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The mystery of the 'legal name fraud' billboards
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y agoIt's a bit of a shame that these push a Sovereign Citzen-esque pseudo-legal message, when they could point out an actual legal fact: under Common Law, you can use any name you like.
- Blahah 10y agoIndeed, I have taken advantage of this professionally for years. My birth surname is very very common, which as a scientist makes it hard to build a professional reputation through publishing. My partner and I are in a long term relationship, so we both use a hyphenated joining of our surnames when we publish and in all professional situations. it all works fine until you try to do something involving a bank or border control - when we founded a company together we legally had to register as directors with our given names, bit when proving our identities we could only produce ID for our birth names. It didn't matter that what we are doing is perfectly legal, it only mattered that the bank didn't know how to handle it. All in all though, it has been a net positive experience - I choose my own name and only encounter bureaucracy when I choose to.
- bencollier49 10y agoI feel the next big advertising campaign should invoke common law to claim that the FB terms of service are illegal.
- olalonde 10y agoWhat does that mean exactly? Surely you can't use a made up name in a contract for example?
- techsupporter 10y agoIn general (wildly general), legal scholars say that you are entitled to use any name you wish, even when contracting, provided you are not doing something that's illegal (such as perpetuating a fraud, theft, or some other form of deceit). States have a statutory name change process so that your name can be deemed recognized but, otherwise, your use of a name is solely up to you and the willingness of others around you to accept it. If you'd like to read a rather well done paper on it, check out this one from the UCLA Law Review: http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/57-1-7.pdf http://www.uclalawreview.org/pdf/57-1-7.pdf (By way of example, I was born "Firstname Middlename Lastname." I use an abbreviated form of my middle name in common usage, so let's say "Mid Lastname." A couple of my credit accounts have "Mid Lastname" on them, as does one of my utility bills, because they accepted my preference for using that name. Others have "Firstname Lastname" or "Firstname M. Lastname" because that was the policy of the business when I opened them. They are all equally valid and equally binding on me because I am the one who did those acts and I can demonstrate that I am. Why have I not done the statutory name change process in my state to formally adopt "Mid Lastname" as my recognized name? Eh, haven't felt like it.)
- keithpeter 10y agoI actually rather like the typography - reminds me of Talking Heads' True Stories. There is one of these boards round the corner from me, and that is quite close to the one that appears in the Birmingham news page - both in lower rent working class areas, perhaps the billboards are cheaper in our kinds of area? I shall just treat it as eccentric urban art from now on...
- hyperpape 10y agoWe have similar crank theories in the US, that you have surrended ownership of yourself to the state, but you can get it back via some weird trick, and what amazes me is the internal inconsistency. If the people running the government are trying to enslave you via the law, they're really not going to leave (or honor) a loophole that sets you free.
- tormeh 10y agoYou could always renounce your citizenship. Citizenship in free countries are actually opt-out, but for some reason this is a difficult thing for these people to grasp. WTF? You could probably be stateless if you absolutely wanted, but I hear that's not very fun. A more realistic alternative is to get citizenship in another country. Apparently these people think that their current country is the greatest, but not quite great enough. I mean, it can't be that bad, then, can it?
- zrail 10y agoIf you opted out of citizenship your super sekrit million dollar bank account would be forfeit. Can't have that.
- mjn 10y ago> You could probably be stateless if you absolutely wanted In many cases that isn't true anymore, since modern law generally disfavors statelessness. In many countries, you can't renounce your citizenship unless you have another citizenship. Alternatively, they may accept the renunciation but with legal effect conditional on receipt of a replacement citizenship. Countries who've ratified the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness agree to that explicitly: Laws for the renunciation of a nationality shall be conditional upon a person's acquisition or possession of another nationality. (Exceptions: not to frustrate freedom of movement of nationals within a country, not to frustrate return of nationals to their country, not to frustrate a person's ability to seek asylum.)
- Crito 10y agoPerhaps you could renounce your citizenship and acquire a new one from a country that did not ratify that treaty, then renounce that citizenship as well. Of course you'd need to find a suitable country that was willing to play along.
- iamben 10y agoPart of me hopes it's part of / the start of an elaborate game, or just fantastic promotional material for a TV show or movie - it means nothing now, but gains a lot of press and attention which is repeated after the big reveal. A kind of "Gabbo is coming" (for all the Simpsons fans).
