Editing Watchdog (section)

==Modus operandi==
Watchdog's purpose is to target and identify economic and political malfeasance, usually committed by parahumans.<ref name="PRT21" /> To these ends, Watchdog employs 'think tanks' of [[Thinker]]s to sift through large quantities of data using their individual talents, with non-parahuman staff working to gather the data in question.<ref name="PRTMR" /> Thinkers within Watchdog can work together, covering one another's individuals weaknesses and expanding on their leads in order to identify anomalies.<ref>As there’s myriad types & conventions of, say, invincibility, there’s a number of subcategories and focuses of precognition or clairvoyance. Tattletale, for example, could theoretically be classified as a subtype of clairvoyance.<br><br>So I’d recommend one not jump to any conclusions about what the thinkers out there could do to monitor the use of powers in relation to economic manipulation.<br><br>''That said'', it’s noted in this chapter that precogs tend to be somewhat unreliable. I don’t think it would be too ridiculous a notion to imagine them working in small groups, supporting one another’s weaknesses and expanding on one another’s leads. All it takes is for one to notice an anomaly and then the others can expand on that. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/interlude-14-5-bonus-interlude/#comment-4991 Interlude 14.5 (Bonus Interlude)], comment by Wildbow.</ref> In terms of its scope of operations, Watchdog covers the political sphere, the financial market, international crime, parahuman science, and the PRT itself.<ref name="PRTMR" /><ref name="I20.y e6">The greater the problem, the faster he could solve it.  He’d taken the time one afternoon to solve world hunger.  Six hours and twenty-six minutes with the internet and a phone on hand, and he’d been able to wrap his head around the key elements of the problem.  He’d drafted a document in the nine hours that followed, doing little more than typing and tracking down exact numbers.  A hundred and fifty pages, formatted and clear, detailing who would need to do what, and the costs therein.<br><br>[...]<br><br>Even when he’d handed over the binder with the sum total of his work, his employer had been more concerned with the fact that he’d shown up late to work for his job.  His boss had barely looked at the binder before calling it impossible, then demanded Accord return to work.  A mind like his, in an office handling economic oversight within the PRT, looking for the precogs and thinkers who were trying to manipulate the markets to their own ends.<br><br>It was only one imbalance, one irregularity, but it had been an important one.  It had nagged at him, demanded resolution.  He ''had'' to prove it was possible.<br><br>So he’d siphoned the very funds that his department was managing.  It hadn’t been hard to redistribute some of the wealth that the villains and rogues were trying to manipulate.  One ambiguous evil for the sake of an undeniable good.  He covered his tracks flawlessly.<br><br>In the process, he failed to account for the full breadth of his newest coworker’s talents.  Thinker powers interfered with one another, and despite his ability to work with that particular drawback, even help them to work in concert, the clairvoyant had found him out.  He’d been caught, jailed, and subsequently freed by the jailbreak specialist he’d contacted well in advance.<br><br>Here he was, years later.  Nobody he’d contacted had taken to his ideas, and government after government had failed to thoroughly read the documents he sent them.  Nobody raised the subject of his work to the United Nations or any major political body.  They were too interested in maintaining the status quo. - [https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/interlude-20/ Excerpt] from [[Interlude 20.y]]</ref><ref name=":0">The thinkers referenced were members of Watchdog, the same PRT sub-organization that Accord was a part of before he went off the deep end. They essentially work a 9 to 5 (varying depending on needs, power, etc) doing various kinds of detective work and keeping an eye out for financial, political, legal, international, and big-picture shenanigans, or working to back up the PRT/Law by resolving tickets by priority. - [https://redd.it/54jw72 Wildbow on Reddit]</ref>

