The foundation of an interstellar community is based heavily on our capability to send messages across great distances, and hopefully reach a specific person. Often enough, these messages reach said person, and many more. There are no truly secure comm systems in Sirius, as is proven time and again. Now, in the interest of running an operational intelligence agency, there's a bit on each network that we need to be aware of:
To begin, Rhienland public comm networks are not nearly as old as they seem to be. The Rhienlanders do maintain the damn things, though the quality does still leave something to be desired. Most of the background chatter, rather than being an old scrambler system, is just broken code added to give listeners an easy mask. These systems are not at all secure, if you want to hide something from the Rheinland government. The common hacker may have a little trouble from the network, of course, but that hacker also opens himself up to attacks from the Chancellor's intellegence agencies, who are quite active.
Moving on to the Libertonian networks, which are, of course, very strongly encrypted. And for sale. I myself have bought from the LPI on numerous occasions, and once from the lane hackers. I'm aware that the Libertonian community of hackers for hire is a very thickly saturated market, all competing with one another, and as such, information is relatively cheap in Liberty. At least in Rheinland, its likely that only the Kriegsmier knows. In liberty, anyone with money knows. And one must always consider that dataslicers are quite prevalent.
Bretonia should be obvious. Admiralty Comm Encryption, while immensely difficult to crack, is being listened in on, and by this organization. If we can get to it, other people can. As recently as last week, the most secure public database in the realm was breached, as the pretender forged documents regarding Her Majesty's genealogy.
Kusari networks are something less standard. Publicly, there is no encryption, or even any real methods of keeping them private. Much as Kusari is tightly populated, and the populance creates privacy by ignoring what is not their business in the physical world, their virtual networks have even less than ricepaper walls in the public domain. The private sector is of course, much more secure. Kishiro Rotating Algorithms are among the very most difficult to crack, and when paired with common half-life based message relevancy, they render the official Kusari transmissions almost invulnerable to eavesdropping.
'Be unexpected' I'm sure there's a variation on that in The Art of War, something to do with being where your opponents wont expect you to be. Trade lanes, of course, are exactly where pirates expect commercial ships to be, which is why I'm often not there. They are, of course, faster than cruise flight, but they are much more likely to be pirate traps than open space, as well, because sharks will go where their prey is, and their prey slide up and down the lanes. Why do you think most transports and trains fly with escorts? I, of course, often do not, but then, I rarely encounter a pirate. I avoid tradelanes, and use jump holes. Now, of course, Holes are said to be dangerous. And, to an extent, they are. But, the danger is not so great as Ageria claims. I've been through many, and as you can see, the damage is not so extensive as they say. There's a bit of turbulence, thats all, a possibility that you might hit something, for a time. Most of the disasters, one would think, are Ageria rumors, spread so that people will be more willing to pay the taxes for the premiums governments pay for operational Lanes and Gates.
I'd suggest, overall, that it is much safer and cheaper to simply use holes and avoid lanes.
