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Gone Forever: What Does It Take to Really Disappear?
- tedunangst 17y agoHas some basic info about Steven Rambam in it, who gave an awesome talk at Last HOPE about tracking down a guy many times, many ways.
- knightinblue 17y agoI'm surprised all of these ppl stayed in the US. I would imagine it's a lot harder to track someone down if they disappeared to the other side of the world.
- lucumo 17y agoI suppose it's quite hard to cross a border without some kind of ID.
- mbrubeck 17y agoIt's also harder to blend in as a foreigner, and as an undocumented immigrant you'd have extra problems if you get into any trouble with the foreign authorities. In your home country you can blend in just by acting like everyone else.
- knightinblue 17y agoBlending in isn't really an issue when you're on the other side of the world, hence the attraction. Documents can be easily obtained. And as long as you don't have to work or do business, you rarely have to deal with the authorities. If the problem is money however, then that's a valid issue. Because all of the above cost significant amounts of money.
- technomancy 17y ago> as an undocumented immigrant you'd have extra problems if you get into any trouble with the foreign authorities Pick the right country and that's not a problem at all; a couple of strategic bribes can get you out of trouble in most of the world.
- electronslave 17y agoI'd be interested in seeing your proof for this claim. My experience has been the opposite: a stateless individual must entirely vanish from the map.
- a-priori 17y agoBut the one guy supposedly did a lot of travelling for work. He could have faked the death while on a trip in another country, leaving his passport somewhere so people would know it was him.
- njharman 17y agoDepends on the border. Biking around Europe I passed from Germany to Czech Republic with nothing more than a wave to/from the border guard. Also, U.S. Mexico border is not that hard. Tons of people and drugs do it daily.
- akronim 17y agoBut it does remove the need for a fake passport.
- tedunangst 17y agoHarder to visit your family from across the world.
- Devilboy 17y agoSounds like a job for video conferencing if you ask me!
- _pi 17y agoHow legal is it for Amazon or Airlines to give out this information? How legal is it for schools/companies/etc to give out information about contacts to the Police? Why is it illegal to give out the record but legal to say that there was activity? It seems that these tactics are quite shady in terms of legalities. Why should I get a warrant for X if I can just ask his vendors? Why would someone have to subpoena your bank records but have Amazon up for grabs so to speak?
- jacquesm 17y agoIt did say the school was subpoenaed. But only after they alerted the authorities based on a previous request for a heads up. I'm not even sure that would have held up in court here (nl). I'm sure a competent lawywer would have used that if it was possible statesside though, so what with him being convicted I take it that it is legal.
- pyre 17y agoIIRC, there wasn't anything in there about him pleading guilty or not guilty... maybe there was no lawyer/trial?
- hughprime 17y agoIs it any different to the police asking your neighbours, or the people at your local coffee shop, whether they've seen you? I don't know if Amazon has any legal obligation to tell the police about your activity, but as far as I know they don't have any obligation _not_ to tell the police about your activity either (someone who's actually read the Amazon privacy policy might be able to correct me on this).
- _pi 17y agoIf the police cannot just grab records and look at them why can they be notified without warrant if records are updated, it seems that that behavior is counter-intuitive to what the law says about privacy, ie the government doesn't have a right without warrant to know what I use my account for but they do have a right to know if I use my account at all without warrant. This is a contradiction to what existing privacy laws already say. As for witness testimony, it's vastly different because they aren't solid records. I don't have the ability to be private out in public, obviously. Plus people have different definitions of privacy, I would mind if my friends or family members alerted the police to where I was for any reason even if I had nothing to hide, because this kind of behavior will just repeat and against other suspects. Suspicion doesn't imply conviction.
- tommusic 17y agoI enjoyed reading the article, and the resulting recognition that to "really disappear" is diametrically opposed to what we'd normally seek around here: - Brand Ownership vs Brand Abandonment - Search Optimization vs Search Pessimization - Collect User Metrics vs Stay Out of Site Logs - Networking/Meetups vs Self-Imposed Exile It was intriguing to look down that alley, but I wouldn't want to live there.
- joe_the_user 17y agoYes, this interesting look at how hard it is to hide in a networked world. The rumor has it that at one time, the CIA manufactured new identities for their agents. I wonder how possible that would today - and especially how possible that might be tomorrow, when not only is everyone online but everyone has a record from being online a long time.
- derefr 17y agoMight be easier. The more we rely on social networking, the less identity you have to manufacture by actually going out and planting evidence, and the more you can manufacture just by procedural generation at the target site.
- billswift 17y agoOn the other hand, the more manufactured background you have, the more likely something is to trip you up, either because you misremembered it when talking to somebody or you ran into somebody who was involved in the real world situation and knows you were not. The best way to get away with a fake past is to be vague, but not so vague as to arouse people's curiosity or suspicions.
- eru 17y agoInconsistencies are not such a big problem. A lot of real people are inconsistent.
- jacquesm 17y agoInteresting article, but you have to consider that the people that you'll never hear from are the ones with the success stories. So they may be a lot more prevalent than you'd think! Also, I really wonder if 10 years in jail is the right way to punish somebody that tries to reboot his life in the wrong way. His kid needs him more than he needs 10 years worth of punishment. Garner the guys wages but set him free.
