Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace (2012)

http://www.skeptictank.org/hs/vanish.htm

by _vvdf • 11 years ago

185 74 11 years ago

skeptictank.org

tired_man• 11 years ago

Good thoughts, where they stayed on the topic. Too much political commentary for me.

epalm• 11 years ago

Reminds me of https://evan.atavist.com/vanish

zero_iq• 11 years ago

That was a great read. Thanks!

nickpsecurity3• 11 years ago

Yeah, that might have been the one I was thinking of. Clicking on this one made me think it was another article. Will be fun to re-read anyway. :)

Tinyyy• 11 years ago

That was really interesting. Thanks :)

boomskats• 11 years ago

'If you plan on going into hiding and want to leave a big hint, consider buying a copy of this book from the author immediately beforehand"

markbnj• 11 years ago

Heh, not to mention that the Kindle does a lot of phoning home.

nkozyra• 11 years ago

You mean the "Kindel?"

Cub3• 11 years ago

The image on the RHS, besides being difficult to read has spelt "Kindle" wrong

leroy_masochist3• 11 years ago

It's a really interesting topic and I'd say I was disappointed by the article for several reasons:

1. Very outdated in terms of the extent to which people hiding today would leave a digital signature. The article literally suggests leaving no available photographs of you, to the point where acquaintances have to work with a sketch artist to put your picture out.

2. Some very naive suggestions for jobs to take while on the run, including doing data entry, working as a day laborer, and joining the Peace Corps.

3. Made-up tinfoil-hat "facts". For example: "Satellites can bounce LASER light off of your windows and, by measuring the minute distance differences between a vibrating window and the satellite, reconstruct your speech -- from orbit!"

Note: this is not true. The pinnacle of laser surveillance (which is actually a real thing) is measured in the hundreds of meters.

This is actually a really cool topic, and best practices in escape and evasion are fascinating. I think the outline of a better manual would look like:

1. Figuring out where you're going to hide (best hope is bland suburb of large metro area in a far-away country where you're not ethnically unusual....e.g., Sao Paulo, Lagos, Taipei, or a frontier market that attracts a lot of expats, e.g., Mongolia, Nairobi, Manila). Additional discussion of extradition law and whether you should prioritize non-extradition countries relative to your country of citizenship. Additional discussion of how to learn the language and culture of your new home without attracting attention.

2. Figuring out how you're going to survive in your new life; refinement of potential destinations based on skill set, age, life goals, etc.

3. Prepping your new life (surreptitiously creating bank accounts, documents, contacts in new residence).

4. Making the break; how to disappear so that authorities classify you as missing and presumed dead.

5. Forensic considerations (facial recognition, DNA, voiceprint, fingerprints, digital signature).

Would be great to hear others' thoughts on what such a manual would look like, I love to nerd out on this kind of stuff.

blakeja• 11 years ago

Do you have any good references for your statement about laser surveillance? Generally speaking, although the us government is a wallowing pile of inefficiency, it generally tends to be true that our military technology is a fair bit ahead of where it is thought to be. I didn't even know satellite laser surveillance was a thing, so I am genuinely curious here.

leroy_masochist3• 11 years ago

http://www.spybusters.com/Laser_Beam_Eavesdropping.html

tsotha• 11 years ago

You know the satellite laser thing can't be true. Even in the absence of atmospheric distortion a good satellite resolution is measured in centimeters. And that's for still pictures.

imglorp• 11 years ago

The pinnacle of laser surveillance ... hundreds of meters

I suspect the limitation is atmospheric distortion which astronomers have pretty much solved a ways back, by observing a laser pilot beam. Considering they can look through about a dozen km of air (upwards) like that, it's not a stretch to think spook gear can go a dozen km horizontally to a window.

