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Missing, presumed missing.
Sep. 13th, 2011 10:59 amA few weeks ago surfing Amazon, and came across a book called How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found
. As it looked interesting, I bought a copy and found it did exactly what it said on the cover. I put it down on the coffee table whilst I made a cuppa and when I got back it had vanished and I've not seen it since.
Ha! I jest.
It's actually a book on how to drop out of sight; how to leave your life, your home, your family, your job and set up a new one, complete with new identity. I suspect it's a common fantasy to do just that. Walk away from your problems because things will be different then. In fact, it's such a popular fantasy that tens of thousands of people do it every year, if only for a short time. You might be surprised - shocked, maybe - to learn that every year in the UK over 200,000 people vanish. That's a fair sized town, about the size of Leicester, let's say, worth of people just upping and leaving and I daresay that if Leicester were to vanish one night we'd notice sooner or later.
The majority of these people show up again in fairly short order, but perhaps 5-10% are simply never seen again. Some are probably suicides or murder victims, but many show signs of a planned departure such as clothes packed, bank accounts emptied before their departure. I do know at least one person who isn't who most peopel think they are (I only found out by purest chance), but I bet there are others.
The thing is, the book above is rather badly out of date. It was written in 1996, before the web, the massive rise in surveillance and the shift in banking to electronic money. I can't help but think that it'd be a lot harder just to drop out of sight now. I don't doubt that it's possible, but I have to ask if tricks like the Day of the Jackal one where you get a new ID by stealing a birth certificate would still work in a world of databases. What the modern-day disappearee would have to do is drop out of the banking system. It'd mean living in accomodation that didn't require a bankers reference and taking cash-in-hand jobs to pay your way. It'd also mean avoiding areas with lots of CCTV where they're using facial recognition algorithms, like the Underground and major overground rail stations.
As an illustration of how hard it is to vanish in the 21st century UK, a reporter carried out an experiment a couple of years ago in which they attempted to go into hiding and engaged a digital tracking team to find him: they caught up with him in under 48 hours. It's easier in the US, due to the great wide open spaces and larger transient population. A reporter for WIRED tried the same experiment and successfully vanished for over a month: he moved to one of the satellite towns of Vegas, where nobody knows anyone or even cares, and then got a job roadieing for a band. He stopped using electronic money, but perhaps his sharpest move was changing his appearance: he put on weight and shaved his head into male-pattern baldness, thereby demonstrating that in the image obsessed 21st century a good way to become invisible is to be a fat, scruffy, bald middle-aged bloke.
There are people who deliberately try to drop 'off the grid' and make a lifestyle of it. The Project Freeman group have taken it to the extreme by declaring themselves independant of the state, resorting to a cash-only economy, and driving round in a camper van being generally anti-capitalist.
I can't help but observe that in the current political climate driving round in a camper van being anti-capitalist is possibly the worst way of avoiding the attention of the state, but that's just me.
Like with many things, if you're rich vanishing is easier. Specialist personal security companies for HNW (High net worth) individuals create dummy corporations for their client's new identity to be employed by. That way when they travel the company can book transport and accomodation in the name of the phoney identity. Why? Because kidnappers in the friskier and less lawless parts of the world google names looking for potential targets, and if your name comes up as someone rich or important that puts you in the frame for a bag over your head and a million pound demand. However, if you come up as a middle ranking executive at dummycorp on 30k a year, you'll be left well alone.
Within this context, Google is the enemy of the person who wants to vanish. A quick search by name can turn up facebook accounts, company records, Linkin profiles. If you're lucky, you have a common name and can vanish into the crowd. Or maybe, like me, you're fortunate enough that you're not known by the name which appears on your passport or credit card. Google my passport details and you'll get nowt. Alternatively, if you're rich, you can afford to pay someone to create hundreds of false positive online returns for your real name so you'll simply be lost as a face in the digital crowd.
If you aren't rich, or desperate enough to drop out into the cash economy, or self-satisfied enough to decalre indepenance like the Freeman people, your best bet for vanishing is to simply sink into anonymity by not doing anything to draw attention to yourself. Get an average job, pay average tax, buy average things. Do nothing that will flag you up to security algorithms which look for outliers of behaviour - and then do all your interesting stuff with cash withdrawn in small amounts over time.
