How to hide?

[Hypoxia]

Just suppose: you want to go off-the-grid, under-the-radar, away from the modern world's ubiquitous surveillance. No, you're no terrorist nor Luddite, no criminal evading due justice, nor fleeing from a vengeful spouse or associate. You merely want to be totally private because whatever.

How would you go invisible? Would you build a fake identity? Live in a cave or subway tunnel or under a pier? Re-invent yourself in another country? Shift to a subsistence existence? Have plastic surgery? What would you do?

 

[barefootgirl69]

Just suppose: you want to go off-the-grid, under-the-radar, away from the modern world's ubiquitous surveillance. No, you're no terrorist nor Luddite, no criminal evading due justice, nor fleeing from a vengeful spouse or associate. You merely want to be totally private because whatever.

How would you go invisible? Would you build a fake identity? Live in a cave or subway tunnel or under a pier? Re-invent yourself in another country? Shift to a subsistence existence? Have plastic surgery? What would you do?

I would move to an area with minimum population, near water and woods where I could hunt/trap and fish for food. The trees would also be used for heating/cooking.

I'd have to sell all furniture/home/vehicle at a certain point, close my bank account and use only cash.

It all sounds good in my head, but there is so much more to it.

 

[UrbanBohemian]

Well this is a tall order. The first thing you need to know is you will need a LOT of cash to do it right. You might have to move to a new country, since we're all pretty much on camera at all times in the US, and that takes a lot of cash. Plus you'll need to pay for everything you need in cash including food, shelter, medical care, all that. So you'll need some kind of income, which means under the table work or some black or grey market-based gig. So I'm not sure what that would be somewhere else but you could go in on a grow op here in the US and that might take care of it. I suppose you could go to Mexico and work for a cartel but that's not a job with a high life-expectancy so maybe not the best choice. In the middle east you could get into the opium trade. That might work. But, again, a lot of health hazards there. Your odds of getting an acute severe case of lead poisoning are pretty high if you catch my drift. And that's even discounting the possibility of being droned.

I guess the thing I would probably go with, not for me personally because I need frequent medical care, but for someone else would be to try to get in on a grow op in California. Weed is going to be legal in the next five to ten years max though so you'd have to ride that thing as hard as possible until the wheels come off.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Well...

as an exercise...

1. never, ever use your real name online. If you have, never use it again.
2. create blind email accounts. I have six and only one leads back to me, the real person, and I haven't used it for 10 year.
3. no cell phones, if your going off the grid what do you need one for. Caveat, buy a burner with cash for emergencies.
4. get rid of your car or put it in someone else's name. Mine is in my brothers name...he doesn't know it.
5. dump your bank accounts. Pay cash. or pay using pay pal via an anonymous name.
6. if you have the funds, get used to living in a seedy motel under an assumed name. otherwise, living on the street isn't all that fun.
7. if you must have a computer, you'll need to set up a proxy server and vpn server and put at least two firewalls between you and the internet. Better to get rid of the computer all together. A laptop you never connect to the internet is okay.
8.use internet cafes for accessing the internet.
9. grow a beard, if you're male or dye your hair, if you're female.
10. be prepared to be bored out of your mind for as long as you do this.

That's short list. There's a lot more you probably need to do...like moving to the desert in California. Good luck.

 

[Ewobbit]

For some reason it always worries me when Smurfy posts something similar to something I've been thinking about prior to his posting it.

As it so happens, I have been giving this a lot of thought. But, I guess from the opposite direction sort of.

At the risk of seeming quasi-Bournish-wannabe, here's what I've noodled.

1) Nothing that has taxes, licenses, or registration fees. So, houses and vehicles would be out.

2) Cash would be king. Not only no banking, but no payroll or w-114x27 triplicates either.

3) ID would have to go. Not faked. Just gone. Poof. No Driver's License. No Birth Cert. No Passport.

4) No internet. No phone. Nothing written down and having a stamp stuck to it. Or for that matter written down at all. If it's not face to face with words whisked away on the wind as they are spoken, it doesn't happen.