That said, that's not a haystack tech; someone would be onto you already if they were using it.

smeyer3• 11 years ago

The spooks do use similar technology to process downwards-looking images, but I still don't think they're at the point of reading your conversation off your windows from space, though, based off of the maturity of the various systems.

sowbug• 11 years ago

Not totally on-topic, but interesting. Reconstruct sound by analyzing video of a potato-chip bag: http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_rubinstein_see_invisible_mo...

butttransaction• 11 years ago

I think you just gave Light a heart attack.

aaron_m04• 11 years ago

Made-up tinfoil-hat "facts". For example: "Satellites can bounce LASER light off of your windows and, by measuring the minute distance differences between a vibrating window and the satellite, reconstruct your speech -- from orbit!"

I agree that this is untruthful, but speech reconstruction _is_ possible if the distance is much smaller (across the street, rather than dozens of km up in the sky).

megablast• 11 years ago

The pinnacle of laser surveillance (which is actually a real thing) is measured in the hundreds of meters.

You skipped the very next line, which says exactly this.

On top of that, while I don't think satellite laser listening tech exists, we don't in fact know what they are capable off.

mirimir4• 11 years ago

For the most part, I don't see the point.

For me, at least, what matters is keeping stuff private that I want private. For everything else, my primary goal is being unremarkable, except for career reputation and so on. Trying too hard to disappear just attracts attention, no?

nickpsecurity3• 11 years ago

You're thinking along the right lines. They think in profiles of people that look or act a certain way. Some are much more traceable than others. You have to pick a profile that resists traceable tech while blending into that overall group. In my area, it's probably the rural rednecks given they have believable reasons to use little tech and mostly use cash. Those two traits, especially, have to be part of the culture to blend into less traceability.

Also, plenty nearby wifi connections for you to use with a cantenna. So, suburbs bridging city and rural types are best. ;)

wil421• 11 years ago

1. Very outdated in terms of the extent to which people hiding today would leave a digital signature. The article literally suggests leaving no available photographs of you, to the point where acquaintances have to work with a sketch artist to put your picture out.

Number 1 would be nearly impossible for me. Facebook has many photos other people uploaded which include me. My parents and girlfriend probably have more photos of me than I do of myself.

_lgx82• 11 years ago

Rather interesting, though, the scope is limited to USA alone.

Supposing you make your way out of USA, a good solution for restarting your life is to join the French Foreign Legion. They'll take recruits from 17.5 - 39.5 years old. No questions asked, for a year. You literally start with a new name, an assumed identity which is a sign-up requirement. Their tagline is "the school of second chance."

You get fed, you get training, you get a salary. If in that year you do well, learn the language, learn soldiering, progress, you can get French citizenship. After the first year, you can either continue your career under your assumed identity, or reconcile your issues with your country of origin.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/french-foreign-legion.htm

curiousjorge• 11 years ago

yeah and they get 'leaked' and you are screwed. or they just snoop around figure out that you weren't Jason Bourne at all but actually David Webb. cue music...

clamprecht• 11 years ago

It's a cool concept. Fingerprint databases kind of throw a monkey wrench at it though (if your fingerprints are in a database).

leroy_masochist3• 11 years ago

Evidently the Legion now asks for ID and runs recruits through Interpol prior to letting them join[0].

[0]: Things Google tells me when I should be working[1]

[1] http://www.overseas-exile.com/p/french-foreign-legion-myths....

refurb• 11 years ago

That's true, but at least in the past I've heard that the FFL will deny your existence to outside parties. One story I read said that a soldier got into a fight in France and then went back to the Barracks. The police came and asked for him and they said "no one here by that name."

I have no idea if they still do it.

Also, if it's a serious crime, they have no issue with turning you in.

swimfar• 11 years ago

But they don't just take anyone. Here's an article about a guy who tried to join [1]. Here's another article about some people who made it in [2]. It doesn't seem as exciting as the image that a lot of people have (me included).

[1] http://www.vice.com/read/i-tried-joining-the-french-foreign-...

