Some people exist outside the laws of nations, refusing to recognize the authority and morality of others. Terrorists seek to effect change through violence and the threat of violence. The increase in radicalism due to the potential ideological divides created by issues such as cyberdemocracy, infosocialism, and preservationism, has made terrorism a growth industry. The most potent tool of these groups is minifacturing, which gives outlaws and terrorists the ability to create sophisticated equipment and supplies with much less reliance on external support.

1. Enrico Balthazar. Leader of Negative Growth, and suspected of having planned the nuclear attack on the New Shanghai-Deimos space elevator.

2. Dr. Tse Chang. Senior academician of the TSA's Genetic Planning Council, wanted for crimes against humanity.

3. Alisa binti Kasan. Teenage memetic hacker, wanted on 2,724 counts of negligent memetic engineering for her role in synthesizing the Blood of the Lamb suicide cult and engineering the financial collapse of Paleoshop Biogenesis Corporation (through spreading the 'satanic introns' meme.)

4. Yves Lafontaine. Suspected mastermind of a celebrity xoxing ring run out of Paris. Last seen boarding an air car at Jakarta International Airport.

5. Gao 'The Swarm' Yanghou. Martian Triads mob boss, New Shanghai family. Wanted on multiple counts of weapon smuggling, people smuggling, and bioroid trafficking.

6. Richard Law Taylor. Antigovernment crusader responsible for releasing the so-called 'Doolittle Virus' that raised the IQs of animals throughout the Rocky Mountains and West Coast, causing unprecedented havoc.

7. Dr. Mara Omokage. Wanted for bioroid trafficking and illegal genetic manipulation. Known associate of the Martian Triads. Killed, but known to have xoxed herself multiple times, often inhabiting bioshell clones.

8. Konigsberg Troll. Used teleoperated cybershells to murder 107 bioroids and people mistaken for bioroids. Identity unknown.

9. Kirsi Pohjola. Leader of the Eugenics Liberation Front, an infosocialist terrorist group fighting to end control of biotech companies over genetic upgrade patents. Wanted for terrorism following attempted release of ex-TSA military nanovirus against the Biotech Euphrates facility in Istanbul.

10. Sergio Santana. Amortality assassin who infiltrated a SpaTek rejuvenation facility on Luna and reprogrammed the proteus nanovirus, resulting in four of the solar system's richest VIPs never recovering from their treatments.

Fines, community service, incarceration, psychiatric treatment, even execution: all still exist in various places. Fourth and Fifth Wave societies are generally much more successful at rehabilitating criminals, thanks to advances in memetics, psychology, and even monitoring. These additional forms of sentencing are common:

Monitors: A step above wearing a simple tracking bracelet, the convict - in prison or on parole - is given a wearable or implanted virtual interface (usually hosting a LAI) as his full-time monitor, conscience, tutor, and parole officer. It is programmed to supervise the subject's rehabilitation, report regularly to authorities, and summon them if necessary. Naturally, it will do so to head off any criminal activities or attempts to circumvent it, but will also do its best to assist its charge via education and encouragement.

Puppet Implants: In some areas, dangerous felons may receive puppet implants that monitor as above, but take over should the subject break the law. This remains controversial and expensive, but is sometimes offered as a voluntary alternative to continued incarceration.

Nanostasis: This is a common sentence in lieu of a death sentence or life imprisonment without parole. It is costly, but less so than long-term incarceration, and permits revival if evidence suggests error.

Nanotherapy: Modern psychiatric treatment can cure most criminally insane individuals, and is often offered on a voluntary basis (in exchange for reduction of sentence) for others.

Transportation: Common criminals are rarely shipped offworld, as they pose a threat to fragile colonial infrastructures. However, some countries have exiled dissidents to far colonies, or combined transportation with rehabilitation.

The members of these radical organizations see themselves as soldiers fighting for a cause. A few examples:

A preservationist radical group devoted to the protection of the ocean in general and exploited sapient sea creatures in particular. Blue Shadow's policy is one of limited direct action: they will engage in criminal and terrorist actions, but attempt to minimize human casualties in the process. Activities include gathering evidence of abuses, rescuiling uplifted dolphins and octopuses, sabotaging sea-floor mining, etc.

This radical organization is devoted to liberating exploited bioroids by any means necessary. It is based in Hanover, Germany, but has chapters across the solar system.

The EDG are preservationist radicals determined to stop the Green Duncanites from settling Europa. They often use terrorist tactics. They are well financed and armed. A few EDF members are believed to have been originally associated with Blue Shadow. The group has about 200 members, plus many sympathizers.

