Aneki nodded. "Did you really expect otherwise?" he said. Intrusion Countermeasures, known as "ice" on the streets, were sophisticated computer programs intended to keep pirate deckers out of important systems and away from sensitive corporate and government data. Most IC programs only restricted access and worked to trace data-pirates back to their location in the physical world so the authorities could deal with them. Some IC, technically illegal, worked directly on the mind of the decker and could injure or kill or, worse yet, alter some of the decker’s "wet-ware" through psychotropic techniques to, for example, inspire paralyzing fear of the corporation the decker was trying to rob.