[2] http://www.vanityfair.com/unchanged/2012/12/french-foreign-l...

nickthemagicman• 11 years ago

This is completely inaccurate. They are highly selective and flooded with ex military from 3rd world countries. So a pudgy middle class westerner would have problems. There's a reddit AMA and a Vice article about it if you google. Also,it takes years before you get the citizenship.

_lgx82• 11 years ago

Thanks for rightfully pointing out edge cases. I believe they excluded the VICE guy because he had a digital footprint that identified him, and that's a completely unfounded opinion. I'm not naive to think that there's not a vetting process, but when you're in dire straits, you need some hope and that's what FFL represents.

Simulacra• 11 years ago

Actually have you ever been to an Ikea alone? You can get pretty lost..

morganvachon4• 11 years ago

A nitpick (beyond the spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors throughout): The part about "most states in the Union require 24 hours before reporting a missing person" is nothing but a Hollywood trope. The fact is, most agencies require a missing person to be entered into their respective state's database within a few hours of the report. I can say unequivocally that Georgia has a two-hour window, as I've entered many such reports during my stint in law enforcement, and that is our state's requirement.

The reason they want to enter the person as soon as possible is so that any checks for that person's info will return a "hit" in time to locate the person. For example, George has dementia, goes for a walk at 8am, and is gone for several hours. He is reported missing at 12pm, and the police report is keyed into the state database by 1pm. At 2pm that same day, George is stopped by an officer and his information ran on the state computer. A hit shows up that states he's a missing-endangered person (endangered due to his mental state), the officer notifies his department so they can notify the family, and all is well. Now, if the bogus 24 hour rule was real, George never would have been reported the day he went missing, and perhaps would have met a grisly demise that night. Timely reporting is a potentially life-saving measure and I really wish television and the movies would stop it with that particularly dangerous bit of misinformation.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

The scope of the operation also grows exponentially (or was it quadratically?) with time. Scent trails and tracks decay quickly, and at a fixed rate of travel the area in which the subject can be grows as time^2 (the area of a circle). At 2mph after 1 hour your subject is within an area of roughly 12 square miles. After 24 hours that area is more than 7000 square miles.

So agencies are generally interested in processing them quickly. That must be balanced against some filtering for bogus reports and incidents likely to resolve themselves, of course.

morganvachon4• 11 years ago

Scent trails and tracks decay quickly

This is generally only an issue when it's a case of a missing-endangered subject; most missing persons reports are of a routine[1] nature (spouse is delayed in travel and can't be reached; child has run away for the third time that month). Having a blanket policy that requires timely entry of all reports will cover every scenario, especially since an otherwise routine missing person report can turn into an emergency situation after the initial report is made.

incidents likely to resolve themselves

That's true, and the vast majority of missing persons reports I entered over a 14 year span were canceled within hours or at most, days, when the missing person returned of their own volition. But the ones who are found safe only as a result of the timely report stand in defense of the policy.

[1] Just as there is no such thing as a "routine" traffic stop and therefore officers should always be alert, there is actually no such thing as a "routine" missing person report either; but for the sake of this discussion, by "routine" in this case I mean "not urgent or endangered".

anigbrowl2• 11 years ago

It's a trope with a basis in fact - that used to be the standard until relatively recently. I have had occasion to file 2 missing person reports and both times I was told on my first call that the person hadn't been gone long enough to justify a report. Both incidents were >10 years ago and obviously things have changed since then.

dogma1138• 11 years ago

Depending on the agency and the situation there could be also very different policies regarding this, however I couldn't find a single regulation stating that there's a 24 hour period or that it had been changed.

If you say that an 17 yr old didn't came home they might say it's more likely that they are spending the night at a friend while a 9 yr old kid that didn't came home from school will spark an ember alert very quickly.

