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Ask Slashdot: What Would Your 'I've Got To Disappear' Plan Look Like?
New submitter diacritica writes "This Ask Slashdot is inspired by manhunts à-la-Bourne movies, but taking a more realistic approach to the world we live in. You are native to and live in a big city (> 1M pop) in a G8 country of your choosing. At T = 0h, you accidentally witness a strange event. At T = 1h, you realize you're being followed and you get the feeling that the police/government might be involved. Contextual data: you are able to speak one language apart from good English. You are 25 to 45 years old. You are computer savvy. You are engaged/married, you have family living in the same city. 99% of your money is in a bank account. You prefer to go 'rationally' paranoid. What would you do in order to feel safe after those first 24 hours? Remember, you didn't commit a crime, but there are plenty of real-world resources invested in catching you."
The first rule of secret escape plans is that you keep them secret.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Withdraw enough cash to feed yourself for a week, then leave. Go camping. Get out into nature. If technology is your concern, get away from the technology.
I'd get a good lawyer, let the press know what I'd seen and then go to the police and give them a statement.
Then, after I had succeeded in hiring a good lawyer, and maybe a bodyguard, depending on who I thought was after me... start posting whatever it was I saw to every communal blog and forum I could think of, then start spamming newspapers with it, too. If I've done nothing wrong, why hide?
Record yourself recounting everything you saw, then post the video to as many sites as you can. The more you can say about the event the better, don't make it short and look like you know more then you're saying. Start babbling if you can manage it.
That way, there is not much of a point silencing you, since you've already done the worst you could.
Ya blew it.
That's really all there is too it. You need cash to disappear. "They" would've already frozen or started watching your assets.
You're already dead.
Serious sex crimes? He didn't corner a girl in a back alley, pull a knife, and force himself on her; she agreed to have sex with him if he used a condom, which he didn't.
And you don't consider that a serious sex crime why?
Maybe because it's senseless, unprovable, he-said she-said bullshit?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I'd get my testimony and any relevant information in my possession as widely distributed as I could. Once the information is beyond containing, stopping me will no longer solve my opponent's problem. They'll have bigger problems to worry about than me.
How's that working out for Julian Assange? Once you spread the information, their priority changes from containment to revenge.
It's a formal and serious allegation which he is avoiding answering to by hiding. If he's innocent, why is he hiding? Read up on the extradition laws and you'll find it's *harder* to be extradited from Sweden than the UK, and that if he gets extradited to Sweden then *both* Sweden and the UK have to consent to extradition to the US on charges that haven't even been brought yet.
Two women have made serious allegations, he should face them using legal due process.
and the police will find a large cache of child porn or marijuana or bomb-making material (or all of the above) in your house/car.
I think my plan is safe enough to say aloud... French Foreign Legion.
So it's OK to potentially infect someone with an STD or get them pregnant as long as you are spreading juicy emails from the state department?
Not using a condom is a pretty big deal when the woman has asked you not to. You have no idea why she asked.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because his fears of political persecution are very justified. He is risking to spend far more time locked inside a room in the Ecuadorian embassy than he would get in the worst case scenario if he was judged guilty in Sweden (which is not very likely). Does that seem like someone running from "serious accusations"?
If you accidentally witnessed something "strange" and believed that you were being followed in the real world, your actions should not and would not resemble what your character would do in a movie, and neither would "the government".
So posing the question to a bunch of nerds on the internet wouldn't make sense.
If you're a novelist looking to write some movie, however, and you run out of good ideas, you might ask Slashdot for a bunch of ideas for your story, posing your question in the way that was done in this story. That would certainly result in lots of ideas being generated by random strangers to fix your writer's block.
It's a formal and serious allegation which he is avoiding answering to by hiding.
Yes, he's avoiding answering them by asking Swedish prosecutors if it was ok to leave the country before he did, and then inviting them to interview him either remotely, or in person in the Ecuadorian embassy. All opportunities were declined. It's obvious that it's not his testimony they want, it's his physical presence. He even volunteered to go to Sweden, as long as guarantees were offered that he would not be extradited to the US. They guarantees were never given.
