7 ms·

I wonder how difficult it would be to disappear like that today. Is it even possible in first world countries ?

by icefo 9y ago

anonlolbang 9y ago
https://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-Without/dp/1599219778/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-Witho...
Retric 9y ago
The US for example has several million 'undocumented' people. That's a rather pool of people to consider something impossible.
- breitling 9y ago
  True. However, they are not being actively pursued.
  - Retric 9y ago
    It's not enough if your 'Americas Most Wanted'. But, there are a lot of 'deadbeat' dads that are actively pursued. They often use similar methods and cash only jobs. EX: Bike couriers are a good example of relatively high pay and often minimal documentation.
    - clort 9y ago
      perhaps thats not disappearing though, merely hiding. I mean, being a cash in hand bike courier isn't going to set up a pension fund, is it? Old age is a long way off when you are 25, but it comes along eventually
      - vonklaus 9y ago
        I don't think you could really disappear depending on your pursuer/ threat model. However, if you were to make more money than you needed to survive you could presumably invest in something like Bitcoin or alt-currency and with the legalisation of crowd-funding you could potentially also make tangible investments in companies through similar mechanisms to the blockchain. Again, I don't think you could knock the ball out of the park or allude a motivated state agency if you were a terrorist or something; but if you were in a similar position to the subject of the article you could probably avoid capture and maintain a semblance of normalcy.
      - Retric 9y ago
        That's just a question of money laundering. Drug lords can still buy stock it simply has much higher overhead and risks of it being confiscated.
      - tormeh 9y ago
        The easiest thing to do would probably be to buy gold, which is not inflationary like money is supposed to be. Of course that's not as good as an index fund, but at least it's not cash. You could also become a loan shark, which can be lucrative, but your illegal status would give your customers leverage against you, which is something you really don't want if this is your retirement savings...
        ant6n 9y ago
        Here's an idea: selling ETFs as physical documents, or as a sort of cryptocurrency. You could trade with others like cash, except it rises with inflation.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        Keeping money under the mattress is a good way to get cleaned out if anyone gets too curious about how such a person saves. Becoming a loan shark is a possibility, I suppose, but puts someone in direct competition with professional criminals and creates a whole new set of existential and legal problems. One low-risk strategy I've heard of being used by cash-savvy people is purchasing food stamps at a discount to their face value. Again, pretty much any kind of black market activity comes with legal risks.
    - ganley 9y ago
      High pay? A really good courier makes maybe $40K. Most make less than that.
      - Retric 9y ago
        Even just 10$ an hour is good pay for under the table work. 40k is well past that.
      - Jtsummers 9y ago
        Considering taxes for more conventional jobs, $40k under-the-table cash would be the equivalent of $60-70k of conventional wage income. Depending on city and state, that would be either solidly middle income or lower middle income.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        First, many undocumented immigrants pay state and federal taxes; it's difficult to obtain a bank account otherwise. Second, their exclusion from the regular system of credit scoring and numerous other aspects of the economy that most people take for granted impose a significant hidden tax, albeit one that mostly flows to private actors such as landlords etc..
        Jtsummers 9y ago
        I'm not sure how that relates to my comment. I was replying to the idea of $40k (cash, untaxed) as not much money. It corresponds to the take home of a middle class income in much of the US.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        My point is that it's not really 'untaxed' in practice.
- anigbrowl 9y ago
  This is something I know a lot about. Such people are systematically excluded from advancement in society in almost every respect, and the 'workarounds' that would allow them to participate fully and freely in the economy are crimes that can, at the discretion of prosecutors, result in the threat of a very heavy prison sentence. The penalties imposed for administrative non-compliance are wildly disproportionate to the scale of the offense. This is by design; for quite a few years there was a notion in sentencing policy (and similar areas like this) that the best deterrent effect was obtained my multiplying the social cost of the offense by inverse probability of detection; that is to say, there is a fairly low chance of being caught but the people who do get caught are punished for both their infraction and that of all the people other people who weren't caught. Essentially criminal justice today uses the language of morality (very popular with conservatives (qua Jefferson Sessions, who as an elf^H^H^H attorney-general is apparently magically immune from punishment despite his perjurious habits), but uses the logic of economics and incentives. The administration of criminal justice is for all practical purposes a commercial enterprise built around slave labor which depends on a steady supply of incarcerable people to function profitably. A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of a HN comment or even a single article or book; entire careers have been devoted to the study and analysis of this issue. This law review article offers a somewhat accessible introduction. http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimecon.pdf http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimec...
