Disappearing Without Trace

[The Generation Game]

Interesting link, thanks. I suppose a writer just has to use their imagination and make however the character overcomes obstacles interesting and believable (up to a point?) Most of the plots on time travel, staying young etc. have been done multiple times, it is just building a gripping story around it that is the thing big selling writers are good at?

I always thought that the late Tom Clancy was very thorough with his technical detailing, particularly of military hardware.

[Parkwell]

If the character is still working then surely the National Insurance number is an issue. Working black market will always mean a risk of being discovered and investigated. So how do you get a new NI number?

Or is the ultimate method to do as much as you can in the UK and then find a country to change citizen ship to. Then assume another identity in that country and then apply for new citizenship in the UK. You'd need to go to a country that was close enough to your ethnic background and were able to assume an identity in. But immigration also isn't as easy as is made out, certainly not a guarantee legally.

[Turned Out Nice Again]

[MrPin]

I think the person to ask about this, Mark, is Durch. Oh...wait

He is on the moon, surrounded by ladies!

[SarahBell]

OTOH, IIRC the authorities now take everyone's DNA at birth and keep it on file indefinitely, so maybe its different now.

Guthrie test?

[MrPin]

Very Funny Mr "NiceAgain"! I'm hiding in the pub later, where there are loads of drunk people!

I might even think about ukeleles!

[Guest TheBlueCat]

• Go to a graveyard and find the grave of somebody who died in childbirth but would be around the same age as you if they had lived.

I believe that getting a passport through this way is actually now very difficult as efforts have been made to build databases of people who died before the time of electronic records. I suspect a better approach would be look for someone who emigrated at a very young age and then died abroad. Actually, assuming you're not trying to vanish for criminal reasons, it would be easier just to get yourself a passport in your new name and then base everything else off that. Data sharing within government is much less than you might expect so it's reasonably unlikely that the link between the old and new you would leak out via that route.

[SpectrumFX]

Howard Marks used to pay people who weren't intetested in having a passport to apply for one and send pictures of him off with the application. That way he got a proper official passport with an actual photo of him in it.

The goverment obviously now know what he did, and presumably will have taken some action to try and stop this.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

That route - made famous in some book decades back but still in use until quite recently - has been closed. I can't remember what change was made to block it. However, it may still work in other parts of the world and there may be a cross border method (birth cert from one (Commonwealth, perhaps) country, create ID in new country) you can work.

It was The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth.

I wouldn't worry too much about accuracy when writing; it just has to be believable and fit with the structure of the novel.

Forsyth's stuff is a case in point in relation to that, I think. Thanks to the Internet and the ability of Joe Public to 'research' subjects that in Forsyth's heyday would have taken long trips to specialist libraries and archives, or building up contacts within professions and cliques who were willing to talk (including security-sensitive ones), I suspect that your novel would probably have to be more accurate and rigorously fact-checked now than it needed to be when he was at the height of his career.

Forsyth is probably in joint first place with Nevil Shute as my favourite sh!t lit writer, because he managed to combine a polished and engaging prose style, meticulous research and subject knowledge, and a plot/character structure that made the first two into a credible package. What strikes me about his books is that the ones he wrote from the '60s to the '80s - Jackal, The Odessa File, The Dogs of War and The Fourth Protocol - simply couldn't have been written without the subject research and contacts, which is why 99% of novelists couldn't have tackled those subjects and produced a credible result. But his more recent stuff (The Afghan, for example), while it still has the elegant prose, balance of main and incidental characters and lucid structure of his earlier novels, has left me thinking that I probably could have done the research for them online. Arrogant, probably, but I'm guessing that for today's docu-fiction novelist, writing skills are probably more important than subject knowledge and how it is acquired. But the subject knowledge still matters, because your readers will be able to check more of it, more easily, if they feel that it doesn't seem credible.