Read up on the extradition laws and you'll find it's *harder* to be extradited from Sweden than the UK, and that if he gets extradited to Sweden then *both* Sweden and the UK have to consent to extradition to the US on charges that haven't even been brought yet.
Just like it's illegal for the US to hold you without trial. Doesn't particularly seem to have stopped them. The underlying assumption to your statement is that the people/countries involved care about the law, or think it applies to them. From previous experience, they know they can pretty much do whatever they want, and they're not going to be called on it by anyone that matters.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
FBI Weenie #001: "You know, we are a bunch of wankers after all." Sips Natural Ice from can.
FBI Weenie #002: "True. And we do suffer a lack of creativity." Sips Natural Ice from can.
FBI Wennie #001: "I'm bored out of my mind. It's been ten years since we had any real terrorists to deal with." Sips Natural Ice from can.
FBI Weenie #003: "Hey! Lets go mine slashdot and get some ideas. There's always a good one somewhere in the threads." Sips Natural Ice from can.
FBI Head Weenie: "Alright, I'll contact Stratfor and get them to whip up an Ask Slashdot title." Sips Budweiser from can
Moments later: Thousands of Slashdot readers see in their rss feeds: Ask Slashdot: What Would Your 'I've Got To Disappear' Plan Look Like?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
1. Get the hell off the internet
2. Lose the mobile phone, iPad, and anything else with wireless capability
3. Become invisible, wear solid black (or white) clothing, no logos, brands or anything else immediately identifiable.
4. (If time permits) Wear sunglasses or some other type of glasses that distort how people see you, eg if the popular trend is cokebottle lenses, get those.
5. (If time permits) Get a wig of a different hair color and lenght. This is much harder for men, but you can just get something that is different enough that it wouldn't draw attention.
6. Very important. Do not pay with credit cards. At hour zero you should have withdrawn all available money, cash advance your cards, etc and convert those into prepaid/gift cards for one-time transactions.
7. Write a letter to your friends/family explaining what is going on, mail it directly in the post office (don't drop it off in a box outside)
After that, you're going to probably want to stay the hell off the grid. Buy some camping gear, take a bus two towns over, buy a bike, and disappear.
8. If you're have such plans, activate the data-self-destruction on your home data remotely. It may not help your cause, but it will prevent any data from being planted. How would I do this? Send a specially crafted email from your cell phone before you lose it, that tells the system to encrypt everything and then unmount. If you really were hiding something, this would actually ignite some minor explosive to blow apart the hard drives, rendering the system inoperable.
These are not serious allegations, and are not sex crimes. Not in any sane country.
He was an asshole, I will grant you that. However, failing to put a condom on, even when the woman expects it, is more likely to be the plot of a Hollywood movie, than the actions of a "rapist" or "sexual predator".
By that logic a woman in Sweden could demand cuddling and talking after sex and it would be deemed just as worthy of being a sex crime when it was not performed.
The whole case is ridiculous and Sweden had their chance to prosecute and now are refuse to offer any guarantees against extradition to the US (which is quite reasonable under the circumstances) or prosecute him remotely.
No, his fears of political persecution are political sleight of hand on his part. You distract them with the circus of claiming asylum from a country which is no friend to freedom or human rights (seriously, look up any reasonably objective assessment of the Ecuadorean government's actions concerning freedom of speech and human rights - they are not a bunch of people who you may un-ironically state are "friends of freedom and human rights"), and claim that the reason you need asylum is some unspecified bogey man that's out to get you.
In one fell swoop, he's destroyed any credibility he may have had, by providing a way for Ecuador to whitewash their human rights abuses using his own name and organization's name. "Ecuador MUST be a friend of free speech - look, they gave Julian Assange asylum because they care so much about free speech!"
You're an idiot if you think his asylum-seeking behavior is anything but a self-serving dodge to avoid facing charges in Sweden.
When there was a chance that a child might not have yet acquired an SSN, that could work. Since now a record of every death goes to the SSA, that'll kill the SSN of pretty much every citizen upon death. (In fact, there are news stories every once in a while about how hard it is to convince the SSA that you aren't dead when somebody fat-fingers the wrong number or name into the database.)
"Become invisible, wear solid black (or white) clothing, no logos, brands or anything else immediately identifiable."
