The Anonymity Experiment

Anonymity has never existed -- in the distant past or in recent US history.

I read George Orwell’s “1984” and understand the concern about Big Brother.
But I also read The Scarlet Letter and know that lack of privacy has always existed and existed less in the past – especially in the times of small tribal villages.
While it may be unnerving to know that heartless machines (computers & cameras) are watching us, a person has nothing to fear from those machines as long as A] the person remains a moral and forthright citizen who could proudly walk down a neighborhood street and B] legal controls remain to prevent abuse a la Big Brother.
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Cell Phones:
Can’t buy a cell phone anonymously ----50 years ago, you could have a phone only if Ma Bell came into your house and placed it there. And the phone and its operation were in their control.
Cell phone location tracking ---- Phone tracking always existed. In the past Ma Bell knew you were using their phone in your kitchen.
Call tracing ---- Not only were calls traced previously, they were individually and personally connect by an operator – an operator who could, at her discretion, listen or record the call.
Cell phones are not secure ---- Party lines were less secure.

Surveillance
Security cameras identify people in public ---- Previously people walked past (and waved to) permanent neighbors every day. People noticed who was new on the street or who was shopping in the bricks-&-mortar store.
Internet
ISP tracking ---- 50 to 100 years ago, the telephone operator personally placed everyone’s calls and knew every one you IM’d with.

Criminal Activity
Ex-criminals decry publication of their addresses ---- In earlier societies and small towns, moving away from a checkered past was not possible

Anonymity
Address disclosure ---- In earlier times address disclosure also meant disclosure of what kind of underwear you hung upon the clothesline. Everything you did outside of your house was public knowledge.
On-line services track surfing ---- In a small community, everyone knew where you shopped and what you bought. The merchant may have been your neighbor or your school teacher’s brother.
Credit reports ---- In earlier societies, your credit worthiness & general reputation were public knowledge.
Records disclosure ---- Marriages and legal contracts have been posted in public notices an newspapers since before the revolution.

Dave is right. Anonymity is a complete myth. Just ask anyone who lives in a small town why they want to leave. "Everyone knows what I am doing!"

You also have one item wrong, I believe. If I am not mistaken, the stalker who killed Rebecca Shaefer (sp) did not access DMV records on his own - ironically, he used the services of a private investigator. Not only was that completely legal then, it was also made legal today through one of the 13 exemptions in the "shaefer" law.

Personally, I'm offended that a stalker like him was memorialized via that law. After all, the word "stalker" implies that he's following his "prey" about. So it doesn't really matter if he/she can look up his prey's address in a phone book or Internet or wherever. More likely than not, he's hanging out in a car across the street from wherever that person works. The stalker will eventually find out where his prey lives because he's ... wait for this! ...STALKING him or her!!

Nice update on state-of-the-art technologies and policies used against citizens. It's always entertaining to hear police state apologists claim that innocent people have nothing to hide, ignoring the fact that with no civil or criminal statues to protect people, we are on our own to safeguard our privacy from exploitation.

For the next experiment, how about a challenge to Chinese hackers to see how long it would take them to publicly reveal the detailed personal finances of all US presidential candidates and their family members. Throwing in airline ticket, cellphone, and license plate tracking would be a nice touch also.

A few quick things. First, it's possible to spoof your MAC address, and thus switch it to a random MAC address each time you . SMAC would be the most obvious tool for this purpose.

IPv6 is actually intended to be user-switchable, so that's a rather overstated issue, especially since it's so similar to MAC address systems in that regard.

RFID chips can be broken rather easily; the most simple methods would be through the use of a large electromagnetic pulse (attach a capacitor such as those found in disposable cameras to coiled wire) or simply microwaving the device. I expect such things to be rather common.

As for my primary comment : if you think you're paranoid now, wait until you start actually looking deeper down the rabbit hole. Think about what a single, exposed and compromised router close to you could send to a lucky hacker. Think about upcoming technologies that give glimpses into someone's life by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time when someone else had a camera.

Big camera systems have shown themselves to be nearly worthless on a city-scale, as you might be able to watch an entire gang unload bullets on a helpless bystander yet lose track of them completely fifteen steps away. This data becomes even more meaningless when you have to sift through thousands of cameras for data that may well not be there. Now, when several thousand concerned citizens individually and simultaneously decide to cameraphone the creepy guy with the hat and glasses, you've got more of a problem.