- wonkaWonka 10y agoA quick Google search shows that there's also some similar activity on the internet, and the campaign is not just the billboards: https://www.google.com/search?q=kate+of+gaia&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=kate+of+gaia&tbm=isch Lots of low budget Youtube video stills in there. Watching the videos, seems to reveal a clean-shaven man with long hair, in a dress, named Kate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtvJRGYS684 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtvJRGYS684
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- MakeUsersWant 10y agoFree advertizing for whoever hacks up a game (and domain) first.
- Twirrim 10y agoOh yay. More of the Freeman nonsense.
- jlj 10y agoI saw the same message printed on a business card and taped to a light pole near downtown Seattle yesterday.
- riprowan 10y agoThe fact that this is upvoted to #3 on HN gives me grave misgivings about the future of HN. --- Edit: apparently y'all disagree, and think this is a topic that deserves the full attention of HN. Can someone explain why? Isn't it just a crackpot billboard? What's the importance?
- ry_ry 10y agoAlthough I suspect that if the tech crowd embraced this instead of weirdly ambiguous billboard, we'd quickly have several different competing definitions of 'free' and half a dozen rival working groups speccing the next iteration of freedom! ;)
- Blahah 10y agoIn the UK, we don't really have 'crackpot billboards'. Billboards are actually quite rare compared to in the USA, and they are regulated for accuracy and to prevent fraud. I noticed these billboards and have never seen anything like it in 30 years in the UK. Discussing what's behind them is interesting I think.
- bencollier49 10y agoAgreed, I can't think of anything like this in the UK before. The closest thing to this previously has been advertising for fundie christian stuff, and that's quite rare. I agree with the earlier commenter who said the ASA ought to strike the ads for factual inaccuracy.
- Symbiote 10y agoMy guess is it will turn out to be a marketing campaign for a film.
- stevetrewick 10y agoAbsolutely. My thought on seeing this was 'Oh hey, the internets are leaking again'. This is really fringe stuff and it's just fascinating to see it bleeding through into the mainstream. Especially by big ass meme carrying billboards. And the design is fascinating. No links, for instance. You see the sign and it piques your interest because it mentions names - which you have, and fraud - which you're worried about. You then either go about your business and just forget about it or you google 'legal name fraud' and bam! There you are in the scary backwaters of the internet immersed in someone's weird memes. A curiosity trap. Physical billboards are (AFAIK) a new vector for this particular meme. And billboard ads cost around £200 a week in the UK (last time I checked) so this has cost someone, somewhere some money. Given the tendency of FoL/SC/etc believers to try avoiding debts with Jedi mind tricks, it's possible that 'someone' is the firm leasing the signage, but still, it's interesting.
- bencollier49 10y agoThere is something wonderful and terrible about the fact that someone with the resources to put these billboards up is choosing to spend the money in this way. Clearly inheritance tax is too low.
- sokoloff 10y agoOr too high (that people would rather spend the money this way than pass it along to be taxed at death).
- bencollier49 10y agoMy point is that I doubt anyone mentally fragile enough to buy in to this claptrap would be able to generate their own wealth. Perhaps they won the lottery.
- seanp2k2 10y agoOr they're spending money on credit which they doubt they'll have to repay since they don't use their real name.
- ryan42 10y agoI did computer repair a long time ago for a friend of the family. He was all into believing this stuff and I was forced to listen to it for about an hour or so. Pretty weird stuff. He thought he could use the concept to get out of debts and speeding tickets, etc.
- justratsinacoat 10y agoThe buried lede here is how this is all being afforded. The article implies the existence of multiple instances of this billboard, but while renting billboard space isn't usurious or anything, renting a shitload of them at once surely requires an amount I would not associate with someone capable of so thoroughly misunderstanding the nature of citizenship and the role of government. Or someone who's willing to type the following, to a journalist, which looks to be the product of either a) disordered thinking or b) smug overestimation of one's sense of humour: "google legal name fraud and read the essays like millions of others did....be a real journalist vs. a talking B-B.C. talking pair-rot"
- DanBC 10y agoTake a look at WeRe bank. They sell promissory notes and information about those notes. People use them to "pay" their taxes; car loans; utility bills; etc. http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?t=10879 http://www.quatloos.com/Q-Forum/viewtopic.php?t=10879 http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=93495#.V1w0ldIrK00 http://www.getoutofdebtfree.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=9... (There's a BBC programme about this, I'm trying to find it now) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lmy http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0783lmy See also Guy Taylor at Bodenham Manor - these people can rack up huge amounts of debt before the system catches up. Also: Someone can become rich before they become mentally ill. (If we're assuming these billboards are a result of mental illness).
