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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."

30 of 789 comments (clear)

  1. One thing for sure by fustakrakich · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wouldn't go out and get laid.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:One thing for sure by PerformanceDude · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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
  2. Wouldn't YOU like to know? by PeanutButterBreath · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nice try.

    1. Re:Wouldn't YOU like to know? by Howard+Beale · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well, I would have at least posted as an AC...

    2. Re:Wouldn't YOU like to know? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    3. Re:Wouldn't YOU like to know? by tdillo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Spanish Inquisition because *nobody* expects the Spanish Inquisition. . . .

    4. Re:Wouldn't YOU like to know? by TWX · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yeah, my disappear plan is to [censored] to [censored] and catch the [censored] [censored] to [censored], [censored]. Then call [censored] and find out if [censored] and if so, go [censored] a [censored] and head for [censored]. Hole up for [censored] [censored] and wait for [censored] to [censored] and then check [censored] to see if [censored].

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    5. Re:Wouldn't YOU like to know? by Forty+Two+Tenfold · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Contextual data: you are able to speak one language apart from good English.

      I speak good English and US English. Is that OK?

      --
      Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
  3. I would ask slashdot by chichilalescu · · Score: 5, Funny

    see title

    --
    new sig
  4. Here. by xevioso · · Score: 5, Funny

    1) Hide in the Ecuadorean embassy.
    2) Hire a lawyer.

  5. The first rule... by ultranova · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The first rule of secret escape plans is that you keep them secret.

    --

    Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    1. Re:The first rule... by cffrost · · Score: 5, Funny

      The first rule of secret escape plans is that you keep them secret.

      Hang on... Okay, got it. Second rule?

      --
      Thank you, Edward Snowden.

      "Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
  6. Simple enough by log0n · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Simple enough by interval1066 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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".'
    2. Re:Simple enough by gmueckl · · Score: 5, Informative

      Literature recommendation: Ghost in the Wires. Kevin Mitnick describes some his thoughts behind his fake identities. He even provides a reference to the book that told him most of the tricks he mentions (and probably many more he didn't dare to write down).

      --
      http://www.moonlight3d.eu/
  7. Hide? Why? by Blade · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Hide? Why? by fm6 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Your lawyer would then suffer a nasty accident, your press contact would be murdered, and the police would discover evidence implicating you in the crime. Also, psychiatric records demonstrating your delusional personality would turn up. Jeez, don't you get cable?

  8. Dear Slashdot, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Please write my book for me.

  9. Disappear? by Antipater · · Score: 5, Funny

    Any G-8 country, you say? I pick Russia.

    First step: Start preaching revolution.

    Second step: Unneeded. I've already disappeared.

    --
    Everything is better with chainsaws.
  10. I'll Become...Presidential Green Party Candidate. by jaskelling · · Score: 5, Funny

    Nobody will ever hear from me again or know who I am that way.

  11. Remove myself as single point of failure by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  12. How to Steal an Identity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!

  13. Doesn't always work... by Ecuador · · Score: 5, Funny

    I only let in celebrities - or at least internet celebrities.

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:Doesn't always work... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Man, you've been waiting how many years to use that line?

  14. You're a slashdotter all right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:You're a slashdotter all right. by Rix · · Score: 5, Funny

      Welcome to every watch list, ever.

  15. Re:I know where there is a cave near my house by OhSoLaMeow · · Score: 5, Funny

    xyzzy

    --
    They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
  16. Re:WWAD by LordLucless · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  17. Re:Simple? by PeanutButterBreath · · Score: 5, Funny

    - Bus into town, taxi to real bus station, bus anywhere.

    I would imagine they would expect you to take public transportation.

    Moreover, if I have to travel by bus, just shoot me here.

  18. Re:it would look like a frosty piss by Razgorov+Prikazka · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ask Slashdot: What would your I just got back from the international spacestation and I want to go back to my wife and friends plan look like?
    You are in Kazakhstan and the bus driving you from the Kosmodrome to Moscow got hijacked by Sart separatists from Tajikistan in a bid to recreate their own sovereign state. You dont speak any Russian, nor any Turkic language, but you master US-style signlanguage. All your money is in the US, and you proved not to be such a good 'survival expert' as you once thought. Your friends nor your wife who you just married can help you and you're in a space-suit. and no normal clothing around...
    Oh, and some jokes on physics are welcome. No McGuiver-is stuff please. :-)

    --
    rm -rf --no-preserve-root / ...and let /dev/null sort them out...