[CanRay]

Maybe one round randomly in each box of military ammo?  Enough to transmit the box and it's details at the very least, but not too much extra cost in bulk.

[KarmaInferno]

Doesn't have to be an RFID.

Modern day industrial explosives are often mixed with a tracer chemical at the factory to identify where it came from. The tracer resists burning enough that it can be picked up with forensic analysis after an explosion.

Mixing similar compounds into a bullet shouldn't be THAT much harder.



-k

[Joush]

I've never acutely heard that before, but even if it was done with ammunition it would be of minimal forensic use. The ammunition itself can generally be tracked to manufacturer and some can be tracked to lot numbers. Traditional forensic techniques can match fired rounds to the weapon that fired them. Being able to say with certainty that a particular weapon fired a partular type of ammo or even pertecular lot of ammo sense the last time it was cleaned is unlikely to be worth much more.

Not to mention that such a processes would require a law to make the job of police easier at the cost of hurting ammuntion manufacturer's bottom line. Given that the game is set in a nightmarish distopia where corporations effectively own the government, that seems somewhat unlikely.

[kirk]

Guns don't tag their ammo with an RFID, for forensics to link your weapon to the rounds it fired, they need to confiscate the weapon and compare the marks it leaves on ammunition to the rounds left on the scene. (Keep in mind with SR, they can't link tool marks on shell cases in most.. uh.. cases. Because they are caseless.) [snip]

Based on the general text (RFID everywhere) and on the way the taggants are developing today, It's possible your gun will tag the ammo's RFID. That's probably a little too paranoid even for shadowrun, but it's worth considering.

Note the phrasing, by the way. I didn't say tag with RFID. The gun would send a message to RFIDs already in the bullet and powder: "Your ride today is courtesy of Jonesy's Predator, serial number 5520088515, registered owner..."

More likely is that the bullet will tag your gun with RFID. I figure that the manufacturing process will leave RFIDs in every bullet and mixed with the powder. A lot of the powder-based RFIDs will be destroyed from the heat and pressure. "A lot" isn't "all". In this case the link isn't as tight. It's just that forensics can read the RFIDs and know the manufacturer and lot number of those bullets. With that they'll be able to trace to all the sales and add the purchasers to their list of suspects.

I see your logic, but it's nowhere in the rules and RFID are not free in Shadowrun. Even basic, easy to burn tags are .05 ¥, with the only tags that can resist burning being 100x more expensive. If every round of ammo has a security tag, it would represent 250% the cost of a normal round.

Given that the game already has everything need to pass though a tag burner before it's used, I'd hardly want to encourage more of that as it's not fun.

About no fun, true and I agree.

About the cost, not so much. Oh, yes, if you purchase your own to emplace them, sure. But purchased in bulk for a standardized purpose?

See nanofax feedstock.

(edit to add) The point I'd actually make is that it's already there, not a new cost that's going to show up. And it goes part of the way to explaining why shadowrun bullets are so expensive.

[Xzylvador]

Still, no mention in RAW and no fun at all.
If you want to look at modern-day top-of-the-line forensics and other crime-fighting techniques and then go on to calculate how much more advanced things will be by 2070, committing a crime without being caught simply becomes impossible and all the fun gets sucked out of the game as 90% of it will be theoretical work on how to clean the crime scene and get into 13.835 different nodes which may or may not have a recording of the crime being committed.

So use the fact that 'police' doesn't exist anymore but instead there are a dozen different security companies, hired by the city, the country, the building, the neighborhood, etc; all trying to make each other look bad so they have a better chance of landing the contract when the time comes for renegotiation and that companies don't like sharing information about their clients.

[DarkLloyd]

Okay. MAD scanners are just metal detectors, maybe a bit fancier in the futre but still. These can be fooled by ceramic parts or MAD dampening materials. As long as that cyber arm is not an obvious job, those methods might get you past a "stop-n-check".  Going thru the Airport, well thats not gonna happen without allot of prep, but it can happen.

Now as for that Radar sensor. It has the biggest vulerabilites; it's radar. And radar is vulerable to ECM and jammers. Going thru one bring a jammer. Or the old reliable have yer decker hack the feeds.

[Reaver]

Don't forget that a license is tied to a SIN, and a SIN is a citizen of a legal, national entity.

Smartlink, wired reflexes, bone lacing?? Knight Errant SWAT member (or at least that's what the SIN says:p )

But it gets tricky that way too (and fun for the game master), after all Aztech isn't going to like a "Horizon media rep" hanging around its property much.

Now yes, some cyber/bioware simply can't be explained away with a SIN and game masters should clamp down as they see fit.

Personally, I only make an issue of it when the characters are trying to go somewhere the security is really tight.