- dkokelley 17y agoYeah what exactly are the charges? I'll I noticed were insurance fraud, and possibly identity theft (from someone who presumably wasn't at all hurt by it), plus the theft from the company. Sometimes I wonder if the punishment is a function of how hard the authorities worked to catch him and how angry they were at his antics. If he were caught the next day (even after committing all the same crimes) would he have still gotten 10 years, or a slap on the wrist?
- njharman 17y ago> What charges Article states "Tennessee specifically outlaws “intentionally and falsely creating the impression that any person is deceased,"
- jerf 17y ago"All" you noticed is $1.3 million in insurance fraud‽ Stealing $1.3 million dollars all by itself is up there beyond "slap on the wrist" territory. I mean, what are you proposing for stealing roughly 30 years' worth of the median American's wages (before taxes)? Six months community service?
- jacquesm 17y agoWell, that depends on how you look at it. There are more parties whose well being here is at stake then just this guy, and besides that he is now a drain on your society, whereas if you'd put him to work you could garner his wages. Locking him up for 10 years is just going to ruin the life of one child and cost a fortune in maintaining him. Six months community service would be a net gain for the community, 10 years of prison is a net loss. The function of a jail is not to take revenge, it is to keep harmful people out of society. This guy did a great job up to the point where he cracked. I'm sure he could be made to do a great job again given half a chance, and keep him under the breaking strain this time.
- joe_the_user 17y agoOne answer - "don't use the phone registered to you" after you "die"!
- koepked 17y agoHe didn't, he left it at a gas station so it's finder would use it and lead the investigators astray. It's later in the article. The author seems to think this was a good ruse, but I think I disagree; if I were an investigator, I think any coincidence, such as a cell phone accidentally left at a gas station, would be something I'd want to look into.
- pyre 17y agoThat may be, but it seemed to be the charges to the corp. credit card that really made them suspicious. The cellphone seemed to just be a quick confirmation that he was still alive. Though it would seem awfully suspicious for him to abandon his cellphone without reporting it missing/stolen (even if the police tracked down the thief). [ I'm assuming he didn't report it missing, because the article doesn't say so, and because it doesn't make sense that messages sent to unknown numbers from a stolen cellphone would mean that he's alive to investigators. ]
- hughprime 17y agoIf you keep reading past the first page, it turns out that he didn't: he deliberately left it in a gas station in the hope that somebody else would pick it up and start using it -- that way the police would wind up pursuing that person and give up when that line of inquiry led to a dead end. The first part of the plan worked, but the second part didn't -- they never tracked down the guy who picked up the phone, but the fact that the phone was being used was enough to convince the police that he was still alive. I guess the real lesson here is that simplicity is the best policy. His plan probably sounded brilliant in his head, but made too many assumptions about the way other people would behave.
- joe_the_user 17y agoUh, you post supports my original point. Plausibly vanishing with no leads whatsoever is best...
- planck 17y agoWhat a coward - he racks up $40,000 in personal debt on his corporate account and then puts his family through the agony of mourning his death? Such a disgrace.
- edw519 17y agoNot only that, he made his wife witness his death. The low just got lower.
- dc2k08 17y ago>Prosecutors accused her of being involved from the beginning, but Roberson says he isn’t sure I think I agree with the prosecutors. The set-up sounds like she was in on the plan, taking a stroll with her husband (without the child) so as to be the eye witness in the charade but I reckon they probably made a pact that if he was found out, they would protest her innocence and say he did it behind her back and swam below the frigid water until he reached another dock down stream out of sight. That would be hard to do especially for someone who sounds like he was fairly out of shape. I doubt he got his toes wet. I'd say the dog got a dipping and they said their goodbyes.
- pyre 17y agoYea. I was thinking that too. Especially his comment about 'a larger body of water.' I was thinking, "So you're a 300lbs out-of-shape guy in the middle of a friggin' lake, and you're going to swim to shore entirely underwater so that no one sees you? Gimme break!"
- jrandom 17y ago> The low just got lower. That would depend on the wife.
- bbg 17y agoYes, and the selfless rescue / recovery workers had to brave the raging 39 degree water to look for his presumed corpse.
- philfreo 17y agoDoes this article really need to be over 6 different pages?
- movix 17y agoMr. Canoe - disappeared http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7512487.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7512487.stm Here's some disappearing tips: Plan before you go Do research from different internet cafes or libraries Tell no-one your plans Use pay-as-you-go phones Apply for no memberships Cash is king If you believe you are compromised, you are Nice of the BBC to help us out with this information
- grellas 17y agoWhen a scandal broke shortly after 1900 to the effect that John D. Rockefeller had a notorious family secret in the form of a bigamist/swindler father still living in the United States, Joseph Pulitzer offered an $8,000 reward to a press corps that utterly hated Rockefeller as a monopolist to go and locate the father. After a frenzied 18-month search, they failed to find him before he died. A Wikipedia write-up on this appears at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Avery_Rockefeller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Avery_Rockefeller. This is equivalent today of the press being unable to find Bill Gates's father even after being offered a rather large monetary reward and after applying all of its vast resources to the effort - even as the father continued to live in the continental U.S. It was a lot easier to "disappear" 100 years ago, before the advent of modern technology, than it is today. There is something vaguely creepy about how one's whereabouts can so easily be tracked with the modern tools at hand.
- chrischen 17y agoMarcus Schrenker stole his idea from an episode of the simpsons! Good to know the navy will get to you really fast if you're really in a pickle though.
- kingkongrevenge 17y agoIt doesn't take much to disappear if you're willing to live like a pauper in the cash only economy, and you don't defraud anyone in the process of disappearing.