[Crime, Technology] ‘Gethnapping’ Case Baffles Authorities, Worries Consensus

‘Gethnapping’ Case Baffles Authorities, Worries Consensus

Report by Rachel Zhao, The Drescher Times. Holographs by Bella Rosales, The Drescher Times.

The bizarre case of Harmonious Accord, the ‘kidnapped’ geth program, has both the Shanxi Colonial Police Force and the Alliance Investigative Services “completely baffled”, according to an anonymous inside source, amid rumours the Geth Consensus is preparing to undertake its own investigation.

The program identifying itself as Harmonious Accord, like many other geth, left Rannoch in order to assist the galaxy’s restoration and reconstruction work after the Reaper Invasion. Little did it know that it would be caught up in what local detective Isidore Beautrelet is calling “the most baffling case [he has] ever worked on.”

“All we know is that the program’s platform was attacked by unknown assailants during a routine inspection of the city’s power lines,” Detective Beautrelet continued. “Evidence suggests that the program known as Harmonious Accord was illegally downloaded - don’t ask me how - from its platform and removed from the scene of the crime.”

In a Drescher Times exclusive, we can reveal an anonymous inside source’s perspective.

“It’s completely [blocked],” alleges our anonymous insider. “The only evidence is a dead flashlight with some scratches around an optic fibre cable. It’s just geth doing geth [blocked], there’s no need to call in those Intelligence guys. If this guy had been human, nobody would care.”

Rumours persist that the Geth Consensus is preparing their own independent investigation, although the Consensus has repeatedly denied such claims.

And the award for most creative use of data storage device in a crime goes to...

Probably an anti-synthetic group that pulled this stunt off. Still, why kidnap a geth of all things? Seems odd that someone just swiped the thing off the street when they could've asked it about whatever it is the kidnappers wanted to know.

So, there's someone going around with a GETH PROGRAM in their POSSESSION?

...If you'll be excusing me, I'll have to go SCOUR the black markets now.


"Emily, grab your coat! We're going geth shopping!"

Interesting.

Hmm, perplexing.

Perhaps, I'll find it being traded. I doubt it but almost anything is for sale these days.

And then, the Citadel Overcourt branded data piracy as sapient trafficking.

Data piracy assumes that there are unlimited copies.

This is explicitly not the case.

Since the Geth make constant backups, I bet that Harmonious Accord is assisting with the investigation of his own kidnapping.

If the kidnappers are able to make copies (and I'd make that a priority, if I was them, because Geth programs often self-delete when hacking's detected and I'd want enough chances to get what I wanted) this could become a real mess.

The technical difficulties involved with properly pulling this off would be incredible.

I've been in law enforcement a quarter of a century. I can honestly say that this is the first time I've heard of anything like this happening. Ever. Also definitely the most bizarre case I've seen. Ever.

The times, they are a changing.

On the one hand, I have to give credit where credit is due; this is definitely something original.

On the other, I'm a little concerned. Ballsy (to use the human term) for slavers to go after the one race we as a whole literally have zero tools for enslaving. Until now though, I guess.

With a geth sure, but it's not unprecedented - it was a while before your time, but back when Iyn Par was head of the CBAIC there was a big scandal about a populated blue box going missing from the bureau's labs, and its absence being covered up. Not sure if they ever entirely got the bottom of where it ended up, but I remember reading there were prosecutions, and Par resigned over it. Further back there was an attempted break-in at mum's institute, aimed at accessing the keystone code from Skygarden, one of the intelligences they had there at the time - they got intercepted and arrested pretty much at their plan's step one (I think they had actually been under surveillance for some time already, so they never got off the ground). AI is extraordinarily difficult to produce, and - if it can be steered, even moderately successfully - extraordinarily powerful, it's no surprise people would try to steal it (the fact that it's sapient sadly doesn't seem to affect that line of thinking - but then that shouldn't be a surprise, given that slavery exists and all).

That it's the first time it's happened to a geth is probably just a result of it being the first time geth have been in peaceful proximity to the rest of us. Granted geth are more capable of self-defence that most AI, but again that doesn't stop regular slavers, why should the infotech variety be any different.

Makes me wonder what they're after the geth for in particular. I mean, most slaves properly broken aren't much better then mechs; they're just cheaper. Wouldn't "breaking" an AI just make it a VI? Or at the very least, wouldn't a VI be cheaper/more efficient than breaking in a geth?

Well, most AIs, even the ones that achieve what we'd define as 'stable' sapience, get by in spite of an enormous amount of processing anomalies (heck, we still go wrong from time to time, after millions of years of evolution to weed out the 'bugs' in our system, even taking into account the accelerated generation span in AI research it's no surprise they're structurally fallible) - those can theoretically be exploited to produce a consenting cooperation. Think of it as using a drug or some such thing on an organic that causes them to be happy when they complete tasks you give them - they retain their full capacity for innovation and adaptation. The same holds for an AI versus a VI, even an AI that's using up most of its runtime compensating for cognisance anomalies will kick the crap, computationally speaking, out of a VI at any advanced task.

Of course, that takes incredible skill (not to mention callous disregard for sapient rights), and just from what they've achieved on their own I imagine doing such a thing to a geth would be orders of magnitude more difficult. Don't rule out stupidity as a factor though - whether it's possible and practical or not, that doesn't mean some software tech with more ambition and skill than sense or compassion hasn't just thought "I bet a geth program is valuable, let's go get one!" If that is the case, we just have to hope Harmonious Accord can be recovered before any additional damage is done to it.

Can't say I know too much about artificial intelligence and all that - bit too theoretical for my tastes at uni - but I'd bet credits to [cashews?] that we're gonna be seeing a lot more geth toting guns and shit over the next coupla. well, evers.

Geth usually self-destruct to evade capture or seizing of data and even then, you can only hack geth for a few seconds until the back-up kicks in. To prevent that you have to disrupt communication with the consensus (hoping there aren't on-board backups on the platform and you can circumvent any counter-measures thrown at you) which in itself is a warning.
They had to had a way of coercing the geth into cooperation, I think a gun to the CPU wouldn't do it.
Maybe some kind of blackmail?
Or if the geth didn't come volutary, maybe a fancy new way of hacking geth the quarians couldn't invent in 300 years? Or maybe they did and there are evil quarian scientist on the loose.
BRB, fetching my tin-foil hat.

How the bloody hell?

The only thing I can think of is that they blocked access to the consensus, and even then with how often geth send backups they'd probably self-destruct before someone could download them. This seems almost... staged, really.

How can a geth 'back up', though? I mean, if they copy/pasted their code, wouldn't that copy be a whole new geth? Same memories and that, but it wouldn't be the same one, right?

Idk. I know geth are alien and all that, but I wouldn't kill myself just cause there's a clone of me sitting safe somewhere.

Tides. Gives me the shudders. Bloody synths.

Well, I'll definitely be watching this case closely to see how it turns out; from a law enforcement perspective it could set an interesting precedent. We haven't had to deal with anything like this on the Citadel in the time I've been here. With the Geth all being sapient now, we're all sort of just winging it when it comes to laws and crimes committed against them. So, we'll see.

...Oh, and I hope the Geth guy is okay in the end too. Would it be a guy? Wait, do they even have gender? Man, everything is so complicated now.

This event is highly disconcerting.