And that's not even getting into near-future technology or paranoid conspiracy theory like tracking dollar bills by serial number or thermal tracking, or certain new technologies like the upcoming quantum computing trend (assume four years before government- and experimental-available 30+ qubit quantum computers become available and reliable, assume twenty years before such things are common place; each one will result in the complete destruction of many encryption techniques).

What's worse, though, is that many of the things you've done only made wide-area searches for suspicious activity *easier*. An adult wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap strikes me as a bit odd. Seeing sudden streams of purely encrypted text coming from a residential house? Seeing out-of-place access from a house when it normally gets nothing? Hell, even updating your virus scanner or firewall tells ClamWin or Kaspersky your general location and operating system.

The simple and ugly truth is that there isn't, and never was, and basic human right to privacy. It doesn't take a government or a nasty person (but I repeat myself) to violate any created right; it takes your actions, and most of your actions will cause it to be violated. That's as true in the 1800s, when the old fart at the counter remembered every item you purchased since you were five years old, as today when it's replaced by a computer. It's more present now, but only because we rely on transactions like it so much more.

The more you rely on them, the harder and more expensive and more stringent any laws or contractual agreements to protect your privacy will need to be.

I say this as a network technician, whose local security is set to "0 privacy".

Fear..... can come in many different forms.

Fear of identity theft is relatively new to us all. This fear has been invoked and perpetuated by those mysterious "bankers" who are in charge of us all, as to make us more in favor of the RF-ID chips to be planted in us all.

Just say no to the RFID chip implant.

I'm not afraid to yield my privacy when I choose it. I also understand that being in public means everything I say and do is, well, public. I further don't mind that the government is looking out for me by monitoring some communications that might actually include my own.

What I do mind is when someone sells my information and I don't: A) get final say to approve or decline the sale; and B) I don't get compensation. I further don't approve of my government deciding to monitor activity without a justifiable cause that falls within the boundary of law. I'm also pissed off that the law hasn't caught up with technology that has been around for AT LEAST 10 YEARS!

As for RFIC chips, I'll happily buy a device to render them useless on items I buy. I have to admit thought that while I'm not a religious person even I find this technology eerily close to the Mark of the Beast

Interesting article. I had a few comments/quibbles/whatever.

As for going online anonymously, did you consider an Internet café? Most I've been to will let you pay with cash and won't need any information to create an account that couldn't be faked. Maybe that wouldn't have worked for you — I don't know if there's one near where you live, I don't know how much you use a computer or what else you use it for besides writing, and so on — and in any event, Internet cafés probably have surveillance cameras. Still, finding one of those was my first thought.

As for the Do Not Call registry, why did you need that? With everything you did, it sounds like you wouldn't have generated any new information in telemarketers' databases. And getting calls based on information gathered before the start of your experiment doesn't seem like it would violate the spirit of things.

And as for the camera in the hats of British police officers, that actually sounds like a good idea to me. At least, at first glance. Everything the camera is capturing, there's a police officer watching it anyway, but the camera DOES create a record of everything the officer says and does. The watchmen are already watching you; the camera is also watching the watchmen. (In theory. Assuming everything is recorded and saved, and the officer can't easily turn the camera off or obscure it, or if it is turned off any evidence gathered then is considered suspect, and so on.)

I get the basic point, that it would have made your experiment much harder if those police were around here. But unlike most of the surveillance state changes, I would be cautiously optimistic about something like a camera on all policemen.

inst that funny, Since this experment was in californa I was supprised I did not see anything about the fact that you have to have a "card" to get the discount at any of the Major Grocery stores out here which is just another way of tracking every single thing you buy at every store. So did you buy food that week?

I must congratulate you, for going through the motions of "disappearing" or "falling off the grid" as it were... doing so gives the author good insight into the mind of someone that relies on this anonymity as a way of life.

cybishop brings up a good point, insofar as the "head mounted cameras could be used both ways" for police, but a hat can be easily removed, misplaced, crushed, forgotten, or otherwise be unused by said officer. placing it in a more... necessary peice of equipment would make more sense. something like a kevlar vest equipped with an audio/video array would make the best logical sense.

there remains some criticism about this article, on my end. to start off in a dense urban area like San Fransisco, where too many people see each other on a daily basis, isn't my idea of the best way to do this for two reasons:
1) They already know you live in said area.
2) Too many cameras have already filmed you.