Personnel typically work from the office, but can also go into the field, launching covert and overt investigations, interrogating, talking to politicians, and carrying out anti-mastermind/conspiracy operations.<ref name="2.5">“I was with the PRT, but I wasn’t a Ward exactly,” she said.  “They had trouble sticking me anywhere, and then I went into training, and got to do a lot of really neat camps and exercises and travel, because they had to wait until I was old enough before they could put me where they really wanted to put me.”<br><br>“Which was?”<br><br>“Watchdog, grrr,” she said.  She’d made a pretty sad attempt at a growl, mischief in her eyes.  “That other branch that worked under the PRT that you almost never hear about.  Oversight and investigation, powers, money, and politics.”<br><br>“I know of Watchdog.”<br><br>“Cubicle superheroes.”<br><br>“They’re actually pretty badass from what I heard, and they do- did a lot of fieldwork and investigations, raiding offices, interrogations, talking to politicians, uncovering conspiracies.”<br><br>“That’s true.”<br><br>“There’s something about getting organized and going after that thinker or that tinker who’s been working behind the scenes, the guy that’s been subverting society for their own gain, when they’ve probably spent months or years making contingency plans and anticipating the day their world and their plans come crashing down around them.  I think that dynamic is pretty damn cool, the approach and the complexity of it.”<br><br>“Hmm, that is cool,” she said.  “Except there aren’t any awesome costumes or monster fighting.”<br><br>“Less monster fighting, I’m sure.  I’m not sure about the costumes.  There are probably masks, I guess?” - [https://www.parahumans.net/2017/12/23/flare-2-5/ Excerpt] from [[Flare 2.5]]</ref><ref name="R2.5 e1">'''themanwhowas''': You mentioned PRT Watchdogs. Is that a group of PRT-specific capes? What are their responsibilities besides evaluating Simurgh victims?<br>What measures does the PRT take to ensure that supplies aren't taken by normal/parahuman gangs or bandits? I imagine not too many guards would want to expose themselves to Simurgh Quarantine Zone threats just to make sure the supplies go where they're needed.<br><br>'''Wildbow''': The Watchdog group is the group Accord belonged to. Parahuman thinkers and investigative bodies keeping an eye on economy, politics and other possible shenanigans behind the scenes. - Excerpt from a [https://redd.it/3ec7eu Reddit comment] by Wildbow</ref><ref name="R3">PRT taps New York and Watchdog, they have thinker resources to zero in on the snipers. You get a team of investigators backed by thinkers and other resources finding the sniper, and then tracing it back to the source.<br><br>[...]<br><br>To the PRT, on the surface, they've got a villain that's getting too big for their boots, who're eliminating competition, breaking the rules, and who could very easily be willing to escalate to start targeting heroes. A murder out in public is very visible and newsworthy, and people in the public get scared. It's controversial. They don't want things to escalate.<br><br>To the PRT, more behind the scenes, they have a vested interest in the balance and the unwritten rules. They want to keep parahuman numbers up. So they have task forces who are exclusively trained to keep stuff like this from coming about. - [https://redd.it/5ip94x Wildbow on Reddit]</ref> Investigations are regularly directed at the PRT itself, making Watchdog a sort of internal affairs division for the PRT.<ref name="PRTMR" /> Watchdog members commonly staff problem sites, such for the outtake process of the [[Madison|Madison quarantine zone]] (per the now-defunct D.D.I.D. measure),<ref name="R1">Once an individual completes this regimen:

*They are placed on a list for outtake. They may or may not be placed on a low-priority or high-priority list, allowing for needs and/or risks. Wait time may be two weeks to eight months, depending.
*Staff in the PRT building conduct a thorough background check.
*The subject is contacted and summoned.
*The individual receives initial screening from a PRT-approved parahuman, provided by the Watchdog arm of the PRT or the Protectorate. - [https://redd.it/3ec7eu Reddit comment] by Wildbow.</ref> and providing consultation for how to handle the [[Ellisburg|Ellisburg quarantine zone]].<ref name="SB1">You know what happens if you nuke the site with bunker busters and try to quarantine the site after the fact?<br><br>People start getting sick. You discover that there's a fuckton of airborne parasites that've been scattered by the bombs, waterborne parasites getting into nearby sites. Stuff that was contained in tougher creations with hard carbon shells, released during/after the fact. Conventional filtration doesn't necessarily work, because the parasites crawl over, through and around, negating the benefit of hazmat and masks and water filtration systems and all that. The people that get sick start changing. They develop into problems that could give many parahumans a run for their money.<br><br>The PRT has a sense of this. They consider every threat, and they have thinkers and Dragon working to monitor major problem sites. They get a squad of thinkers to check on Nilbog every week or two, and they get responses like "Black!" "Nine!" "Trojan Horses, Director."<br><br>They think about leaving him alone, and they get a response of "Yellow", "Three" "Poisoned apple trees, sir." from the same three thinkers.<br><br>They leave him alone, they keep a close eye on him, they have research teams and tinkers work on developing ideas that might get a response from the thinkers that isn't quite so grave, and they keep things quiet, so the public doesn't realize how dangerous that particular situation really is. - [https://forums.spacebattles.com/posts/15024590 Spacebattles comment] by Wildbow.</ref> Thinkers from Watchdog also help in rating threat levels, such as [[S-Class|S-class]] threats.<ref name="Queen_18.4" />