breitling 9y ago
With so much facial recognition happening everywhere, I can't imagine having a regular life on the run. There's cameras on the streets, drivers licence photos are searchable, and phones are practically spying devices.
tyingq 9y ago
The US still seems like the best place to try and disappear, because of the lack of uniformity across cities, states, etc. Bootstrapping your way into a birth certificate, drivers license, voter ID, etc, is easier when there are so many different systems to try.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice, and maybe you can find one where the government isn't quite so intent on tracking down "illegals". I think the US would be getting harder thanks to the RealID act, online citizenship checks, etc... It might be easier to move to a country that's a little more corrupt so you can bribe your way into the system. Maybe Italy or Greece or a former Soviet country. You need to find a balance between cities big enough to disappear in and cities where the law enforcement doesn't give a shit as long as you grease the wheels a bit.
  - davidw 9y ago
    > Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice I think the point is that there is no national ID in the US, and often less in terms of showing ID's. In a lot of places in Europe, you have to show ID to check into a hotel, for instance.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      Yes, that clarifies my point. In the US for IDs and birth certificates, you have dozens to hundreds of different places with different rules to choose from. Finding a corrupt or inept person in one of them seems likely. And you can, as you point out, often work around a lack of ID.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  It seems like there's an awful lot of surveillance, though, with little in the way of wiggle room to bribe your way out of getting caught at a corner store. Why not somewhere with a large expat community that you could also probably tap for information and experience? One of the megacities in East/Southeast Asia, India, Morocco, Turkey...you'd at least want the sort of place where you could easily buy a warning if the authorities are on to you. The US' pay-to-play system is too rich for most peoples' blood.
justinhj 9y ago
There's an interesting podcast (Criminal by phoebe judge) which has a couple of episodes about disappearing. One way is to go to a corrupt country and buy a fake birth certificate. Use that to officially stop existing
- devicenull 9y ago
  s/birth/death/
  - justinhj 9y ago
    Oops thanks for the correction
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
js2 9y ago
From a few years back: Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear? https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take-to-really-disappear/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take... and: Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff_vanish2/ https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff_vanish2/
- Mz 9y ago
  From your first link: Nearly 200,000 Americans over age 18 were recorded missing by law enforcement in 2007, but they represent only a fraction of the intentional missing: Many aren’t reported unless they are believed to be in danger. And according to a 2003 British study, two-thirds of missing adults make a conscious decision to leave. Edited to add: A few years ago, an investigator named Philip Klein was hired by Dateline NBC to locate Patrick McDermott, a onetime Hollywood cameraman who also happened to be Olivia Newton-John’s former partner. McDermott had disappeared from a fishing boat in the Pacific, and the authorities presumed him dead. Early on, Klein likewise turned up only the vaguest hints that McDermott could be alive. “This was the ultimate walk-away,” Klein says. Then Klein decided to set up a Web site about the disappearance. Purporting to be asking for tips, it was designed specifically to trap visitors’ IP addresses. Suspecting that McDermott was in contact with at least one confidant from his former life — and relying on the investigator’s maxim that people on the run always monitor the pursuit — Klein blocked search engine crawlers from cataloging the site. He gave the URL only to McDermott’s friends and family. Ninety-six hours later, it started registering multiple daily hits from an IP address in the beach town of Sayulita, Mexico. Klein says he eventually tracked McDermott around South America and contacted him through an intermediary. McDermott had a simple message for the investigator: His new life was “nobody’s business.” So, I guess if the law isn't looking for you, it can be done.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    It's easy to run if nobody's chasing you, and it's easy to hide if nobody's looking for you.
    - deleted 9y ago
scythe 9y ago
Most people who run away get caught because they tried to contact someone from their past life. If you're willing to lose everyone, it's possible.