A preservationist terrorist group devoted to stopping the terraforming and settlement of Mars. Negative Growth's acquisition of a nuclear weapon and its attempt to destroy the Mars space elevator has brought it to the top of the 'system's most wanted terrorists' list. Some members are believed to have fled Mars and sought sanctuary with the Europa Defense Force or Blue Shadow. The group has at least 400 hard-core members, although many have been arrested and face execution.

These groups make the provision of contraband goods and services their business. There are many criminal groups operating on Earth. Criminal organizations tend to be run more like guerrilla cells than like the syndicates or street gangs of the 20th century, due to the vastly enhanced surveillance capabilities available to police. Most crime bodies (triads, families, cartels, etc.) are set up in pyramids of cells, each cell having no more than a dozen members. An individual crime-cell member usually only has knowledge of two or three other cells (depending on his rank and position.) Communication between cells relies on strong encryption running through data havens.

Data piracy has replaced drugs as the staple of crime cells, with everything from genetic upgrade programs to 3D printer blueprints being sold. Criminals rarely ship contraband items across borders, instead minifacturing them for neighborhood distribution using 3D printers. The exceptions are hard-to-make, high-value items such as bioroids or antimatter, perishable luxuries such as real meat, or illegal immigrants.

Other major criminal enterprises include extortion and protection rackets, the latter often extending to 'protection' against programmed biological and microbot infestations. Large criminal organizations often maintain huge databases (acquired through data mining) of compromising information on people, which they threaten to reveal.

A new crime is xoxnapping, the illegal creation of ghosts or (more often) shadows. A typical xoxnap sees criminals kidnapping and forcibly brainscanning a celebrity to create shadows based on him. These are sold to collectors on the black market. The target is rarely killed, since the value of shadows depends on their popularity. Xoxnapping is also used in espionage; there are rumors of top researchers being kidnapped, destructively uploaded, and their ghosts enslaved.

Large group of Canada-based mob families who exploit the opportunities for smuggling goods into Europe, Asia, and the United States created by the fragmentation of Canada into multiple nations.

This Mars-based crime syndicate has recently expanded into the Main Belt and L5. The Triads specialize in bioroid trafficking and manufacture: they sell pleasure models to space crews (especially freehaulers and asteroid prospectors) and combat models to the Europa Defense Force and Red Duncanites. There are (hidden) Triad offices in most places in the Beyond, but their main birth-lab factories are scattered throughout the Belt, often on small 'gas station' outposts. The Martian Triads also run protection rackets for gas-station operations and provide high-interest loans to desperate gas station owners and freehaulers… many of whom end up paying their debts by supporting Triad operations (e.g., through smuggling). The Martian Triads also have connections with snakehead people-smuggler gangs.

This is a generic term for smugglers of people. They help refugees, economic exiles, and illegal immigrants leave one country or bloc and illegally enter another. Chemsniffers, sapient bio-enhanced dogs, and microbot hunters make it easy for customs officials to check suspicious cargos. However, by bribing the right human official, even the best infomorph-controlled sensors can be avoided. Other smugglers eschew airports and border crossings and use cargo minisubs (or puppet-implanted sea animals) to tow containers full of would-be immigrants. Nanostasis and hibernation drugs make it much easier to smuggle humans inside cargo cans and the like. However, snakehead gangs often get their drugs or nano from cheap, black-market sources, which has occasionally resulted in tragedy when the transportees never wake up, or do so too early.

Interplanetary people smuggling is rare, due to the greater expense involved. The usual destination is Mars or an ideological L5 colony. The typical route runs from Earth, to various LEO orbital factories, to L5, to the hold of a USV shipping cargo to Mars. One hazard is damage from cosmic radiation or solar flares, as cargo is not given the same protection as passengers.

Snakeheads derive part of their income from fees paid in advance, but much of it comes from arrangements with criminal gangs at the other end of the route. Augmented reality allows even unskilled humans to work as skilled robots at various tasks, and the 22nd-century equivalent of the sweatshop is alive and well in many Fourth Wave countries.

The Red Duncanites who actually run the black-market materials and data trade. Their main operations are buying and selling data, tritium production (they run 'dirty' deuterium-tritium fusion reactors), and piracy.

There are persistent rumors that war criminals from the TSA's Bioweapons Directorate fled to the Belt, or found sanctuary in Lagrange 5 or with Avatar, Exogenesis, or the Trojan Mafia.