All pretty obvious, right? Then I got serious.

5) There's cameras every freakin' where. How do you buy a candy bar and bottle of water without getting caught on camera?

I suppose you could go rural. But, in my experience those people pay more attention to each other and strangers than cities. And don't even get me started on farmers. They notice EVERYTHING and gossip worse than they claim old women do.

So, it's back to the big city. Preferably a college town with at least one major university, I suppose. College libraries are a pretty good spot to catch some zzzs as long as you are willing to sleep while the sun's up and be on the move between midnight and six. Just open three books on a table and no one seems to mind if you "happen to doze off" as long as you don't snore too loud.

6) Clothing. Jeans, dark blue, are ubiquitous here and most places I've been. But, the shirts... I don't know. For me, I think plain earth tones with no writing would be a lot less noticeable than garish colors or printed sayings. Not tight enough to tell whether you are sporting a six pack or a keg. But, not loose enough to look like fashions by Omar the tentmaker either.

Hats and dark glasses, in my experience, have been nonononono for going unnoticed. ESPECIALLY after the sun sets, but even during brightest day there just seems to be something about them that draws the eye. Hoodies with the hood up too.

7) I think tattoos and piercings get jotted down by corrections officers as identifying marks for a reason. I don't know. Maybe I'm more noticeable because I'm the last guy in the world who doesn't have any. But, I reckon the more esoteric inks and pins are going to get a double take unless they are covered.

8) Be polite but not too friendly. People remember rudeness and they remember overly companionable people. They also remember brusque people in a hurry. Empty smile and amble is the ticket, or so it seems to me.

9) Habit or addiction? One day at the grocery store, I noticed that I was seeing the same people. Oh, not exactly the same people all the time other than the staff. But, generally. Although I didn't know their names or a damn thing about them, I sort of recognized them. Then I realized as I thought about it that it was the same day of the week and about the same time.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the more I looked into it, the more it seemed like everyone right down to the homeless and jobless tended to go the same sort of places at the same approximate times and do roughly the same things.

Just as an experiment, I made a note to go to different stores on different days of the week. And you know something? It was tiring. After awhile I figured I was spending more time trying not to follow a pattern than it would have taken to just do it and get it over with.

10) Is your blender broken? Pretty much the biggest thing I think is to be average. Neither too tall nor too short. Neither too fat nor too skinny. A blonde or redhead is probably going to stand out on a Choctaw reservation. Neither fugly nor pretty. Just plain.

11) Pets. I've lived here for five months. Couldn't tell you the names of my neighbors and doubt they know mine. But at least three people can (and do) greet my dog by name whenever they catch us outside. So, pets are probably going to break the blender.

Any road, I've probably passed the point of interest a couple of clicks ago. And like I say, I went about it backasswards and probably overboard besides. But, that's what I figured when I was noodling and doodling the past few weeks.

 

[Hypoxia]

Only a partial reaction

Alas, those hiding-in-the-desert ideas won't work. I've lived on the California and Arizona deserts, and taught military desert-survival classes, and written and published (UC Press) field guides of desert plants. (I showed-off that a bit in The Botanists.)

Problems? 1) It's hard to hide when your every move is visible miles away. 2) The Southwest is pretty much a military playground, highly wired, deeply surveilled. 3) Resources are scarce. Ya gotta be somewhere to survive. Those somewheres are few and far between. Be visible somewhere... or be dead.

Similar objections to escape to-Mexico ideas. I've lived there, and in Guatemala. Gringos are rather obvious. And these are fucking police states, with military (or cartel) checkpoints everywhere. I could pretend to be just another drunk gringo pervert in Taxco but the cops and cartels would know exactly who and where I was. Doesn't help that I'm conspicuous.

My best shot for invisible living would be in a large polyglot USA or Mexican city with mass transit and cheap digs. I'd need very good fake ID and a source of funds. I could probably disappear affordably in Guadalajara. But I'd have to stay in town and not fuck up. Yow.