I wonder how difficult it would be to disappear like that today. Is it even possible in first world countries ?

by icefo 9y ago

I wonder how difficult it would be to disappear like that today. Is it even possible in first world countries ?

https://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-Without/dp/1599219778/ https://www.amazon.com/How-Disappear-Digital-Footprint-Witho...

Retric 9y ago

The US for example has several million 'undocumented' people. That's a rather pool of people to consider something impossible.

breitling 9y ago
True. However, they are not being actively pursued.
- Retric 9y ago
  It's not enough if your 'Americas Most Wanted'. But, there are a lot of 'deadbeat' dads that are actively pursued. They often use similar methods and cash only jobs. EX: Bike couriers are a good example of relatively high pay and often minimal documentation.
  - clort 9y ago
    perhaps thats not disappearing though, merely hiding. I mean, being a cash in hand bike courier isn't going to set up a pension fund, is it? Old age is a long way off when you are 25, but it comes along eventually
    - vonklaus 9y ago
      I don't think you could really disappear depending on your pursuer/ threat model. However, if you were to make more money than you needed to survive you could presumably invest in something like Bitcoin or alt-currency and with the legalisation of crowd-funding you could potentially also make tangible investments in companies through similar mechanisms to the blockchain. Again, I don't think you could knock the ball out of the park or allude a motivated state agency if you were a terrorist or something; but if you were in a similar position to the subject of the article you could probably avoid capture and maintain a semblance of normalcy.
    - Retric 9y ago
      That's just a question of money laundering. Drug lords can still buy stock it simply has much higher overhead and risks of it being confiscated.
    - tormeh 9y ago
      The easiest thing to do would probably be to buy gold, which is not inflationary like money is supposed to be. Of course that's not as good as an index fund, but at least it's not cash. You could also become a loan shark, which can be lucrative, but your illegal status would give your customers leverage against you, which is something you really don't want if this is your retirement savings...
      - ant6n 9y ago
        Here's an idea: selling ETFs as physical documents, or as a sort of cryptocurrency. You could trade with others like cash, except it rises with inflation.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        Keeping money under the mattress is a good way to get cleaned out if anyone gets too curious about how such a person saves. Becoming a loan shark is a possibility, I suppose, but puts someone in direct competition with professional criminals and creates a whole new set of existential and legal problems. One low-risk strategy I've heard of being used by cash-savvy people is purchasing food stamps at a discount to their face value. Again, pretty much any kind of black market activity comes with legal risks.
  - ganley 9y ago
    High pay? A really good courier makes maybe $40K. Most make less than that.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Even just 10$ an hour is good pay for under the table work. 40k is well past that.
    - Jtsummers 9y ago
      Considering taxes for more conventional jobs, $40k under-the-table cash would be the equivalent of $60-70k of conventional wage income. Depending on city and state, that would be either solidly middle income or lower middle income.
      - anigbrowl 9y ago
        First, many undocumented immigrants pay state and federal taxes; it's difficult to obtain a bank account otherwise. Second, their exclusion from the regular system of credit scoring and numerous other aspects of the economy that most people take for granted impose a significant hidden tax, albeit one that mostly flows to private actors such as landlords etc..
        Jtsummers 9y ago
        I'm not sure how that relates to my comment. I was replying to the idea of $40k (cash, untaxed) as not much money. It corresponds to the take home of a middle class income in much of the US.
        anigbrowl 9y ago
        My point is that it's not really 'untaxed' in practice.
anigbrowl 9y ago
This is something I know a lot about. Such people are systematically excluded from advancement in society in almost every respect, and the 'workarounds' that would allow them to participate fully and freely in the economy are crimes that can, at the discretion of prosecutors, result in the threat of a very heavy prison sentence. The penalties imposed for administrative non-compliance are wildly disproportionate to the scale of the offense. This is by design; for quite a few years there was a notion in sentencing policy (and similar areas like this) that the best deterrent effect was obtained my multiplying the social cost of the offense by inverse probability of detection; that is to say, there is a fairly low chance of being caught but the people who do get caught are punished for both their infraction and that of all the people other people who weren't caught. Essentially criminal justice today uses the language of morality (very popular with conservatives (qua Jefferson Sessions, who as an elf^H^H^H attorney-general is apparently magically immune from punishment despite his perjurious habits), but uses the logic of economics and incentives. The administration of criminal justice is for all practical purposes a commercial enterprise built around slave labor which depends on a steady supply of incarcerable people to function profitably. A full discussion of this is beyond the scope of a HN comment or even a single article or book; entire careers have been devoted to the study and analysis of this issue. This law review article offers a somewhat accessible introduction. http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimecon.pdf http://www.masonlec.org/site/rte_uploads/files/Hylton_crimec...

