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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."
I'm not interested in running for the rest of my life, so my goal would be to solve the problem permanently. If the problem is that I witnessed something, then 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. You can distribute your materials from anywhere these days - record a video on your phone, upload it to as many websites as possible, stick it on Wikileaks, email the press...
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Hour 1.5, go to local soup kitchen :( ...
Hour 2, trade half of your 1% of your money not in a bank account for a bum's SIN and dirty ratty clothes.
Hour 3, attempt to submit forms for a birth certificate for said bum
Hour 4, use remainder of 1% to buy copious USB devices
Hour 5, spend an hour creating USB devices that "phone home" when plugged in (you want at least 20-100 USB's here)
Hour 6, pretend to lose these near where the government agents might be (also why you need many)
Hour 7, hopefully get a hit - start enumeration and finger printing on FBI (or what ever agency is after you)
Hour 8, check into a motel under a fake name
Hour 9, pull a Kevin Mitnick and setup a pager/cellphone to notify you when they are going to setup the Sting
Hour 9.5, put on dirty ratty bum's clothes and GTFO coz they've set up the sting and are on their way to the motel, if you're lucky no one will see you
Hour 10, sit in busy area of city pan handling in the bums clothes
Hour 24, no one will notice you for 14 hours or more because no one cares about homeless people
6-8 weeks later: obtain your fresh new birth certificate
day after: apply for a new passport, say you're traveling soon and get it rushed, use the money you pan handled to pay for it
week later: have your new passport, leave the country under your new identity
Enjoy!
Luckily enough, this will not cause any change in your plans...
TBH, one other poster has a good idea. If you disappear for a couple of months you're likely to drop away and be lost until they look again for you for some reason. Go camping for a while.
Whilst you're "offline", work out what evidence you have and figure out a dissemination policy. If you have none, work out who is "after you" and what that means to them, attack being a good defence. Failing that, ignore the problem.
Back to civilisation, disseminate as widely as possible all the data you have before getting back to your life. Investigate and procure information on those you need protection from and if you thereafter think you're being brought in, don't bother playing by the rules. If they're thinking "the rules don't apply to me" then show them what it means when the rules of civilised conduct REALLY don't apply.
And if you have to preemt an attack, don't worry about getting big people, nor even the involved.
If Hollywood action movies have taught me anything, it's that the Big Bad ALWAYS thinks their family is out of harms way. If you're going to be boned, show them how wrong they are. Civilised actions preclude it, but like I said, they think those rules don't apply to them.
Make it so.
Had a friend who, for reasons not entirely clear, felt the need to change his identity. I do not know why, he wasn't wanted for anything that I'm aware of, but who knows. Anyway, he obtained the birth cert and ssn of a man who was born about the same time he was, and had been dead for 20 years. Using only the cert and the ssn he was able to create a whole new life for himself. He lived using this identity for 8 years, including got married, and was only caught when his mother in law found out he was 'dead' putting together a family chart. Seems like this is the way to go to throw off the feds, unless you have a nosy mother in law.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The US extradition treaty with Sweden has some very curious provisions. See this commentary by a lawyer. Section VI b of the supplement to extradition treaty, in force since 1984, states that:
So, in force of this particular clause, once in Sweden Assange may well be quickly aquitted of the trumped-up rape charges, then sent to the Guantanamo concentration camp, and the US government may keep him there indefinitely "pending prosecution" along with hundreds of illegally detained political and war prisoners. Note that section VI b makes no mention whatsoever of the conditions in which Assange would be detained, nor does it specify any time limit for the prosecution. Even if Sweden requested the US to return Assange, the US would likely just ignore the request once they have Assange in their hands, citing national security concerns.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y