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Questions about Portal Security - SPOILERS

posted 6 years ago by Maximus256 (62)
2 replies | jump to latest

1. To cross over and visit the other side, you need a visa. What kind of vetting, if any, is performed on visa applicants?

2. Why doesn't each side investigate its visitors' local counterparts to see who and what they are before approving the visitors' visas?

3. Why is there no monitoring or process to prevent a visitor from interacting or switching places with his/her counterpart? Why isn't this be a concern? There's a Cold War between the two worlds, right?

4. Why would they let visitors in who have counterparts in important or sensitive gov't positions? And then not investigate and monitor those counterparts for their own safety?

5. If vetting and monitoring all visitors and their counterparts would consume too many resources, why not limit the number of visas they approve to a number that can be monitored?

6. Each world knows they have their own self-interested, opportunistic motivations, and have ambitious and unscrupulous people in positions of power who will be tempted to misuse the portal. So shouldn't each side assume the other is no different? They don't seem to assume this. Isn't a little healthy paranoia called for here?

[–] footlegger (1462) 6 years ago

Realistically, diplomatic relations would simply require that visas are only issued to persons not having a living counterpart on our side (or at least not a high ranking official one). That would be the safest way to insure non-intrusion. But then, there would be no drama.

[–] mobocracy (893) 6 years ago

The security on the portal and visitors is a joke.

Ideally, nobody would come over unless there was a specific need for them and those needs would be heavily negotiated. Ie, you need an embassy, we figure you need only 10 embassy employees. If they need to talk to someone from your side, they can go back -- you don't get to bring people over for meetings. Anyone who DOES come over from the other side would be watched like a hawk, possibly even physically marked or made to wear a tracking bracelet.

It should be pretty much impossible to plant people on the other side with enough supervision and restrictions on movement.

Part of the reason for scrutiny isn't just cold war spying fears or something, it's keeping the secrecy of the portal. You can't have a zillion people crossing all the time without having some alternate universe rumors and eventually the entire secret spilling out.

If I think about it too hard, the risks of one side dominating the other seem pretty small. It's not like you're going to bring over a couple of tank divisions through the portal, and either side could just choose to wall off their side of the portal more or less permanently.