"Identity Farming" Do it for the kids?

Check This Link

It's a Wired article about hypothetically creating the perfect fake identity. The catch is it's like an investment, starting years in advance with a paper trail and waiting a couple decades before you could actually use it.

This got me thinking a little about my son. He's 3 at the moment. If I wanted to, this seems like a relatively easy thing to get away with.

Again, purely hypothetical situation here... this is way illegal to try and I'm not planning on it.

Like I said, got me thinking how something like this could come in handy down the road for him.

Say 20+ years from now, (conspiracy theory alert) the gov't is way over the top with nixing freedom, rights, etc. The whole federal ID thing is out of hand, whatever. And my son is in some trouble for something relatively harmless or because of some red-tape screw up. Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time and there's a new version of the patriot act and he's tagged as a potential terrorist... who knows?

Whatever the case, he's in some deep trouble. Ta-Dah!!! Here you go son, a false identity with a complete paper trail. You have a new SSN, bank account with activity over the years, birth cirtificate, passport, almost everything save a drivers license - which would be easy to get with all the above.

Thoughts?
(again, very illegal, hypothetical situation only)

James Robinson or Victor Kruger ? Picking the correct name for the identity farm seedling would be quite important I think

I suspect Mr Kruger probably has less of a problem with the TSA

Interesting idea regarding your three-year-old son. I recommend "How to Be Invisible" by J. J. Luna for some ideas (and I'm sure an online search will uncover many other titles and articles on the subject).

There are legal ways to minimize one's "profile," but as you suggest it can be a pretty grueling investment of time, money and opportunity costs as you try to proceed along the spectrum of hidden identity.

Another strategy is "hiding in plain sight," a kind of stegography of life in which open visibility provides (perhaps) some measure of anonymity and/or risk management.

It is pretty much impossible to put the genie back in the bottle once one's identity accumulates the various datapoints of many current societies. Starting over with a new identity is something I can't speak to.

As I understand it, you in the USA don't have 20+ years to wait until your government and corporations are "way over the top" regarding privacy, data collection and data mining, surveillance, secrecy in government and much weakened "rule of law." A cursory reading of Presidential Directives in the last seven years, for example, makes this clear as does the Total Information Awareness project (now called ADVISE).

Hope this doesn't sound like conspiracy theory or off-topic politics. I keep up with US law and society because I consider it one of the last bastions of freedom and have been alarmed by trends and practices there in recent decades.

Part of my preparedness includes, as recommended by others elsewhere on this forum, situational awareness in terms of local, regional, national and international laws and policies especially as they relate to the ability to move during various "emergencies," be they of natural, man-made or unknown origin.

I'd say you're right to consider what kind of society your son is growing up in and what prudent steps you can take now to minimize certain risks to his pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

Seems like it could backfire in a big way when the social worker shows up with a court order to see your imaginary child. A jury might convict a "child killer" even without a body. The prosecutor would be using your own paper trail against you.

I would think if you are so inclined to create a fake identity it would probably be better to just find the right person and buy one. Playing with making one over a 25-year time span seems like it would be too easy to slip up and you could not be sure what would be needed 25 years in the future so some of what you would have created may not be of use.

I'm not sure how this would be a problem, I mean it could... The imaginary child would be the same as the real one.

For example, the passport photos would be the same picture of the same child. If it came down to getting caught doing this, the first thing a prosecutor would have to do is prove the flesh and blood version of both children existed in the first place. All they would have is the paper trail you created and that arguement could be countered simply by telling the truth. In order to discredit your identity farming story, they would need some sort of physical evidence I think. For example, there wouldn't be a record of the imaginary child ever enrolled in school, nor would there be any witnesses to claim they ever met the child.

I wonder which would be worse from a ciminal penalty standpoint, the supposed murder of a child, or years of social security fraud and falsifying various government documents? You could get tagged with multiple counts on the latter and rack up years and years in prison.

I suppose at the very least the murder charge, being a violent crime, would land you in maximum security whereas all the fraud charges would get you minimum security.