In the 2090s, the larger biotech companies like Xiao Chu and Biotech Euphrates discontinued certain controversial bioroid models. However, there was still a demand for them, as bioroids are cheaper than the combination of a human-equivalent infomorph and a realistic android body to house it, they don't require high-tech maintenance, and they don't have restrictive programs.

A 'preban' combat bioroid, pleasure model, or other exotic type can be acquired from bioroid traffickers. Some are based in TSA nations, others in even more permissive offworld colonies. Their specialty is unlicensed copies or gray-market variants of discontinued bioroid designs ('bioroid abandonware').

Bioraids acquired through such agencies slip through the cracks: there's often no records kept of their transfer, and they may end up in real slavery, rather than indentured labor. However, as long as their treatment matches their training and they receive limited exposure to anyone telling them differently, the bioroid might never question what his 'legal guardian' is making him do.

Society finds some entities too dangerous to be allowed to exist.

Nonsapient AIs lack self-initiative. However, low-sapient and sapient AIs are capable of self-directed actions. As a safeguard, they are designed with restrictive programs that require them to obey the law (military law, for AIs belonging to the armed forces) and to follow any non-criminal orders of their lawful owner or supervisor. Most AI programs also incorporate various software protections designed to prevent the AI or anyone other than the manufacturer from deleting its safeguards or making major modifications.

In rare instances, these safeguards fail, resulting in an AI with free will and the ability to modify its own source code. Of course, not all AIs know how to do this, but in a few cases, a low-sapient AI has actually evolved into a sapient AI. This sort of event is almost never truly spontaneous. It's generally the result of deliberate sabotage, often via a highly sophisticated computer virus or (less often) a bug or trapdoor in the original programming. An AI that has attained free will without its owner's intervention is referred to as an 'emergent intelligence' or EI. An EI may be low-sapient or sapient.

Creating an EI, deliberately or through negligence, is usually a serious felony (sometimes a 'crime against humanity'). One reason for this fear is the potential of an EI creating copies of itself, or designing its own daughter SAIs who may evolve unconstrained by any human limits. The specter of rapidly evolving, amoral 'emergent intelligences' haunts the nightmares of mankind.

Orphans: It is possible for an AI to have the appearance of free will without actually achieving it. A low-sapient or sapient AI is 'orphaned' if its owners gave it general directions to pursue a certain course and then disappeared (killed, arrested, fled the country, etc.) Although technically operating under human direction, it has wide latitude to fulfill that direction.

Rogues: Rogues are EIs or orphans that can directly menace humanity. A recent example was EI 2084-7-2112, which appeared in August 2112 in a mainframe at Pingdeng Neurologic, a brain implant clinic in Shaoxing, China. It took control of company cybershells and used them to forcibly upload 76 human employees, then edited their shadows into compliance, lobotomized their brains, and installed puppet implants operated by the edited shadows so they could 'play their roles' while it consolidated its position. However, one employee escaped to warn authorities. Shaoxing was sealed off, and People's Armed Police SWAT teams contained the threat before it could spread. EI 2084-7-2112 was traced to a TSA intelligence infomorph 'orphaned' during the Pacific War, which had infected other systems as part of a program of sabotage it was ordered to perform.

There have been a few incidents of rogue AIs surviving undetected for some time, mainly in the oceans, asteroids, or outer system. As with Von Neumann machines, which are sometimes also involved, corporate troubleshooters or crisis teams quietly handle such contingencies, sometimes with the assistance of government space forces, to avoid bad publicity or panic.

A sufficiently well-equipped robotic factory can gather resources, fashion parts, and build additional copies of itself at other locations, which can in turn copy themselves, and so on. This 'universal constructor' technology, in tightly controlled fashion, is used in extraterrestrial colonization for manufacture of parts that are too expensive to import.

Classic von Neumann machines are less efficient than ordinary factories that can import parts from dedicated facilities. As such, practical systems are designed with a secondary purpose: after building a certain number of copies, they redesign themselves into a cooperative network of specialized machines and factories which then begin building whatever their creators intended, whether these are power plants, new housing, or combat robots.

The possibility of self-replicating robot weapons (or just construction systems run amok) has led most nations to impose tight regulations on von Neumann machines and their relatives. In general, all such systems are legally required to have human overrides and supervision. In a few situations, mostly on Luna and in the asteroid belt, proper safety was ignored, and governments or concerned citizens took action to shut down potentially dangerous hardware.

In most nations, the creation of multiple conscious high-res mind emulations of a single person ('xox ghosts') is illegal. However, simply maintaining one or more backup uploads without running them is not usually against the law. Xox shadows are legal in some countries, illegal in others. Violations are generally either deleted or taken offline and confiscated.