But all that said...have I missed anyhing? Do you have a contingency plan to just vanish should you ever need to? How would you do it?
. As it looked interesting, I bought a copy and found it did exactly what it said on the cover. I put it down on the coffee table whilst I made a cuppa and when I got back it had vanished and I've not seen it since. Ha! I jest.
It's actually a book on how to drop out of sight; how to leave your life, your home, your family, your job and set up a new one, complete with new identity. I suspect it's a common fantasy to do just that. Walk away from your problems because things will be different then. In fact, it's such a popular fantasy that tens of thousands of people do it every year, if only for a short time. You might be surprised - shocked, maybe - to learn that every year in the UK over 200,000 people vanish. That's a fair sized town, about the size of Leicester, let's say, worth of people just upping and leaving and I daresay that if Leicester were to vanish one night we'd notice sooner or later.
The majority of these people show up again in fairly short order, but perhaps 5-10% are simply never seen again. Some are probably suicides or murder victims, but many show signs of a planned departure such as clothes packed, bank accounts emptied before their departure. I do know at least one person who isn't who most peopel think they are (I only found out by purest chance), but I bet there are others.
The thing is, the book above is rather badly out of date. It was written in 1996, before the web, the massive rise in surveillance and the shift in banking to electronic money. I can't help but think that it'd be a lot harder just to drop out of sight now. I don't doubt that it's possible, but I have to ask if tricks like the Day of the Jackal one where you get a new ID by stealing a birth certificate would still work in a world of databases. What the modern-day disappearee would have to do is drop out of the banking system. It'd mean living in accomodation that didn't require a bankers reference and taking cash-in-hand jobs to pay your way. It'd also mean avoiding areas with lots of CCTV where they're using facial recognition algorithms, like the Underground and major overground rail stations.
As an illustration of how hard it is to vanish in the 21st century UK, a reporter carried out an experiment a couple of years ago in which they attempted to go into hiding and engaged a digital tracking team to find him: they caught up with him in under 48 hours. It's easier in the US, due to the great wide open spaces and larger transient population. A reporter for WIRED tried the same experiment and successfully vanished for over a month: he moved to one of the satellite towns of Vegas, where nobody knows anyone or even cares, and then got a job roadieing for a band. He stopped using electronic money, but perhaps his sharpest move was changing his appearance: he put on weight and shaved his head into male-pattern baldness, thereby demonstrating that in the image obsessed 21st century a good way to become invisible is to be a fat, scruffy, bald middle-aged bloke.
There are people who deliberately try to drop 'off the grid' and make a lifestyle of it. The Project Freeman group have taken it to the extreme by declaring themselves independant of the state, resorting to a cash-only economy, and driving round in a camper van being generally anti-capitalist.
I can't help but observe that in the current political climate driving round in a camper van being anti-capitalist is possibly the worst way of avoiding the attention of the state, but that's just me.
Like with many things, if you're rich vanishing is easier. Specialist personal security companies for HNW (High net worth) individuals create dummy corporations for their client's new identity to be employed by. That way when they travel the company can book transport and accomodation in the name of the phoney identity. Why? Because kidnappers in the friskier and less lawless parts of the world google names looking for potential targets, and if your name comes up as someone rich or important that puts you in the frame for a bag over your head and a million pound demand. However, if you come up as a middle ranking executive at dummycorp on 30k a year, you'll be left well alone.
Within this context, Google is the enemy of the person who wants to vanish. A quick search by name can turn up facebook accounts, company records, Linkin profiles. If you're lucky, you have a common name and can vanish into the crowd. Or maybe, like me, you're fortunate enough that you're not known by the name which appears on your passport or credit card. Google my passport details and you'll get nowt. Alternatively, if you're rich, you can afford to pay someone to create hundreds of false positive online returns for your real name so you'll simply be lost as a face in the digital crowd.
If you aren't rich, or desperate enough to drop out into the cash economy, or self-satisfied enough to decalre indepenance like the Freeman people, your best bet for vanishing is to simply sink into anonymity by not doing anything to draw attention to yourself. Get an average job, pay average tax, buy average things. Do nothing that will flag you up to security algorithms which look for outliers of behaviour - and then do all your interesting stuff with cash withdrawn in small amounts over time.
But all that said...have I missed anyhing? Do you have a contingency plan to just vanish should you ever need to? How would you do it?
