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I'm pretty sure he's bullshitting. Even the Mossad couldn't track down every high-profile Nazi after the war, and often took years to find even the ones they di

I'm pretty sure he's bullshitting. Even the Mossad couldn't track down every high-profile Nazi after the war, and often took years to find even the ones they did find.

RandomBacon 7y ago
Back then they didn't have the technology and networks we do today. Social media facial recognition is a game-changer for this kind of thing. You'd have to live as a hermit if you attempted to fake your death, because if you're in the background of a photo uploaded to the internet, game over.
- Throw_Away_4382 7y ago
  Can you actually check every photo that is up-loaded to social media? And can't you change your appearance to fool the program?
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    Facebook'll do it for you. Create a profile, upload a few photos of the subject, and they may start alerting you that you've been tagged in others' photos. https://www.facebook.com/help/122175507864081 https://www.facebook.com/help/122175507864081 > Here are some examples of how Facebook may use face recognition: > Let you know when you might appear in photos or videos but haven't been tagged.
    - lozenge 7y ago
      The false positives on that would be insane, they must only check friends (maybe also friends of tagged users)
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        I've had it come up from friends-of-friends, at least. A good investigator is likely gonna find that a few friends-of-friends of the "deceased" play Mafia Wars and accept every friend request.
- rincebrain 7y ago
  Not necessarily. It needs to be a photo depicting you clearly enough along with ideally other photos containing you, and the person has to be able to search by faces on that dataset. I believe e.g. Facebook will try to automatically suggest tags for faces, but I don't think something like Twitter makes those recommendations.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  FWIW, Frank Abagnale Jr (the guy depicted in the movie "Catch Me If You Can") was asked whether he thought it'd be harder for him to do what he did with technology as it is today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI He suggested that technology makes it easier for the fraudster to come up with the right details, whereas he often had to bluff when he was defrauding people.
closeparen 7y ago
Jobs paid cash and did not need I-9s with E-Verify. There was no TSA Secure Flight database query for every airline ticket. You could forge a passport without breaking RSA. Landlords didn’t insist on running your credit. Photos and surveillance footage only moved by hand and could only be searched manually. The license plate from a car on the freeway only hit a database if a patrolman read it with his eyes and spoke it into his radio. There were no audio, video, GPS, and RF devices in people’s pockets. If you broke out of prison in the 60s, you might have actually started a new life. Almost no one makes it past the first year anymore.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  Whitey Bulger was on the run for 16-ish years and had a lot more resources looking for him than this dude...
  - closeparen 7y ago
    Whitey Bulger owned the loyalty of a large and well funded organization specialized in evading law enforcement, and even that failed.
    - shadowprofile77 7y ago
      Not quite. For the first few months after he went on the lam in late 1994 sure, but after that the old Winter Hill gang went to pieces as the indictments started raining down and he was pretty much dependent on the resources he himself had piled up before hitting the road. The whole point wad to avoid all contact with old friends. It was how it took the FBI until 2011 to catch him, this very lack of network contact.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        There wasn't much interest in finding whitey until after all the people he could have told "interesting" (true) stories about had retired with their pensions.
- 7y ago
mschuster91 7y ago
Back then there was no lightning-fast international network other than horribly expensive international phone lines, no Internet, no tracking devices better known as cellphones, no national registries searchable in split-seconds. There were not many regulations on international transport as long as you had a decently forged passport. Additionally, there was a lot of support from e.g. church networks that helped out fleeing Nazis. Even the Mossad has its limits.

I'm pretty sure he's bullshitting. Even the Mossad couldn't track down every high-profile Nazi after the war, and often took years to find even the ones they did find.

RandomBacon 7y ago

Back then they didn't have the technology and networks we do today. Social media facial recognition is a game-changer for this kind of thing. You'd have to live as a hermit if you attempted to fake your death, because if you're in the background of a photo uploaded to the internet, game over.

Throw_Away_4382 7y ago
Can you actually check every photo that is up-loaded to social media? And can't you change your appearance to fool the program?
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  Facebook'll do it for you. Create a profile, upload a few photos of the subject, and they may start alerting you that you've been tagged in others' photos. https://www.facebook.com/help/122175507864081 https://www.facebook.com/help/122175507864081 > Here are some examples of how Facebook may use face recognition: > Let you know when you might appear in photos or videos but haven't been tagged.
  - lozenge 7y ago
    The false positives on that would be insane, they must only check friends (maybe also friends of tagged users)
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I've had it come up from friends-of-friends, at least. A good investigator is likely gonna find that a few friends-of-friends of the "deceased" play Mafia Wars and accept every friend request.
rincebrain 7y ago
Not necessarily. It needs to be a photo depicting you clearly enough along with ideally other photos containing you, and the person has to be able to search by faces on that dataset. I believe e.g. Facebook will try to automatically suggest tags for faces, but I don't think something like Twitter makes those recommendations.
rgoulter 7y ago
FWIW, Frank Abagnale Jr (the guy depicted in the movie "Catch Me If You Can") was asked whether he thought it'd be harder for him to do what he did with technology as it is today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI He suggested that technology makes it easier for the fraudster to come up with the right details, whereas he often had to bluff when he was defrauding people.

closeparen 7y ago

Jobs paid cash and did not need I-9s with E-Verify. There was no TSA Secure Flight database query for every airline ticket. You could forge a passport without breaking RSA. Landlords didn’t insist on running your credit. Photos and surveillance footage only moved by hand and could only be searched manually. The license plate from a car on the freeway only hit a database if a patrolman read it with his eyes and spoke it into his radio. There were no audio, video, GPS, and RF devices in people’s pockets. If you broke out of prison in the 60s, you might have actually started a new life. Almost no one makes it past the first year anymore.

sokoloff 7y ago
Whitey Bulger was on the run for 16-ish years and had a lot more resources looking for him than this dude...
- closeparen 7y ago
  Whitey Bulger owned the loyalty of a large and well funded organization specialized in evading law enforcement, and even that failed.
  - shadowprofile77 7y ago
    Not quite. For the first few months after he went on the lam in late 1994 sure, but after that the old Winter Hill gang went to pieces as the indictments started raining down and he was pretty much dependent on the resources he himself had piled up before hitting the road. The whole point wad to avoid all contact with old friends. It was how it took the FBI until 2011 to catch him, this very lack of network contact.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      There wasn't much interest in finding whitey until after all the people he could have told "interesting" (true) stories about had retired with their pensions.
7y ago

mschuster91 7y ago

Back then there was no lightning-fast international network other than horribly expensive international phone lines, no Internet, no tracking devices better known as cellphones, no national registries searchable in split-seconds. There were not many regulations on international transport as long as you had a decently forged passport. Additionally, there was a lot of support from e.g. church networks that helped out fleeing Nazis. Even the Mossad has its limits.