Missing, presumed missing.
Sep. 13th, 2011 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davywavyA 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The thing is, the book above is rather badly out of date.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?
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Surveillance
Date: 2011-09-13 11:05 am (UTC)It was one of those moments where it flashes across your mind quite naturally that you could just look at the envelope and say "No, that's my flatmate, she's out at work at the moment, but I can sign for it for her if you want." He'd have given it me, no question. No way did this man want to climb 11 flights of stairs again.
What I actually said (after the briefest moment of hesitation) was "No, sorry mate." After which his face fell and he trudged away again.
This, you'll recall, was at a time when we were still all being told what stringent checks would be placed on the new shiny ID card scheme, and how much more secure we'd all be as a result of them ... anyhow, that is the story of how I nearly acquired someone else's ID, but didn't.
H
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 11:12 am (UTC)I reckon you could totally pull a contemporary Day of the Jackal (only preferably without Richard Gere this time). It'd probably make sense to produce a completely fraudulent birth certificate based on known details rather than request a copy from the GRO, since they then don't have a copy of the request.
I do have a special method of adopting a fraudulent identity, which I've been cultivating for a while as a bit of a mental exercise. I doubt very much that many people who aren't me could do it, though.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:43 pm (UTC)Could be done on the cheap with a scalpel and a couple of stitches beyond the hair line.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 02:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 03:06 pm (UTC)Because it's usually taken optically from 2D images, it's subject to optical noise such as anomalous lighting. More contemporary facial recognition methods can build up a similar facial fingerprint in 3D, but this has to be done from video footage (preferably taken in a controlled environment) rather than from photos. It's also more computationally intense than the 2D method, so not worth the while of that many people.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 11:34 am (UTC)I can also confirm Leicester is still here. I am in it.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 11:53 am (UTC)they both use facial recognition
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 12:05 pm (UTC)Feels fairly safe.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 05:54 pm (UTC)Of course FB respect your privacy. And none of their employees or contractors are corrupt, there are no glaring security holes, and none of their third-party app developers and advertising partners misuse their privileged access to users' private data.
In other news, are you getting spam promoting plastic surgery, counselling for social phobia, online image management, or photo retouching software? Or phone calls about it from marketers who seem to know an awful lot about you?
Or has the information that you are a bit sensitive about your image been sold to a 'research' company, so that a more directed investigation can be attempted, trawling for potential blackmail clients, press targets, or divorce defendants?
When you un-tag an image, you are doing something unusual in a data environment that was explicitly designed to record what you say and do, and to act as a searchable source of personal information. You have become *interesting* and as such, commercially-valuable: an added-value product to be sold to information buyers.
I'm not paranoid: I just happen to believe that personal data is only ever recorded so that it can be misused... And that these 'Freemen' are fools if they believe that some sinister 'gummint' (as Americans refer to their Government) has a monopoly on intrusive data-gathering and the abuse of private information.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 11:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 11:27 am (UTC)I might hope that making intrusively-crosslinked personal data expensive would force the buyers to use it intelligently; but this hope would be confounded by (a) selling the data cheaply, and (b) rich idiots in marketing companies.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 10:21 am (UTC)It would be possible to infer who I am from FB by looking at the people I tag as pals, but if someone really wants to bother doing that good luck to 'em.
Project Freeman
Date: 2011-09-13 02:00 pm (UTC)Actually one has the feeling he sort of wants them to, in a funny way
H
Re: Project Freeman
Date: 2011-09-13 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 02:22 pm (UTC)"This book is obviously written as a fantasy novel for middle aged unhappy men! Come on...stop stereotyping women...we're not all nags!"
Vanishing completely has crossed my mind more than once before, however, for as long as my parents are alive I would never try to carry out any such plans.
Vanishing partly is a more likely step for me. I reckon I could escape everyone in the UK and, with the help of my folks, settle in Poland without being found again.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 02:35 pm (UTC)Especially me.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 10:19 am (UTC)I bet you think you know my name.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-13 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 10:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-14 01:34 pm (UTC)