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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.
I think my plan is safe enough to say aloud... French Foreign Legion.
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
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