# The Data Brokers Guild: Information as Currency

## Overview

The Data Brokers Guild is a loose confederation of independent information traders who buy, sell, and exchange data in GLMZ's shadow economy. Unlike the Ninth Circle, which operates across multiple criminal markets, the Guild specializes exclusively in information: surveillance data, corporate secrets, personal records, intelligence analysis, and the raw data that operators, journalists, and corporate espionage divisions need to function.

## Structure

The Guild operates through a reputation-based marketplace. Brokers establish their credibility through the quality and accuracy of the information they sell. A broker who sells bad data loses reputation; a broker who sells good data gains it. Reputation is tracked through an informal consensus system maintained by the Guild's senior members — there's no database, no algorithm, just the collective memory of a community that values reliability above all else.

### Brokers
Individual information traders who maintain networks of sources, process raw data into actionable intelligence, and sell to clients. Most brokers specialize: corporate intelligence, personal information, infrastructure data, military information, or synthetic intelligence tracking. A skilled broker earns Φ5,000-20,000/month.

### Sources
The people who generate raw data — surveillance operators, corporate insiders, maintenance workers with access to restricted areas, E.L.F.s that provide system access, and the casual informants who sell observations of people and events. Sources are the Guild's most protected asset — a broker who burns a source is expelled from the Guild permanently.

### Clients
Anyone who needs information they can't get through legitimate channels. Operators make up the largest client category, but the Guild also serves journalists, attorneys, corporate security divisions (who officially deny using it), and individuals seeking personal information — missing persons, infidelity investigations, background checks that go deeper than the official systems allow.

## The Watchers

The Guild maintains a special division called the Watchers — brokers who specialize in monitoring the Cap's sensor infrastructure for information that can only be gathered from elevation. The Watchers are the Guild's highest-paid specialists, operating in the harsh conditions of Cap Level Zero and providing intelligence that combines electromagnetic intercepts from the Antenna Forest with visual observation from the city's highest vantage points.

## Ethics

The Guild operates by a code that distinguishes it from raw criminal intelligence operations: no selling information that leads directly to physical harm (the Guild will sell a person's location but not if the buyer's intent is assassination), no selling children's data, and no selling information to clients who are under UBC suspension (a prohibition that exists because UBC-suspended individuals are desperate enough to use information in ways that generate blowback). The code is enforced by reputation damage and expulsion rather than violence.