Not as polished or detailed as I'd have liked as my notes are at home (my home net connection's buggered until NTL send round an engineer) and I don't have many spare brain cycles right now as we're in major deadline mode here at the moment. So this is me hacking bits together in about 10 minutes while I'm _supposed_ to be doing something else at work. :P
"Beautiful, man, beautiful."
"What is it?"
"It's a TAP, my friend, and it's my favoritest toy in the whole wide world."
"What does it do?"
"It watches."
-- Stuart 'Squiddy' Bevan, DN Media Relations in conversation with unidentified assistant."Who would commit an atrocity like this?"
-- Subtitled commentary on the new top-rated Channel Resistance show, "Through The Eyeball"There's a new tool being fielded by DN and Channel Resistance, a new weapon in the media war. The TAP, or Tempest Acquisition Pod has revolutionised Channel Resistance's working methods and its insidious abilities are inciting fear in SLA's most loyal operatives -- despite its limitations.
The TAP is believed to have been developed by DN by stealing and reverse-engineering Finance Chip Detector equipment. Like the FCD, it detects the low-level electromagnetic radiation emitted by Finance Chips as a by-product of their normal operation. Unlike the FCD, it can use this radiation to reconstruct a partial signal.
Its range is even more limited -- at the 50m the FCD functions at, the signal is too degraded to reconstruct, but the closer to the Chip being monitored, the stronger the signal, and the better the fidelity of the reconstruction. A full-colour (albeit grainy) image with sound can be gained at 1m, a monochrome + sound stream at 5m, and sound only at 10m. After that, the signal tails off sharply and by 15m no signal can be recieved at all. Remember also that this device cannot intercept the (encrypted) signal used by the Chip itself, but just side-effect radiation, so the signal is usually distorted, ghosted or otherwise unstable. It is also confused by multiple overlapping signals. However, as the TAP is very small (about the size of a cigarette-end and smaller models are believed to be in development) DN's modus operandi is to hide one in close proximity to a target operative (sometimes even bribing, blackmailing or otherwise coercing official SLA repair engineers to embed them in armour customisations) to ensure a clear signal. A TAP camouflaged amongst the other equipment attached to a scout helmet, close to the target's skull, gives a very clear picture indeed.
The resultant media damage caused to SLA by first-person footage of undercover operatives in action must not be underestimated, especially as the stream comes from the Chip's interactions with the optic and auditory nerves and thus includes Chip heads-up readouts, orders from Station Analysis and communications with other squadmembers.
Unauthorised possession of a TAP is highly illegal and grounds for immediate termination. Operatives discovering a TAP should isolate it inside a shielded container and deliver it at the first opportunity to Station Analysis for examination and spin control.