But in general the police cannot actually prevent you from filing any type of a report, you can go to any police station and a file a report that aliens have abducted your cat.

morganvachon4• 11 years ago

Then I would say the agency you called wasn't conforming to their state's regulations and was potentially endangering lives. I worked in law enforcement from 1999 to 2013 and missing persons cases always had a timely entry regulation during that time. My state's regulations are copied nearly verbatim from the federal rules (NCIC).

davydka• 11 years ago

Fantastic info. Thanks for sharing that.

ryanlol2• 11 years ago

Certainly an interesting writing style:

Remove the radiator filler cap if the engine is cold. (Opening the cap with the engine hot can get you badly burned. The fluid can start to boil once the pressure is relieved and spray all over you. The fluid will be quite painful resulting in first and second-degree burns. It's not likely to be disfiguring but if you accidentally burn yourself, you can very well go ahead with your plan to escape however your mind might be focused entirely upon the pain and not upon escape. With the engine cold you don't have to worry about getting burned.)

That certainly seems like a rather elaborate way of explaining that touching hot things burns.

dfox• 11 years ago

Problem is not in that the cap might be hot in itself (it even might not be), but that the action of removing the cap will relieve the pressure inside the coolant plumbing and as boiling point of fluids in dependent on pressure, the super-heated coolant will boil off violently.

Few years ago when I was changing thermostat on my car, the thermostat itself was not significantly hot in itself, but other parts of the coolant circuit apparently were, which after unscrewing the thermostat caused minor case of said violent boil-off. I didn't get burned mostly because I was standing to the side (as to reach to the screws that are obviously perpendicular to the flange which they hold).

ryanlol2• 11 years ago

That's not exactly what I was referring to, although I wasn't being very clear.

This is the part I was talking about:

The fluid will be quite painful resulting in first and second-degree burns. It's not likely to be disfiguring but if you accidentally burn yourself, you can very well go ahead with your plan to escape however your mind might be focused entirely upon the pain and not upon escape.

Author seems to be overly focused on the results of such a burn.

kragen• 11 years ago

People get steam-scalded by car radiators all the time, even though they know that "touching hot things burns."

nickpsecurity3• 11 years ago

Very true. We warn people out here. My take is, if they know anything at all about it, that they intuitively think it will be OK when the car is off. They don't realize that the radiator keeps doing its thing for a while. I've had to shout to plenty of people "No, don't touch that shit! Wait an hour or two!"

It's the "little" things people rarely thing about that get them the most.

zw123456• 11 years ago

This reminds me very much of Breaking Bad when Walter went to the "vacuum cleaner" who hid him in a cabin in the woods and had to follow many of the rules outlined in this article.

Tloewald• 11 years ago

I wish it were organized in terms of utility relative to difficulty. Walking everywhere with a hat and buzz cut to avoid shedding hair is kind of insane and is more likely to attract attention than prevent you from being tracked by your DNA.

sliverstorm2• 11 years ago

There definitely seem to be a mix of useful information and big brother paranoia. Instructions on how to kill a police dog sent to track you? Yeah, this is blurring from 'escape your shitty life' and into 'escape a dystopian enforcer squad'

thrownaway2424• 11 years ago

I really enjoyed this article just because it reminds me so much of the early internet: wall-to-wall libertarian derangement. UCC 1-207. Sovereign Citizenship. And it got slashdotted by this link. Really takes me back.

peckrob2• 11 years ago

I was just thinking that while reading this and enjoyed it for much the same reason. Everything about this page - the loose writing style, the borderline paranoia (although, given the subject, perhaps not without reason) and the antiquated - but perfectly readable - layout. It just screams early Internet. You can even pull up the source code and tell that, more than likely, it's hand edited.

It's like stepping back into the mid-90s, one of those random pages you might land on one morning at 3am - and you waited for it to slowly load on your 9600 baud modem.