- evan_ 10y agoFor that matter many sovcit gurus are making lots of money teaching their ways to others.
- tzs 10y ago...or teaching what they say are their ways to others. I suspect that the way some have been able to peddle their "pay no taxes" seminars and books for years without getting busted is that they themselves know that their methods do not work and so they actually do pay their taxes. This does not occur to their gullible students, who take their teacher's continued lack of indictment as proof that the methods work.
- DanBC 10y agoThe Sovereign Citizen / Freeman on the Land movement is fascinating, if you're interested in that kind of stuff. I tend to disagree with the ASA here. The Sovereign Citizen movement is associated with severe harm -- people lose their money and their possessions, sometimes ending up in jail, because they associate with This One Weird Trick to stop paying tax or drive without insurance and licence. US tax authorities have a list of frivolous tax arguments. These are often used by SC/FoLs. https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/the-truth-about-frivolous-tax-arguments-introduction https://www.irs.gov/tax-professionals/the-truth-about-frivol... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153729 There are a bunch of Youtube videos of people making incoherent arguments using these themes. Here's one of my favourites: police seized a camera. The people went to the station to get it back. The police want to give it back, but can only give it back to Mr Allen. Since the people don't have names they can't claim to be Mr Allen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5X_5v08xCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5X_5v08xCk
- msbarnett 10y agoIf you're interested in this stuff and you haven't already, you should absolutely give the Reasons from the Meads v Meads case issued by Justice Rooke a read: http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012ab... It's a pretty fascinating cataloging and dissection of every fringe legal quackery he's seen or is aware of. Great read, as legal decisions go.
- kahnpro 10y agoThis decision should be the reading list of everyone who is interested in these people.
- DanBC 10y agoYes! It's brilliant. It covers everything - the weird names, the weird language, the reliance on Black's, the rejection of law, the reliance on law to attempt to force what they want, etc etc.
- jacquesm 10y ago
- yoo1I 10y agoThe whole basis of these sovereign citizens/freemen/reichsbürger/similar-thing-in-other-countries seems so odd to me. The state can impose laws on you, because in the end, the state wields physical power. To lawyer about, even with odd ideas, within the framework of your state, to try and change it, or by interpreting existing laws wildly differently makes some sense. But to pretend that the laws of a state don't apply to you, because you deny the whole state legitimacy, means you are putting the physical power of you and your fellow dissidents against the power of the state. That makes some sense in some situations I guess, but to try and do that so half-assed semi-within the legal framework of the state you are in and often enough just to get out of traffic tickets... I guess I just don't seem the end-game.
- captainmuon 10y agoThis. What I find so crazy about these people here in Germany (Reichsbürger) is that they reject the authority of the state by referring to the authority of another state that no longer exists in that form, the German Reich. They call themselves citizens of the Reich and have their own passports, refuse to pay tickets and so on. The German state will have none of their BS, and they have issued a 150 page handbook for administration and police on how to deal with those people.
- jtolmar 10y agoWe have stories about overly literal devils and genies obeying exact wordings instead of the obvious intents of their agreements. And stories where lawyers win their cases at the last minute because they found an obscure loophole, despite everyone else being against them. Laws actually come from state power, social contracts, and human interpretation, but the idea that they're actually a separate magical thing that everyone - even governments and devils - has to obey, is common in our culture. That sort of story is often about contract law (the devil ones especially) so the freemen focus on that. And "social contract" has contract in the name, which gives the laws-are-magic-spells thinking a fertile place to start out . The rest follows from wishful thinking that knowing the law is made of magic spells will work out in your favor.
- 300bps 10y agoOnce when the law was on my side I had a judge rule against me for a moving violation and he dismissed me with, "if you don't like it, appeal it to the county." I could've done that, but for a $90 no-point ticket it didn't seem worth the additional time and he knew that. I agree with you that these radical ideas stand no chance before a judge who will not hesitate to send you to jail for not respecting the authority of the court.
- spatulon 10y agoDoes it seem to anyone else that the person behind these billboards is likely to have mental health issues? I worry that this sort of media attention will have a spectacularly negative effect on them.
- stevetrewick 10y agoYes. I ran into a bunch of FoL/SC types when I used to run in libertarian circles and my impression of the ones who take it seriously was that they are vulnerable people in a shit load of trouble. By the time you are trying to turn bailiffs and cops away from your door by chanting some weird mantra based on a profound misconstruction of some dusty old legal principle or other and uploading it to YouTube while your life burns to the ground around you, it's not really a question of if you have MH issues, rather one of whether they were the chicken or the egg. Agree totally with DanBC up thread, people who get into this hardcore do themselves permanent and irreparable harm. Shattered credit records, home repossessions and jail time are all on the cards. Kids. Don't try this at home.
