licenses, thats' why.
[Graham Chapman]
"Oh, your home has insulation and aluminium siding, that blocks our sensor sweeps, this isn't on our list of military installations so obviously you are a terrorist!"
[/Graham Chapman]

[Novocrane]

Ok.

So your argument is that 60+ years into the future, advanced thermal damping would be irrational as an item forbidden to standard citizens, because the majority of clothing and household materials we use today have properties that aren't accounted for.

Makes sense if you assume standard materials aren't going to change between Shadowrun past and Shadowrun future, along with the laws that refer to them. From my perspective, that's a nonsensical thing to do, though.

[Aryeonos]

Thermal imaging resolution will probably improve the the spectrum of which they work on wont, allot of common materials today block infrared radiation. 60+ years from now materials being made of silicon, mylar, and all matter of other naturally water tight heat dissipating materials will become even more ubiquitous than they are today. A rating 6 thermal damping is obviously something you would intentionally have to put into your clothes, and on a search would incite allot of questions, but small levels of heat distribution wouldn't be difficult to accomplish at all, even accidently by insulated clothing. On the other end are things like magnetic diffusion shielding, which have the obvious purpose of hiding things from scans, these are forbidden even though the same materials would have scientific application in isolating background noise. However, you have things like NanoCleansers, which could be used to smuggle bombs with ease, and they are only restricted.

Do you see how the F and R thing doesn't always make sense? Even so, these are only the laws for Seattle, not the world on a whole.

[JoeNapalm]

Thermal Damping: Designed to reduce the wearer’s thermal sig- nature, inner layers capture and retain heat while outer layers maintain a surface temperature equal to the surrounding air.

This is not Mylar or tin foil.

This is a specially designed system - likely akin to Adaptiv.

Common household materials wouldn't cost ¥500 - ¥3000 to cover something armor sized.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Aryeonos]

That's active camoflague, in the very description it's describing layers of material, not active heated plates. My snowsuit cost around 500 dollars, it's watertight and is designed to keep me isolated from outside air without letting me get too hot. Yes I know it would probably show up fine on active infrared imaging, but not as good as someone wearing normal clothing. But really, I'm not going to pull a player over for not showing up on one instrument spectrum when they pass by one of thousands of IR cameras, until they start doing something suspicious and someone notices them on one of thousands of feeds.

I completely agree that thermal damping 5-6 should be F, but I disagree that low levels of it should be even R until you hit the rating 3-4 mark.