Add an "under construction" sign and it would have been complete. :)

laichzeit0• 11 years ago

Ok you had me until 9600. If you said 28800 well.. :)

jzwinck• 11 years ago

If you want to disappear, maybe you should do it in a place other than America, so that you will not need to so thoroughly marginalize yourself (panning for gold?!).

mirimir4• 11 years ago

Although it's quite dated, I'm willing to accept the author's claim that he originated much of the "how to disappear" stuff. And so I'd love to give him my $5. But perhaps ironically, Smashwords (the bookseller) only accepts PayPal and credit/debit cards. However, if some kind person would gift it to me, I would reimburse the price via Bitcoins :)

kentt2• 11 years ago

Sure, I can do that for you, though I guess you'll have to trust me. 18ajA8Joq6MrCP3VfXcZcsxYLgW5Man52W

mirimir4• 11 years ago

Done. My email and Keybase proof are in my profile.

Thanks :)

reality_czech• 11 years ago

"I wish you the very best and hope that some of these suggestions and contact references prove helpful though most of it, I'm afraid, is probably unworkable, silly suggestions that won't help you one bit"

So the author himself admits that this is a bunch of silly nonsense that won't help you at all. For some inexplicable reason the article continues past this point.

WillyNourson• 11 years ago

I love this thing because if you remove the first four points, it's just a good how-to about life in general. Actually if you follow these rules you may never have to vanish :

#Discard your old life. #Limit the resolve and resources of your opposition. #Run from your opposition (and your old life.) #Hide from your opposition.

Make new friends. Acquire a (new) identity. (Legal papers: Birth record, Social Security #) Find gainful employment. Pay your taxes. Get medical, life, and automotive insurance. Get a credit card -- and keep it paid up. Perhaps take college courses to learn a new marketable skill. Acquire and maintain respectability in your community. Find a wife or husband: Make a (new) family. Don't drink heavily, don't use any illegal drugs, don't do any crimes. Die with dignity.

LesZedCB• 11 years ago

That's definitely a little idealistic on several levels. First because of this* quote, which describes the reality we live in. Secondly, that assumes that living a life that adheres to the law is totally fair an just. History is full of acts of civil disobedience which in some cases could require people to disappear.

* "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience

MrJagil• 11 years ago

This linked video is very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxpUc8lj-CY

V-2• 11 years ago

Lovely, but my favorite is http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-Living-Through-a-Coup reportedly from a person who's survived quite a few back in the day.

"Has your country's dictator been overthrown? Did he seem fatherly and protective or just overbearing and threatening? Are you feeling confused as to what to feel? Have you exchanged one bad situation for another? Has the military decided they know better how to run things? If any of these things apply to you, you'll find yourself in a country in turmoil and it's time to think about your immediate survival needs."

It contains plenty of seasoned, golden advice, eg.

"Don't panic. The worst thing to do in any situation is to panic."

As well as some useful guidelines on how to deal with harsh political reality of a revolution:

"If there are more than one party up for vote, request time with them to see what they believe in. Pick the one that more closely fits with your values."

xacaxulu• 11 years ago

I would start from the other side and start learning about how surveillance works, and the numerous forms of SigInt/HumInt that can grab you anywhere. If you want to disappear but you still want to use credit cards, a smart phone, drive around in a car or login to regular websites (social media for sure) from the same computer, I question your dedication :-)

guizzy• 11 years ago

On one hand the author says that if you're running from a crime you will get caught. But then after gives tips to escape from someone with the ressources and determination to have skin samples from hotel rooms analysed and access to thermal imaging satellites.

Looks to me like the author doesn't know what people would be running from. I doubt the authorities would use LASER SURVEILLANCE SATELLITES for anything they intend to pursue with less zeal than a very serious felony.

philwelch• 11 years ago

I figure the author doesn't want to overtly advise people to evade law enforcement because he doesn't want to get into trouble.

akallio9000• 11 years ago

When I read his description of "radiator fluid" and dumping gravel into the oil fill of a car, I began to have my doubts, but when he suggested that a revolver with the cylinder swung out might still have a bullet in the chamber, all doubts that he didn't know what he was talking about were erased.

PhantomGremlin• 11 years ago

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned a very infamous person who disappeared for many years. Whitey Bulger.[1]

All it takes is friends and money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitey_Bulger#Fugitive

Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace (2012)

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