There are also specific areas of knowledge that have a big geek base, who'll lynch you if you get anything wrong. Admittedly these two are bigger gotchas for film and TV than written prose, but when I first worked as an historical consultant on a TV show, I was given some advice by an old pro: don't get the costumes wrong, and don't get trains wrong, especially if the script calls for a specific time and/or place (e.g. Birmingham in 1858). If you dress someone up in a suit with a lapel shape that didn't become fashionable until the 1870s, or have them get out of a railway carriage that was never used by any railway company that served Birmingham, you are guaranteed to receive hundreds, if not thousands, of complaints.

[tiremola]

You'd be hard pressed as a novelist to imagine disappearances more mysterious than ones that have happened in real life.

Who could have imagined the circumstances and the fate of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince?

See: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Le_Prince

Before you look at that, here's a trick question. Who was the first film star? And where was she filmed?

As for disappearing in modern times, Lord Lucan managed it somehow. I believe, but cannot prove, that he had accomplices, and that still is the answer. You need someone to take you in, whom Plod does not know. You would have to have plenty of cash, plan well in advance, and find trustworthy friends, preferably abroad.

[Turned Out Nice Again]

You'd be hard pressed as a novelist to imagine disappearances more mysterious than ones that have happened in real life.

Who could have imagined the circumstances and the fate of Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince?

didn't another innovator, Rudolf Diesel, pull off a similar trick?

[tiremola]

didn't another innovator, Rudolf Diesel, pull off a similar trick?

He did indeed. In both the cases of Le Prince and Diesel, suicide was a possibility, but why was there no note or any definite indication of intent? Diesel did disappear mysteriously, but his body was found eventually. What happened in the case of Le Prince is not known. He could have been alive for years after 1890. My belief is that the brother did it, or actually knew what happened.

[Mrs Bear]

Making it difficult for people to find out where you are is surprisingly easy

Move house

Don't tell anyone where you have gone.

Dont get your post redirected

Don't get a phone line installed.

Don't die or get married

Drop any internet presence in your real name

Of course the police/NSA can still track you via bank accounts, medical records etc but normal people won't have access to that information.

Thousands of people go 'missing' every year because they do this without thinking about it.

A while ago we tried to trace an absentee freeholder (daughter was buying a flat) who had not been seen or heard of for 5 years. He had not asked for or chased any ground rent in all that time and neither of the owners of the 2 flats he was f/holder of had a clue where he was. It was assumed that he had returned to his native Ghana.

Turned out that he had changed his name and was living just a few miles away - there were considerable debts officially attached to the freehold so presumably he was hiding from creditors. It took a tracing service less than a week to track him down - I would guess they used 'unofficial' methods since previous orthodox efforts had failed. I did ask how they could be sure it was him and they just said they had 'ways and means' but would not be specific. And it was him,although everyone at the address denied all knowledge at first. But once the process of buying the freehold was under way, up he popped, evidently thinking there would be money in it and not realizing that a) it would go first to his creditors, and that said creditors would now know where he was,so that any remaining debt could be attached to this 2nd property.

[MrPin]

A while ago we tried to trace an absentee freeholder (daughter was buying a flat) who had not been seen or heard of for 5 years. He had not asked for or chased any ground rent in all that time and neither of the owners of the 2 flats he was f/holder of had a clue where he was. It was assumed that he had returned to his native Ghana.

Christ almighty !Somebody has "failed to be a gentleman"!

[Tankus]

Government has your photo from at least two sources ,passport and driving licence, backdated data from where your car and mobile has been and who you have been close too. , DNA , from any samples given to the NHS , retinal and orthodontic scans from your optician and dentist .Anything you have updated in your youth on social media or cloud.

Going to get harder and harder to change your ID with facial recognition etc .

Give it another decade and the police will be carrying portable DNA mappers with them and standard kit.

George Orwell wasn't even close .

[MrPin]

Government has your photo from at least two sources ,passport and driving licence, backdated data from where your car and mobile has been and who you have been close too. , DNA , from any samples given to the NHS , retinal and orthodontic scans from your optician and dentist .Anything you have updated in your youth on social media or cloud.