IOW, try to stand out in the crowd?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I don't think you've answered the real question. If his real fear is extradition to the U.S., why is the risk higher in Sweden than in the U.K., where he has voluntarily remained for quite some time? I (and apparently others) would have expected the opposite. But if that's the case, Assange needs a new explanation for fighting extradition to Sweden, doesn't he?
Meanwhile, Sweden has always had a policy of not interviewing suspects outside the country. It is apparently controversial among Swedish legal experts whether doing otherwise would be legal under Swedish law.
If both these things are true (and I think they are) then while Assange seems to have no good reason to fear extradition to Sweden, Sweden seems to have a perfectly good reason FOR seeking it. No?
caritj.org
Most of you failed to read the FP, and even if you did, seem to have skipped the obvious first step.
* You have someone following you. You haven't yet manage to elude your potential captors.
* You don't know that your pursuers have government ties, just suspect it.
* You don't know that "they" actually know your identity yet - Even the MiBs don't really know everything instantly.
* You have almost no money on you (or if 1% counts as "enough", you have enough money to get a damned good lawyer).
You can test two of these and potentially fix one with one simple move - Go into the nearest branch of your local bank and take out a modest, odd-sized sum of cash well under $10k... Perhaps $3450 (no need to go crazy with precision, virtually all legit debts in the four-digit range will round to the dollar, and often enough to the 50s - And keep in mind that 35 bills will cause a very sizable bulge in your pocket). If the bank gives it to you, then "they" either don't know your identity, or don't belong to the government (note that the latter doesn't make you any safer - Plenty of NGOs pose as much, if not more, of a threat to you than the government-proper). If the bank tries to make you stick around for more than two minutes, time to vanish into the woods, penniless or not (and if "they" can get to the bank and nab you in under two minutes, sorry dude, you had no shot from the moment you saw A Strange Event, so might as well get it over with).
So, assuming you have a decent wad of cash (if you have either died at this point or know you can look forward to a life of hermitage in a mud hut in the Great North Woods, not much more advice matters, so turn to page 99, "the end")... Task #0a: Leave a message with your lawyer describing your situation and asking him to look into it, and say that you'll contact him in a week for an update. Task #0b: Leave a goodbye message (you can do that directly with most cell phones, without actually ringing the line) for anyone you care about - This will both protect them and make you less likely to do something stupid like try to go home three months from now. Take this chance to wipe your phone (not that they can't recover it, but might as well make it a bit of a challenge)
Task #1, lose your tail. Easier said than done, but we've all seen plenty of trick in movies you could try. Personally, I'd favor large crowds with lots of cover, ie, a shopping mall (outdoor market, all the better, but we don't have a whole lot of those in the US). Wander around for a while, always heading for the largest crowd you can see, and try to leave by an unusual route. At some point early in this step, "accidentally" leave your phone in a conspicuous place, preferably with lots of teens around. Someone will kindly pocket it for you and provide a new non-you moving target.
So you've lost your tail. Task #2, get the hell out of Dodge. "They" will watch most forms of public transit, so a series of hailed cabs or hitchhiking will give you the best chances. If you can get to a bus depot in an outlying suburb, you have a chance. Go to a different state.
On your first stop, buy an activate a pair of Tracphones. Mail one to your lawyer, and one to your wife (or mother). Now Pretend you still have a tail and repeat steps 1 & 2. Do it again. Bonus points for finding alternate means of transportation than buses and taxis (commuter trains don't ID you, long-haul ones sometimes do, airports always do).
So... Now you consider yourself more-or-less safe to stop and think for a while. Get a good night's rest, get a complete makeover (hair/beard style and modest color change), get some new clothes. Get another Tracphone, activate it, but don't call anyone yet.
Have your next bus ticket ready, and take a taxi/T to the opposite side of the city. Call your lawyer's shiny new Tracphone and see if he has anything useful to tell you. Don't automatically believe
Jesus fucking christ.
It was not rape.
Having sex is not a legal contract. She was there for the fucking. During the fucking she did not say no.
According to your twisted logic, terms of consent could have been that he was required to cuddle, or mow her lawn, or walk her dog, or some shit like that. Failure, after the fact is determined to retroactively take away consent?
That's bullshit and insane crazy.
