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How to disappear in America without a trace
- evansolomon 17y agoVery interesting articles from Wired where one of their writers tries to disappear and there's a contest to find him: http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/08/author-evan-ratliff-is-on-the-lam-locate-him-and-win-5000/ http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/08/author-evan-ratliff-is-o... http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/ http://www.wired.com/vanish/2009/11/ff_vanish2/ http://www.wired.com/vanish/ http://www.wired.com/vanish/
- pyre 17y agoIt was stupid because he was tweeting from a known twitter account. Presumably no one that is trying to vanish should be holding on to such accounts.
- ghaff 17y agoIt was a fun read but nothing more than that. On the one hand he was intentionally playing a bit of cat and mouse for the drama of the contest. On the other hand, he didn't have to actually earn money or do anything that might require providing identification. So it was a pretty artificial set of conditions.
- Luc 17y agoWhat a dumb collection of paranoid fantasies.
- andrewvc 17y agoExactly, but that's what I liked about the article!
- joe_the_user 17y agoIt's just intelligent-sounding enough that a foolish person might on it's suggestions. Bad thing.
- philk 17y agoEven if the stuff in this guide actually worked I can't imagine the life he's advocating being more pleasant than sticking around and dealing with your problems in more than a few limited circumstances.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- bluesmoon 17y agoI'm confused by this block: "This information is offered in the public domain, copyrighted by Fredric L. Rice (1999-2009) who grants permission for some or all of the text to be used elsewhere for non-commercial purposes." If you offer a creative work into the public domain, you're giving up copyright and can no longer dictate how that work is used.
- philwelch 17y agoHe's trying to gloss over international laws. In some countries, you can't put something in the public domain except by your copyright naturally expiring. It's not the best example of legal writing, though.
- andrewvc 17y agoWow, this is a trip: Toss your wiping materials down the toilet. (If you're on an airplane, don't toss anything down the toilet as it goes to a holding tank which can be raked for evidence later. Carry-out your wiping papers with you inside your shirt under an armpit and flush them in a normal toilet when you can. (Note: Visible bulges under your shirt will be considered by flight attending employees to be indicating the real possibility that you're smuggling drugs. If you must hide a lot of wipe materials, you should distribute them among your body to eliminate bulges, otherwise you may be escorted to a little white room and made to strip. When they find you're hiding damp paper towels, you'll have some explaining to do.)
- phil_collins 17y agoWon't you be drawing a lot of attention to yourself if you smell like shit? I think the best thing to do would be to eat those wiping materials.
- jcl 17y agoI liked the part telling you that satellites can record your conversations from space by bouncing lasers off of your windows. And the part advising you to bring along any police dogs you might happen to kill, to keep from leaving evidence. And the part that gives "assistant to elderly Navajos" as a top employment opportunity. Wonderfully imaginative, if nothing else.
- barrkel 17y agoAFAIK, sound can be recorded using laser reflections on windows, but not I imagine from space, where there would be too much atmospheric interference. I also imagine that single glazing would help.
- ErrantX 17y agoEven more important; the speed of the things :) This is why much of the satellite "intel" you see in films is pretty bunk.
- 17y ago
- argv_empty 17y agoThe "destroy photos" step seems like it would be difficult to accomplish nowadays. Most recent photos (of me, at least) are digital, and many people have copies of the image files.
- CoachRufus87 17y agoBring negative attention to powerful corporations / influential individuals
- duck 17y agoI think it is missing one key piece of advice - move to Alaska. After living there for several years I can't count how many people I ran into that were running from something and they never seemed too worried about getting found.
- philwelch 17y agoI wonder how you manage that. There's either two border crossings or a whole lotta swimming to get there. Once you're there, though, I imagine you're home free.
- pyre 17y agoI imagine that most of the people there that were 'running from something' weren't running from Border Patrol or the CIA. More likely they either skipped bail for some minor charges, or were running from something like child support, minor drug charges, etc. Things where people have no heavy motivation to seek you out other than to put your name on 'watch lists' (e.g. someone is notified if you use a credit card in your name or something like that).
- philwelch 17y agoWouldn't border patrol check against the watchlist? Canada at least knows if you're on the list of concealed handgun permit holders. I guess with enough forest to sneak through and a "clean" buddy to drive through the borders and pick you up, you'd make it. This kid did it, and he was one of the first big BC Bud smugglers: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7683923/kid_cannabis http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7683923/kid_cannabis
- rdtsc 17y agoIf you sneak over the border, wouldn't you just want to stay in Canada rather than go all the way to Alaska?.
- InclinedPlane 17y ago
- euroclydon 17y agoHere's another one: clear this article from your internet history.
- jdietrich 17y agoThis is all a bunch of tin-hatted flim-flam, but I would be seriously interested in seeing what advice a group of actual security professionals would put forward. Here in the UK, I can't begin to imagine how hard it would be to go missing and stay missing. Cars are tracked by Automatic Numberplate Recognition systems, bus and train stations all have plentiful CCTV, the cash economy has been decimated - its an interesting thought experiment when considering our levels of state surveillance. As far as I can work out, your only options would be destitution or a dinghy across the channel.
- lvecsey 17y agoVery impressive how resilient society is, if you combine this article with the current economic recovery. The sheer number of checks and balances keeps it going.
- xilun666 17y agoWhile the author says stuffs like "not to be used by bad persons", he also writes long shits about evading pursuit in the woods, killing dogs as needed, or getting out of cars while an helicopter is watching. Definitely weird, paranoid, but entertaining. You can indeed find stuffs in the same spirit in some Hollywood movies -- "Enemy of the State" comes to mind.
- julius_geezer 17y agoWithout spending a lot of time on Wikipedia and looking at SSI statements I can't verify this, but I'm fairly sure that many years ago I worked with a murderer on the lam, who remained at large for a good twenty years till people recognized him from America's Most Wanted. He had been a white collar worker and was then a short order cook. His big asset was drabness. He did not stand out, he did not say much, and if you thought you might have seen him you could not say where or how. I think this sort of thing must be a lot harder to do now.