What if they found out and did know it was an imaginary child and wanted to make an example of you and go after you for murdering your kid. As we all seen in the Duke Lacrosse case it did not take good evidence to run the boys and their family’s through hell. It came out right in the end after millions were spent to defend themselves from something they didn’t do. But it could just as easily have gone the other way. All it took for this to go bad was a prosecutor with political aspirations.

I don’t know that it’s worth messing with.

"The wicked flee when no man pursueth."

You're talking about breaking multiple just laws based on the speculation that you might end up wanted by some future unjust police state. *

Become a real criminal now in order to dodge unjust persecution later?

Offhand I would suggest alternative hobbies such as decoupage, hang gliding and possibly aquaculture.

* and don't give me any crap about the patriot act. You flatter yourself if you think that you're worth watching.

There, fixed that for ya.

No worries, it's not a problem to add civilians, er, citizens (whether or not they're worthy of scrutiny) to our data-mining or wiretapping programs.

If you're not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about the "Patriot" Act, FISA, various "National Security" and "Homeland Security" Presidential Directives, At&T's Hawkeye and Aurora database programs, right?

Papers, please....

I aint a-gonna touch that one with a ten foot pole in this forum, lest a moderator decide to send the thread down the memory hole.

Not only no, but hell no...

The laws of our country aren't the product of some evil cabal out to enslave people so much as our own fears. The solution is as always education. Educate your fellow voters and maybe we'll have a few less fear driven laws. Everyone wants to be safe and comfortable, sometimes we pursue that to our own detriment. We chose which leaders to vote for, we chose which news programs to watch and which newspapers to read. Our choices determine our future, we can't claim it was unjustly foisted upon us.

"You decide your own level of involvement" -Tyler Durden "Fight Club"

It simply won't work. Tnhe cameras in casinos can identify you in seconds from the digital photos used in IDs now. Soon all cameras and photos will be like that.

If in 2025 you try and say you are someone your face says you aren't, you won't get away with it.
The Sock

"...Tnhe cameras in casinos can identify you in seconds..."

Is that for real, or just on TV shows like Las Vegas???

It's real. It's just matching the patterns created by your facial features. I"m not sure if Vegas cameras are actually doing that or if they would be connected to some kind of ID database, but the technology exists .I BELIEVE that the British Govt using some kind of technology like that in their public surveillance cameras. I THINK they do that, but I know that the ability is there. I had thought that TSA was going to role out something similar at the airports to look for bad guys or something.
OTOH, I've been drinking tonight.

In the old days, people used to mine cemeteries for kids that died young, and assume their identities.

I'ts for real. They showed it on a documentary. The reporter gave them a 10 year old pic and did everything he could to throw them off. big glasses, baseball cap, had lost weight, grew a thick beard... He was in about 1 second before their systems rang an alarm with his name flashing up.
They work on things like distance between facial features. So unless you have your ears eyes nose and lips moved around...
The quality of cctv pics is very poor in the UK judging from the 'crime watch' so i doubt they can do that now.
But the day will come. Try walking down the street when you are wanted in 10 years time and you won't get 2 steps without the cops systems flashing you up.
The Sock

They are already using retina scans for ID at one UK airports. All ID checks will be like that soon.
When it comes to actually handing in an ID card to be checked, rather than just walking down the street you'd best be planning on eye implant.

Course if you are innocent this is all great. I ever get stopped and told 'you match the description of someone who robbed a bank yesterday' I'll simply tell them to check the cctvs at wherever I was.
And anyone trying to use my credit card will need my baby blues.
The Sock

That sort of thing has been trialled in UK airports, eg as reported by The Register. Whether it works is another matter. One report claims 100% accuracy, which frankly isn't credible, and another only recognised 30% of the faces it was supposed to. I'm doubtful that the casinos have better technology, and I'm wary of their vested interest in hyping up their success rate as a deterrence.

It's even less likely to work with public surveillance cameras because their quality isn't great, nor is the infrastructure. The UK government is better at cock-up than conspiracy.