Sorry to revive a long dead archive but this has become relevant in one of my games and I want an opinion before I submit an OOC case to the GM.
By "secure systems" from erased, one would argue that means from systems not accessible from the outside. If so, then LE hosts are not immune as the hosts do data checks to so many places outside of a hard wired connection. However one might argue secure is measured by the firewall of the host and LE would have a firewall high enough that you could never expect have erased consistently work. What is the consensus as to the meaning of "most secure"?
If someone had a criminal SIN, the SIN is still a normal SIN - national or corporate - with a giant "CRIMINAL" label slapped on top. Would the erased quality not be able to take off the label and return your criminal SIN to a normal one; I would argue it does by the whole "removes the stuff you don't want but keeps the stuff you do want intact" addendum.
How does someone get tracked if they don't have a SIN (erased but without the SINner quality): do they just create a file about the criminal habits of a blurry camera shot, do they assign him/her a code name, did they forget that the best idea the FBI had was to keep a copy of everything on paper and just store the random SINless files next to "create admin account" button? If the SINner quality, something that makes someone easier to track and therefore easier to keep all the information bundled together for, interferes with LE's monitoring of criminal activity which was likely also committed with a fake SIN anyway, then how is even possible for LE to keep track of criminals without SINs using fake SINs?
From a rule/gameplay standpoint, how does adding the SINner quality to the whole mix actually change anything? Now when your stuff disappears, there is stuff left over that is a human being in the servers, but that was already a thing anyway because the flavor text of the quality says so. Instead of unknown dude was at stuffer shack 21 and said dude rubbed the store for money becoming just the dude was there, its now John was there, John robbed the store becoming just John was there. The only thing potentially game breaking about this is that now you don't need fake licences when you have restricted goods, you need real licences; serious, where are the rules for SINners getting real licenses because I haven't found them in any edition?
While it would be totally fair for a GM to say you can't have your cake and eat it too and just take away the 10 karma for the SINner quality, there is no reason for someone who is erased to not have a real SIN, their SIN just looks suspiciously clear of infractions which could ultimately just be a backstory choice at this point anyways.
(Partially off topic, but couldn't one also use the erased quality to "add" themselves amongst the SINners and then just keep their SIN clean? The quality has access to the same matrix hosts that would do this when they are erasing things anyway.)
What does anyone think? Also, my usage comes from a character of mine working with Black Ops for whichever group owned Seattle between the 2030-60s (he is a 65 'borg, jsyk) and said connections earned me the favor the guy who highlights with a black highlighter, but since before that I was a defector from Special Ops in Arabia, I had to be given a SIN to be able defect at an Embassy. Would rules lawyering ruin a perfectly valid reason to have someone removing my action's existence from public record? (We have been playing before so this isn't for a character pitch, even though it was SINner+erased at chargen.)