If she did not want to have sex, or wanted to stop having sex, she could have done so.
I'm not denying rape because rape never occurred. You don't to scream rape after the fact, while admitting that you gave consent the entire time , but just had regrets or a disagreement aftewards.
Rape is a very serious allegation that demands lengthy prison sentences. Trying to apply some bullshit legal logic about consent, and breach of contract, etc. to it is just plane crazy.
You left out that Alaska is a very large ans easy place to "disappear" in. Having lived there for 37 years I kind of know where to go to blend in. I also know enough people that have a dislike for the "government" as to help in any way they can. Come to think of it, it is hunting season and I could easy load up on moose and caribou and not have to surface for quite a while.
"Remember, politicians and diapers should be changed often and for the same reason."
Yeah, I mean if you witnessed something like that and there were people after you, wouldn't they just shoot you on the spot? "Oh no, a witness to my heinous crime! I think I'll conspicuously follow him around and menace him while he empties his bank account and gathers his guns, and then mysteriously stop following him while he secrets himself to an undisclosed location. I can't lose!"
He didn't destroy any credibility with me and with many many people that are smart enough to understand the circumstances. Anyone with half a brain would have done the same he did. It is not his fault you lack such an organ.
Assange isn't hiding. Why do you keep saying he is? The whole world knows exactly where he is. The two girls who accused him traveled off to who knows where. All this over Sweden wanting to "question" him? Get friggin' real. If Sweden wasn't in cahoots with the US in an extradition agreement of some sort, the ass hats in Sweden could travel to the UK and question him. The two girls were *groupies*. They wanted his penis in them. Nothing more, nothing less. If they gave a damn they would have stayed in Sweden to press charges. Serious sex crime? Give me a break. Two groupies became pissed off when they talked and found out he was fucking both of them. Cry me a river...
If the US really weren't out to get him, why were it's elected officials suggesting he be executed and charged with treason? Why won't they give a diplomatic guarantee that they will not extradite him?
The entire "America can do no wrong" propaganda is a bunch of patriotic BS, propounded by a country with an extensive history of human rights violations.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Hmmm - I think the GP was refering to prepaid cards such as VISA or Mastercard that you can pick up at your local 7-Eleven and load with balances up to $1000. I use those cards myself when I want to purchase something from a web site that I don't completely trust to be PCI compliant. The cards costs about $3, can be bought and loaded using cash and there are no identification taking place whatsoever. I use them to avoid fraud, but they are equally useful to make purchases completely anonymously. As for cashing out your savings.... you could conceivably do this by visiting a number of different branches. Most banks will at least allow you to cash out around $10K without too many questions. Do that 2 or 3 times and you should be able to comfortably survive for at least 6 months.
Meus subcriptio est nocens Latin quoniam bardus populus reputo is sanus callidus
Sadly, "most of your money" for many people is whatever amount happens to be left over from your last paycheck that you hope you can stretch to the next one.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
If Assange's defenders could rise to the moral level of accepting what rape is and accepting that the allegations are rape, we could rise to the moral level of Assange himself and accept the seriousness of the charges. Then we can discard the potential for extradition by demanding he stand trial or face charges for his alleged crimes, with a guarantee that he won't be extradited for unrelated reasons. If you read the other responses, you'll see that the left has not risen to this moral point, and instead has become rape defenders.
I am a WikiLeaks supporter. I even think Assange has been a positive force in terms of journalism. That doesn't mean he isn't a rapist.
Pretending that violating sexual consent is anything other than rape only undermines WikiLeaks and Julian Assange's journalistic work. And it ensures that he can be extradited for unrelated reasons by muddying the waters.
Like it or not there were senior people in the government of the most powerful nation in the world publicly calling for him to be hunted down.
Yes we're used to automatically assuming that anyone who says the CIA is after them is crazy. 99.99% of the time this is the correct response.
when the homeless man on the street corner says the CIA have him bugged he's almost certainly wrong. When someone who's deeply pissed off the CIA and the american government like Assange did says the same they're probably correct.
Sure he might actually be guilty of rape. it might all be true. that's a possibility.
But do you really think the CIA or similar isn't out to get him?
It ceases to be a conspiracy theory when it's just plain sensible and likely.