Naval data packs

[rancke]

An Imperial Navy ship has to carry along a lot of top secret information. The location of secret deep space fuel stations, communication codes, contingency plans, emergency rendevouz points, technical specifications of ships, radiation signatures, orders, political assessment reports, personnel files, dossiers of prominent persons, etc. To safeguard such information, the IN has developed a data pack. Its two most prominent features are two big buttons, marked respectively 'Erase' and 'Retain'. If the erase button is pressed, every bit in the memory is thoroughly randomized and the memory bank itself destroyed by a small thermite reaction. If the retain button is NOT pressed for 12 hours, the same thing happens. Every officer is required to press the retain button on their personal data pack every 8 hours. Less drastic operations are entered using a keyboard. For instance, specific bits of information can be deleted; the memory is still thoroughly randomized, but the memory banks are not destroyed. It is possible to make a data pack go dormant if, and only if, the entire content of the memory bank has been deleted and randomized.

All the secret information carried by a ship is held in a special data pack called the Ship's Data Pack, but usually referred to as the 'Last Will'. It is kept locked in the captain's safe when not in use. The captain transfers the information that could conceivably be needed during the upcoming watches to another data pack called the OOD pack (OOD stands for Officer of the Day) that is held by the watch-standing officer. This information includes the code to the captain's safe, in case he is killed or incapacitated. All transactions are logged, though not in detail. I.e. if an officer accesses the code to the captain's safe, this is logged, but the code itself is not.

 

[FreeTrav]

Would there be anything similar that might routinely be carried by civilian ships?

 

[rancke]

Would there be anything similar that might routinely be carried by civilian ships?

I suppose so, if they routinely carry top secret information that mustn't fall into rival hands. I would expect most civilians to make do with upgraded computer security software.


Hans

 

[kafka47]

Agreed that the Navy has such "boxes" on all Capital ships of the Fleet. Smaller vessels would not carry them, as the risk of them falling into enemy hands is too great. I would disagree with the timing. Maybe, once per week but I can live with either.

IMTU, this was the location of the Ancient wormhole network and the activation codes (that the Navy stumbled upon in 1113 hence not all ships have this information), deep space/planetoid caches, slaver controls (directives that allow one to use the transponder of a friendly and turn it into a slave of your own ship), different Black Ops codes and a whole lot of other fun. I also placed knowledge of the box at the level of Admiral or greater. Crew are just expected to follow orders, however, mundane those orders. This accounts for much of the early losses by Lucan in the early part of the Rebellion as he purged the Core Admirality to make way for "yes men" who had no knowledge of the Data Packets.

And, most other factions were too afraid or behaved honorably and declined to use the Data Packets. So there they remained until my players in 1248 were given a task of assembling the puzzle. For the deleted files were like a jigsaw puzzle (in fact I used a simple child's puzzle as a prop) in which each adventure would allow them to recover a portion of the data which had been deleted and found in a number graveyard worlds or former battle sites of the Rebellion.

 

[Vargas]

If the retain button is NOT pressed before 108 minutes elapses, the same thing happens.

Fixed your typo.

 

[rancke]

Fixed your typo.

Your humor is too subtle for me.


Hans

 

[opensent]

Your humor is too subtle for me.


Hans

Your humor is 'Lost' on him..

 

[Vargas]

Well played sir, well played.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Would there be anything similar that might routinely be carried by civilian ships?

The Chief Steward's "Little Black Book."

 

[Dragoner]

Anybody read "The Cryptonomicon"? IMO these packets seem a clumsy way to carry data. Regular encryption seems more likely and with more sensitive data would not be carried: "the need to know" basis most militaries use now.

 

[jatay3]

I suppose so, if they routinely carry top secret information that mustn't fall into rival hands. I would expect most civilians to make do with upgraded computer security software.


Hans

A courier vessel from an intersteller bank might be in this category.

 

[Spinward Scout]

A courier vessel from an intersteller bank might be in this category.

It might depend on who owned the bank, but I would think interstellar banks would use the X-boat system for data transfer. Let the Imperium do the legwork of protecting the messenger. Then, if an X-boat or X-boat Tender is attacked/intercepted, the bad guys just attacked a ship belonging to the Imperium, with the consequences the Imperial Navy will bring down upon them.

Megacorps might use that, tho. Since some of them can field their own armies/navies.

 

[rancke]

It might depend on who owned the bank, but I would think interstellar banks would use the X-boat system for data transfer. Let the Imperium do the legwork of protecting the messenger. Then, if an X-boat or X-boat Tender is attacked/intercepted, the bad guys just attacked a ship belonging to the Imperium, with the consequences the Imperial Navy will bring down upon them.

Anyone dealing with interstellar finance would prefer something a lot faster than the X-boats.


Hans

 

[jatay3]

It might depend on who owned the bank, but I would think interstellar banks would use the X-boat system for data transfer. Let the Imperium do the legwork of protecting the messenger. Then, if an X-boat or X-boat Tender is attacked/intercepted, the bad guys just attacked a ship belonging to the Imperium, with the consequences the Imperial Navy will bring down upon them.

Megacorps might use that, tho. Since some of them can field their own armies/navies.

If the bank's ship is attacked, the bad guys just attacked The Imperium's loyal subjects, and more important its revenue.

 

[BlackBat242]

Your humor is 'Lost' on him..

By your comment, I'm guessing that the other comment had something to do with that show... but since many of us (myself included) haven't watched that piece of excrement (not since the 3rd show anyway), the exact meaning is indeed "lost" in the place where all the rest of that show's material is... the garbage masher on the detention level.

 

[Hemdian]

I had something vaguely similar IMTU. “Tablets” (ruggedized PADDs) are fairly common, but a “Mission Pack” is a specialised tablet used by the IN: it has no tile reader (removable media) and it requires an authorised ident chip (electronic dog tags) to access. Mission packs are used to pass mission briefings and related data (maps, etc). They are often stored in a heavy duty orange bag with a waterproof zip. They don’t have the timed auto-erasure feature of rancke’s Naval data packs but they do have anti-tampering features.

In addition, the main computers of IN ships have a volatile memory wipe program (“Omega”) used when abandoning a ship or it’s about to be overrun by the enemy. Volatile memory includes star charts, logs, and other data but not operating software (which is hard wired).