- GunlogAlm 10y agoYes. Reading the associated site (http://legalnamefraud.com/ http://legalnamefraud.com/) I'm confident whoever is behind the billboards is mentally ill, or certainly very deluded. I feel sorry for them. I'd be very interested in learning who funded this.
- jasiek 10y agoI think it's an advertising campaign, completely unrelated to the movement, which just piggybacks on it to get people's attention.
- fit2rule 10y agoDoes it bother anyone else that whenever someone comes up with a strange or weird, non-mainstream idea, their mental health is immediately called into question? Just out and out say it: you're bigoted against the strange idea that this person is presenting. Just because people don't live like you do, doesn't mean they are mentally ill. Seriously, this "oh, mental illness" trope is really a drag. Please, whenever you consider "oh, mental illness" as a way of writing off someones opinion, check yourself. Not everybody agrees with the ideals proposed by the mental-health cult that currently has the West in its grip ..
- roel_v 10y agoI was similarly baffled years ago by signs around San Juan, Puerto Rico that seemed to be gibberish (Spanish gibberish, like mangled words) and then a few weeks later, with phone numbers added to them. Turned out to be a creative Herbalife campaign. I think this sort of plastering signs all around is illegal now, I haven't seen it in years, but it was common in many places I visited a number of years ago. And then there is Adelaide, AU where there are dozens of blue and white signs on buildings saying 'POLITES'. It seems something official at first, until you notice how many there are. Turns out these are all buildings owned by a single guy of (IIRC) Greek decent who just likes to show his accomplishments as a real estate mogul by putting his name on all buildings he owns. Sometimes it's a weird world we live in.
- seanp2k2 10y agoIt's also amusing to me how many buildings are named Trump Tower: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Tower
- metaos 10y agothe BBC were very careful not to explain the difference between "legal" & "lawful", "crown court" & "common law court", and jurisdiction. I have personally had success using the techniques taught by Karl Lentz.
- nfd 10y agoUh, how so? A quick search turned up webpages with about as many different font sizes and colors as Timecube.
- nfd 10y agoUh, how so? A quick search turned up webpages with about as many different font sizes and colors as Timecube.
- vidarh 10y agoThere is no separate "common law court" in the UK. All UK courts, including the Crown Court, have the same requirement to use common law when it is applicable, and to use codified laws when they are applicable. If this Karl Lentz is claiming there's a separate common law court, he is totally ignorant of the UK legal system.
- abernathyblue 10y agoIt's always confusing to me how you people manage to learn to use computers. Is it just matters of law you deliberately misunderstand?
- xenadu02 10y agoNo you haven't. The system takes a long time to catch up with people because it assumes good faith in most cases. It isn't built to deal with crackpot nonsense. It will eventually catch up.
- chippy 10y ago> I have personally had success using the techniques taught by Karl Lentz. Can you tell us what success you have had?
- cbd1984 10y ago
- howfun 10y agoELI5 please?
- stevetrewick 10y agoAs with most such official documents [0] a UK birth certificate bears a Crown Copyright [1] imprimatur. Therefore, the thinking goes, your actual name is owned by the state and not you. Therefore using it is a fraud, therefore you don't need to pay bills/debts/fines etc, because mumble mumble reasons. It's a tradition or an old charter or something. [0] And OS maps and geodata. [1] http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re-using-public-sector-information/copyright-and-re-use/crown-copyright/ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/information-management/re...
- toast0 10y agoI'm not familiar with UK copyright; in the US, factual information is not copyrightable -- if a birth certificate is copyrighted, you would not be permitted to photocopy it, but you could use all of the information. Additionally, works of the US government have no copyright; birth certificates are issued by counties or states, though (a passport is a work of the US government, so those are public domain)
- Doctor_Fegg 10y agoUK copyright is different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow
- roywiggins 10y agoCrown Copyright is a thing in the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_copyright
- scandox 10y agoThe BBC shouldn't give this oxygen. In my view these kinds of promotions are designed to hook the interest of vulnerable people. These people end up on sucker lists and are targets for the rest of their lives.
- EvanAnderson 10y agoAs I read the article I kept thinking "Toynbee Tiles" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toynbee_tiles) over and over.
- cpeterso 10y agobtw, the RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES documentary is now available on Netflix DVD and Amazon Instant streaming.
