History Headscratchers / MirrorsEdge

*** I assumed that the police had a broad-spectrum high-power jamming system up outside of the public licensed spectrum. Combined with the idiotic amount of EM-reflective material in the real world, it'd make point-to-point wireless transmissions difficult to impossible without enough power for bleed to be detected. Monitoring wired connections isn't hard even in the real world, since you usually need .gov permission for anything crossing a street or property lines and that permission could be made dependent on allowing a CARNIVORE-like system to tap in. That leaves encrypted communications across monitored channels. In our time, SSH connections over AES is usually considered good enough, but there are already paranoids worried about attack vectors known by the government or hidden many-bit quantum computers. In three years, those could be fairly reasonable. Most of the methods that are secure against such are reliant on one-time pads or similar methods, which are meet 'perfect security' requirements (effectively unbreakable without capture of the pad or original source). Under this method, the Runners have nothing but completely useless and random data with no identifying information, and those employing the Runners do not. Mercury's audio link doesn't need to be nearly as well-encrypted; as long as the location information requires as little as a few dozen minutes to crack and messy enough that trilateration isn't viable (and little location data from near Mercury's pad is sent). That doesn't explain how Big Brother is supposed to sort through all this data, but that's usually a NecessaryWeasel in disutopian societies.

*** And before people get started about encryption, well, what do you think the PATRIOT Act was about? "OMG! I can't understand what this private citizen is saying to his family! If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear! He must be planning an uprising! Kick down his door and beat him to death! Oops. He was a shy little dork talking with his wife about kinky sex. Ah... Good work troops! Another pervert dealt with!" Well, if they weren't planning an uprising before, they sure as hell are now. Security states make all ''intelligent'' people very ''insecure''.
*** I hope all RealLife traceurs are listening! Keep practicing! One day soon, we'll need you!
*** Ah, the lovely StrawManPolitical. Don't be so over the top. Even societies are reactionary and tightly-wound as the USSR and Hitler's Germany didn't readily send investigators out there for such reasons if better evidence could be obtained (and keep in mind that these were regimes that intentionally targeted people telling jokes or using disrespectful slang, for less insane or Type A governments/regimes, such issues can be dismissed after confirming the harmless nature of the discussion- which a few seconds of listening to should do-, as you would know if you have examined any intelligence "how to" worth its paper). And yes, unintelligible communications ARE a major source of worry, if for no other reason than because while it could be your local computer geek talking smack with the webcast model he is wooing today, it could also be Am. A. Nutjob planning to blow up something or other, which was a very real possibility decades ago, and certainly is now, with the birth of the modern nonstate actor. Yes, it SHOULD make you nervous, because such power can be readily abused, but even the SS and NKVD were not as hysterically stupid as you seem to think a totalitarian regime would act, and because a small google search for any Islamist hot word would show that at least having SOME idea of what is going around digitally is hardly unwise.
*** I invoke GodwinsLaw. I win.
*** Even if you go by Faith being a terrorist the setting is more NelsonMandela than UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's America. Her parents were gunned down in front of her ''before'' the dystopia was built.
*** Was going to comment on the old "don't be rude, it doesn't help..." guidelines but they seem to have been pulled. Rude away!
** It certainly seems like Merc is getting a lot more information about faith than just a dot on a map. It's hard to imagine him saying some of the things he says without him having a full video feed to comment on.

* When the New Eden Mall opens, how many of it's retail spaces will be occupied by "La Dernière Mode" and "King Men's Fashion"? Not even Starbucks puts that many stores so close together.

** Maybe the runners are transporting physical artifacts, like forged passports, or fake versions of other "official" documents. The specialized equipment required to forge these means they would need to be made offsite for any "legitimate" client, but would need to the transported through underground channels (e.g. Faith). Or [[AlternativeCharacterInterpretation they might just be transporting cocaine and conflict diamonds]].

** The same reason [[MarvelComics Carol Danvers]] is 5'10" and 130 lbs: MostWritersAreMale and/or sloppy research. There seems to be this idea in fiction that a woman who weighs over 130-ish lbs is "fat" or "heavy", when in reality, a woman who is 5'9" and weighs 129 lbs is most likely drastically underweight and unhealthy.