breitling 9y ago

With so much facial recognition happening everywhere, I can't imagine having a regular life on the run. There's cameras on the streets, drivers licence photos are searchable, and phones are practically spying devices.

tyingq 9y ago

The US still seems like the best place to try and disappear, because of the lack of uniformity across cities, states, etc. Bootstrapping your way into a birth certificate, drivers license, voter ID, etc, is easier when there are so many different systems to try.

jandrese 9y ago
Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice, and maybe you can find one where the government isn't quite so intent on tracking down "illegals". I think the US would be getting harder thanks to the RealID act, online citizenship checks, etc... It might be easier to move to a country that's a little more corrupt so you can bribe your way into the system. Maybe Italy or Greece or a former Soviet country. You need to find a balance between cities big enough to disappear in and cities where the law enforcement doesn't give a shit as long as you grease the wheels a bit.
- davidw 9y ago
  > Any immigrant heavy country would be a good choice I think the point is that there is no national ID in the US, and often less in terms of showing ID's. In a lot of places in Europe, you have to show ID to check into a hotel, for instance.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Yes, that clarifies my point. In the US for IDs and birth certificates, you have dozens to hundreds of different places with different rules to choose from. Finding a corrupt or inept person in one of them seems likely. And you can, as you point out, often work around a lack of ID.
leggomylibro 9y ago
It seems like there's an awful lot of surveillance, though, with little in the way of wiggle room to bribe your way out of getting caught at a corner store. Why not somewhere with a large expat community that you could also probably tap for information and experience? One of the megacities in East/Southeast Asia, India, Morocco, Turkey...you'd at least want the sort of place where you could easily buy a warning if the authorities are on to you. The US' pay-to-play system is too rich for most peoples' blood.

justinhj 9y ago

There's an interesting podcast (Criminal by phoebe judge) which has a couple of episodes about disappearing. One way is to go to a corrupt country and buy a fake birth certificate. Use that to officially stop existing

devicenull 9y ago
s/birth/death/
- justinhj 9y ago
  Oops thanks for the correction
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

js2 9y ago

From a few years back: Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear? https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take-to-really-disappear/ https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take... and: Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here's What Happened https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff_vanish2/ https://www.wired.com/2009/11/ff_vanish2/

Mz 9y ago
From your first link: Nearly 200,000 Americans over age 18 were recorded missing by law enforcement in 2007, but they represent only a fraction of the intentional missing: Many aren’t reported unless they are believed to be in danger. And according to a 2003 British study, two-thirds of missing adults make a conscious decision to leave. Edited to add: A few years ago, an investigator named Philip Klein was hired by Dateline NBC to locate Patrick McDermott, a onetime Hollywood cameraman who also happened to be Olivia Newton-John’s former partner. McDermott had disappeared from a fishing boat in the Pacific, and the authorities presumed him dead. Early on, Klein likewise turned up only the vaguest hints that McDermott could be alive. “This was the ultimate walk-away,” Klein says. Then Klein decided to set up a Web site about the disappearance. Purporting to be asking for tips, it was designed specifically to trap visitors’ IP addresses. Suspecting that McDermott was in contact with at least one confidant from his former life — and relying on the investigator’s maxim that people on the run always monitor the pursuit — Klein blocked search engine crawlers from cataloging the site. He gave the URL only to McDermott’s friends and family. Ninety-six hours later, it started registering multiple daily hits from an IP address in the beach town of Sayulita, Mexico. Klein says he eventually tracked McDermott around South America and contacted him through an intermediary. McDermott had a simple message for the investigator: His new life was “nobody’s business.” So, I guess if the law isn't looking for you, it can be done.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  It's easy to run if nobody's chasing you, and it's easy to hide if nobody's looking for you.
  - deleted 9y ago

scythe 9y ago

Most people who run away get caught because they tried to contact someone from their past life. If you're willing to lose everyone, it's possible.