Going to get harder and harder to change your ID with facial recognition etc .

Give it another decade and the police will be carrying portable DNA mappers with them and standard kit.

George Orwell wasn't even close .

Actually, my driver's licence picture is a picture of "somebody else"! Who the ****** cares?

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

What happened in the case of Le Prince is not known. He could have been alive for years after 1890. My belief is that the brother did it, or actually knew what happened.

Stephen Herbert writes (source): 'In 2003, an 1890 photograph of a drowned man resembling Le Prince was discovered in the Paris police archives.' It was fished out of the Seine not far from the station which was the final destination of the train LLP was last seen boarding. Most likely, he was up to his neck in debt, his projector fundamentally didn't work (and thus he would have been unable to monetise the R & D investment in his experiments without a lot more time and money), creditors were snapping at his heels, and so he just topped himself. It is known that he'd made that trip to France in the first place to try to raise more money, and had been unsuccessful.

[ChumpusRex]

Turned out that he had changed his name and was living just a few miles away - there were considerable debts officially attached to the freehold so presumably he was hiding from creditors. It took a tracing service less than a week to track him down - I would guess they used 'unofficial' methods since previous orthodox efforts had failed. I did ask how they could be sure it was him and they just said they had 'ways and means' but would not be specific.

I'd guess that he had told some govt agency that he had changed his name, e.g. DVLA, or told some insurance company, or maybe kept a mobile phone or bank account going. My understanding is that "unoffical" methods used by tracing services involves a brown-envelope handed to an insider at one of these agencies or companies.

If you really wanted to disappear, you'd have to completely cut all ties with everyone, every company and every government agency.

How you'd get a new identity, I've no idea. I'd guess you'd have to take over the ID of someone who's emigrated, and ideally died abroad with no UK next of kin, and preferably somewhere where records are scant.

That said, new passport/driving license photos include biometric measurements which are stored in an ID database. If that person has ever had an official photo ID made, then this would raise all sorts of red flags if the biometrics didn't match.

As for medical records, NHS stored DNA; I think people overestimate how organised the NHS is.

[The Ayatollah Buggeri]

How you'd get a new identity, I've no idea. I'd guess you'd have to take over the ID of someone who's emigrated, and ideally died abroad with no UK next of kin, and preferably somewhere where records are scant.

I'm guessing it would be risky trying to assume the identity of someone who emigrated in the recent past.

I moved to the US permanently in July. As soon as my immigration formalities were complete and I got a social security number, I opened a bank account, got a credit card and got car insurance. For the latter two purposes, I gave the vendor my UK NI number, and so I presume that they credit-checked me in the UK. If that's the case, then Equifax and Experian will have my UK NI and US SS numbers linked in a single record, and thus will know that I've emigrated. My UK passport expires at the end of next year, at which point I'll have to renew it at the British Consulate in Los Angeles. The moment I do that, the UK government will know formally that I am no longer resident in the UK. Presumably the passport agency will promptly share that information with HMRC and goodness knows who else. And of course I am now a number in the American bureaucracy as well (two in fact - I had a charmingly titled 'alien registration number' immediately my wife filed a petition for a visa for me, and then a social security number once it was granted). As part of that process, the US Government wanted to know my UK NI number and my UK passport number. So both governments know who I am in the others' bureaucracies.

How effectively the different government agencies share this information with each other, I don't know. But in theory, if someone on UK soil tried to assume my identity and apply for a passport and/or a driving licence in my name (the two documents you need to prove your identity for most other purposes), the government would have all the information it needs to know that he was an imposter. If they want to use my NI number to work in the UK, that's fine by me - they'dbe making NI payments on my behalf! But if they want to use it to borrow money, the credit reference agencies already have it linked to my US social security number, and therefore presumably would red-flag the attempt immediately.

