Slashdot Mirror
Shedding Your Identity In the Digital Age
newscloud writes "Writer Evan Ratliff tells how he managed to hide from crowdsourced searchers for 27 days. The first person to find him and photograph him would claim a $5,000 prize. In addition to hiding out as a roadie with indy band 'The Hermit Thrushes' for a week, Ratliff donned a variety of increasingly impressive disguises. It's an interesting read on how to disappear in the digital age: 'August 13, 6:40 PM: I'm driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I'm reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there's no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught. About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe. What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can't be detected. There will be no digital record that at 4 AM I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile...' Spoiler alert: We previously discussed the denouement of the contest."
Sure one might be able to hide from a group of relativly untrained people with no resources for quite a long time. But in my experience if someone is actually wanted by the police they tend to be found pretty quickly. The only reason so many get away is simply a lack of any real motivation to target that specific invidiual. This is why the bike you had stolen is far less likely to be found than the man who murdered his wife. In the end, a well trained force with authority and technology is quite difficult to evade in the long run. Especially without going life ruining stres and anxiety.
Osama Bin Laden
More like Ratliff wanted his life back and decided what he was getting paid wasn't worth it
Yeah. What if everybody lost interest and stopped looking, and he was stuck in Outer Nowhere, working in a warehouse.
"You mean nobody remembers my Round the World Walk?" - old cartoon from Punch, showing a guy in hiking gear in the lobby of a big London newspaper.
getting offline (both 'net and financially) would be a wise thing.
Exactly. If you're really trying not to be found, staying away from communities like twitter and facebook are just the start. Otherwise, you might as well shout "Here I am, Look at me!" from the rooftops.
So, as the guy says in TFA (which incidentally is one of the better reads I have come across on Slashdot):
Had I shown that a person, given enough resources and discipline, could vanish from one life and reinvent himself in another?
I would have to say no. Ratliff is obviously somewhat dependent on social engagement (which he admits as a source of stress), but there are many who are a lot more self-contained who would require less in the way of social interaction, who I think would stay below the radar for a lot longer.
I'm rather surprised he got into a hostel, the one I tried in Venice Beach a while back demanded a passport instead of the valid ID that I presented - evidently the desk clerk didn't like my looks (I was a wandering longhair at the time) and I was denied service, just like you hear the old stories about lunch counters or the new stories about British soldiers.
PS the classic counter-surveillance technique is three right turns in a row. If the same car is still in your rearview mirror, you can be pretty sure they're following you. Detecting surveillance is one thing, evading it quite another. Of course, these days they just stick a GPS tracker on your car, which is why you need to go into an underground structure and change vehicles.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Yup. It's pretty easy to disappear. Don't go out where you'll be seen. Give traces where you aren't.
You know, it's not very hard to send a trusted friend your credit card and cell phone, and tell him "Use the card every few days to pull out $40, and deposit the cash once a month at a different branch.. Call your girlfriend/house/friend from my cell every few days just to chat."
Depends on how badly they want you vs how badly you want to stay hidden... "JWSmythe (446288), in this bag we have one of your girlfriends fingers. In 9 days she will run out of fingers. Please get in touch with us.". s/girlfriend/someone_else_you_care_about as required.
I hope I never have to stay hidden from someone who wants me at any cost.
There is a clear difference between hiding if people know who you are
and getting away with murder if the police does not know you're the one they're looking for.
-- SouNerd.com
It's not the ABILITY of the government. It's the MOTIVATION. The two-bit conman who ripped me off is still at large, even though he had a long criminal record before he ripped me off, and doubtless a long record afterward. But, I bet if he shot the mayor's dog, he'd be in jail the next day.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.