- kerr23 10y agoI'm impressed that the reporter did a whois search and tried various domains. That's not something I would expect from a standard US reporter now-a-days.
- jacquesm 10y agoWesley Snipes was taken in by this group and ended up in jail for tax evasion because of it: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2008-01-29-wesley-snipes-tax-trial_N.htm http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/perfi/taxes/2008-01-29-...
- Pitarou 10y agoSomething tells me that the bill for renting all those billboard sites is never going to be paid.
- tacon 10y agoFor a somewhat entertaining peek into the weird legal theory mindset, give a listen to the radio archives of Rule of Law Radio[1], a show on Texas Liberty Radio[2] in Austin, Texas. [1] http://www.ruleoflawradio.com/ http://www.ruleoflawradio.com/ [2] http://www.txlr.net/#Schedule http://www.txlr.net/#Schedule I think the show's host matches one of Daniel Kahneman's warnings about how being very confident in one's pronouncements can be so dangerous if we don't ask what record of success they have in their recommendations. TLR used to be a broadcast station (now internet only), just strong enough to pick up about an hour outside of Austin. It was fascinating to listen in on another complete world view when I was traveling by car. The commercials, in particular, were targeting a subset of the population that is clearly terrified of the future: preparing for the collapse of society, special cleansing medicines to remove toxins, etc., etc.
- s_kilk 10y ago> A further web search took me to a site called legalnamefraud.com, which outlines a theory that when your birth was registered, a legal entity - your legal name - was created. But the legal entity "Jane Smith" is distinct from the actual physical person Jane Smith, the website says... sigh, not this shit again.
- yoodenvranx 10y agoFor the Germans who are interested in this whole Freeman/Reichsbürgertum: Go and have a look at the forum at www.sonnenstaatland.com, you will find most cases from Germany there. They also have a very nice ebook with the title "Vorwärts in die Vergangenheit" which destroys 99.9% of all the Reichbürger myths.
- techsupporter 10y agoSome time ago, I acquired a Staatsangehoerigkeitsausweis ("Certificate of Nationality") to prove German nationality. Boy, do not go searching for that word without some additional terms around it. That certificate seems to carry with it, at least by mention, a lot of baggage around "being declared a citizen of the Reich" and so on. I found a whole 20-page thread about how to hassle the BVA (Bundesverwaltungsamt, or "Federal Office of Administration") into issuing someone a certificate that didn't say "Im Auftrag" ("On behalf of") because having those words on it means it isn't "real." Fortunately, the German Mission to the U.S. has risen in search results so the meaningless cruft is pushed down below the useful information.
- backtoyoujim 10y agoBe vigilant over your bird sanctuaries, UK.
- onetwotree 10y agoAwwwww yiss - Sovereign Citizens arrive in the UK. Coupled with the seemingly innate talent that British people have for ruthlessly mocking things like this, this should be entertaining and delightful. BRB letting /r/AmIBeingDetained in on this.
- CM30 10y agoReminds me of the 'capital letters argument', where similar types of tax protesters argue that legal notices that state their names in all caps apparently refer to a seperate entity than the individual. They see 'John Doe' as the real person and 'JOHN DOE' as a government trick to scam them out of money. That's usually connected to the sort of reasoning mentioned in the website the article talks about, and works just as well (read, not at all) when attempted in an actual court case.
- dottythechicken 10y agoevening all to be honest I lost patience with the freemen movement over the rainbow arc debacle its all pseudo legal rubbish based on a misreading of reality, logic goes like this a table has 4 legs therefore this dog is a table as it has 4 legs, but maybe I am being cynical, they wasted a year of my life arguing black was white until squashed in the high court.
- cbd1984 10y agoYou're not being cynical, that's actually a pretty fair reaction to these people and their ideas. The ideas all share one common feature: They're just not worth it. They're complex, contradictory, and utterly frivolous, in that they have no bearing on reality and will never be of any practical use to anyone but the "gurus" who sell them to the gullible. The "legal arguments" are a con artist's patter and misdirection, impressive to the people who the huckster is about to fool but so much hot air and nonsense to everyone else, especially the real courts. To anyone who understands the law, this crap is painfully transparent and obviously stupid. It's all nonsense, bluster, and castles in the sky. The only reality is the money and time the gullible lose and the legal penalties they face if they attempt to take this stuff too far.
- monadsrule 10y agoEven if they don't believe in the Government because they're crazy, it doesn't follow logically that they should believe they don't have to pay for infrastructure and services they use.