The point I'm trying to make is that both governments and credit checking agencies (in developed countries, at least) clearly can and do pass information about migrants between each other and across international borders, meaning that trying to assume the identity of someone who has emigrated is unlikely to work, I'd have thought.

[DTMark]

Wow. Thanks so much - that's exactly the sort of stuff I was looking for. I'll have a detailed read.

Although it doesn't have to be "spot on" in terms of accuracy... one of the things I hate in films and literature is when IT comes into it and since I work in IT you can spot ****ocks a mile off. Technology that simply doesn't exist, risible plot devices because what it being described is actually impossible.. so I wanted to try to get this right.

It's one of two possible stories I have in mind this one being more straightforward, the other has a dystopian future setting and is something of a commentary on the human race. Not quite "1984", though. It all comes from one of those dreams you have sometimes which you can recall scene by scene in such an incredible degree of detail - or, you think you can - that it was like watching a movie in my sleep and which I've not been able to forget, so I feel compelled to do something with that.

[tiremola]

Stephen Herbert writes (source): 'In 2003, an 1890 photograph of a drowned man resembling Le Prince was discovered in the Paris police archives.' It was fished out of the Seine not far from the station which was the final destination of the train LLP was last seen boarding. Most likely, he was up to his neck in debt, his projector fundamentally didn't work (and thus he would have been unable to monetise the R & D investment in his experiments without a lot more time and money), creditors were snapping at his heels, and so he just topped himself. It is known that he'd made that trip to France in the first place to try to raise more money, and had been unsuccessful.

Indeed, the body found in the Seine could have been Le Prince's. However, there is the mystery that nothing that could identify him, i.e. no pocket book, papers, signet ring etc. were found on the corpse, unlike Diesel, who, although horribly decomposed, was identified by his “pill case, wallet, I.D. card, pocket knife, eyeglass case”.

Also the Paris Morgue was in operation until 1907, where the dead were exposed to the public on slabs for relatives to identify, and no-one did in this case. It is the first place that his brother, and his friends, would (or should) have have looked when Le Prince went completely and mysteriously missing. At “6ft. 3in. or 4in.” he would have looked fairly distinctive.

The other thing is what happened to his luggage which was put on the train with him? According to the New York Times, 1990: - “On Monday, Sept. 16, 1890, his brother Albert Le Prince placed Augustin on a train headed for Paris, where Augustin's good friend, a Lloyd's banker named Richard Wilson, was waiting for him at the Gare de Lyon. The train arrived in Paris, but Le Prince did not.“

If this is true, did Le Prince get off at some at intermediate station, or was his brother lying? Did the fact that Albert scooped the pool when his brother was declared dead, and Albert (the executor) inherited their wealthy mother's estate, have any bearing on this matter?

Incidentally, you are the expert here on film technology and projection. Given that Le Prince was said to be experimenting with celluloid, do you think he could have gone on to pre-empt Edison and the Lumière brothers, if he had not disappeared? The Roundhay, Leeds bridge and Adolphe's accordion films are tantalising fragments, but was he going into a blind alley with his particular technology?

[MrPin]

I have disappeared without trace! For those of you in the security service, here is my phone number, except I forgot it!

[Goat]

I'm guessing it would be risky trying to assume the identity of someone who emigrated in the recent past.....

Here's an idea, what about pretending to be a foreign national in the UK.

Let's say that you could get hold of a convincing forgery of a Irish passport, or failing that how about something eastern european? You could use that to set up an address, bank account etc and then apply for a NI number, driving licence etc. Once that's in place lose the foreign background over time.

The question is would anyone cross check your documents against Irish records? Potentially that would happen when you applied for an NI number, which might rule out the Irish background, but I reckon for an appropriate "fee" you could get a genuine Hungarian/Polish etc passport, so long as you can do a reasonable impression of your chosen nationality it should work.

[shindigger]

Careful now... any excuse to whack this up again.

[Turned Out Nice Again]

Careful now... any excuse to whack this up again.

what a brilliant clip.