start off by renting a hotel room under a pseudonym, in a small-ish town, something local, scenic, maybe even tourist friendly. pay by cash. watch nothing on tv, and wear said disguise as often as possible. you don't want them remembering the real you, only the John R. Smith that rode into town a few days ago and left without so much of a word.

buy a car from someone, an old beater preferably, as a "gift" for a relative.

move yourself into another destination, keeping up the disguise and/or moniker as long as humanly possible. pay your new landlord in cash. get a job somewhere where you aren't required to use your social insurance number, or use banking information. if you "need" to have a bank account, make one, but when your pay arrives, on that day, remove your money from said bank account. from the teller in the store, and not from the ATMs (they have cameras)

The cellphone segment is a good one, using pre-paid airtime can get lost in the "traffic" or all other pre-paid users. Avoid calls to call centers as they are recording all conversations "for training and feedback purposes"

It is possible to live a life of complete anonymity, but it's hard work. it requires diligence and steadfastness that, in this day and age, is hard for most people to grasp.

Taking different routes to places (mapquest loves me) is also essential, to avoid being followed/tracked. you can find city maps at your local municipal office and they don't usually put up too much of a fuss if you're looking to make some photocopies.

The essential is to understand how you can be tracked. support local and independent merchants, as they will be some of the last ones to implement RFID chips. Walmart's openly stated a few years ago that they were included in over 65% of their products. There is no record of it or linkable admittance to it, obviously, but we've all known it.

The step that most people who want to undertake this kind of experiment are remiss to take is the complete and total uprooting of their lives as they know it.

To truly cloak every aspect of daily life, one must begin an alternate life, adhere to it, and put away the past life. sever all connections with the people you knew, and start making new friends who know you under your alias.

This message was posted from someone on a laptop using a commercial and freely available WiFi connection, and said laptop will be formatted, it's MAC address changed, and logging for the router's been disabled, it's logs cleaned. (this company needs to stop hiring teenagers for their computer techs...)

I've fallen "off the grid" in my country for well over 9 years now, and I've enjoyed a careful freedom that none of the other people I knew then have now.

Going through AT&T was a mistake. Using a smaller Prepaid carier would be better. I've used Virgin Mobile off and on for several years. All you have to do is buy a phone ("disposable phone") and register online. You can use any address and any name. You can even get a different area code by using the right address, so if anybody was looking for you they would be looking in the wrong area. This will work with many other cariers too.

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I really was freaked out by this article. Now I feel like I have to look over my shoulder everywhere I go. I can't believe those companies could take advantage of the people and the courts just let them!

This is such a great article, it really creeped me out, i had no idea that the US was that behind in privacy laws.

Thanks for writing an informing and engaging article.

Kind of scary if you think about it.

In the future everything will be monitored and no one will really have true privacy unless they choose to live as a hermit. The two big issues pushing this will be "national" security (although it will probably be considered global security) and a move towards cashless society where your identity will be tied up in everything you do (ex. fingerprinting and iris ID or even the use of RFID chips). Although we should all try hard to defend our privacy, we are fighting a losing battle and its a matter of time before true privacy will no longer exist.

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The definition of privacy has changed. It's more like, sure, you can be anonymous, as long as it doesn't impede the general public good...

With E911, RFID, data-warehousing, Follow-Me, IR, Sat., optical and Terrahertz imaging, even walking out the door or going to any public place will subject you to threat classification and/or identity confirmation...for the public good.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that we're rapidly approaching an age where everything and everyone will be held accountable. The technologies listed above will be matrixed into the ultimate societal killer-app: Accountability.

Uncle Fester will no longer be able to regale the kiddies with masturbatory tales of what he did in the war, 'cause Cousin IT will be able to get his complete embellishment history on his phone.

Husband Moe won't be able to backup his story about being late at the office 'cause his wife has wired the fridge with pheremone-collecting lie detectors.

The ultimate result is Truth, truth in all ways...so is it really privacy we're mourning the loss of...or the fear of being held accountable for everything you'll do in a lifetime from the age of 3?

I predict people in the future will pay to experience the thrill of gilding the lily, in whatever form it takes. I predict that once the half-truths are gone, true transmogrification will occur. Transcendence on a level unimaginable today...

What an amazing time to be alive!

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Are we really talking about ourselves...or "pointers" to ourselves. For example, suppose you have a database with my chronological age: 47. The real crises is the point at which you start making extrapolations about me. It's not a problem that you know the date on which I was born...the problem (and it's always been with us) is what you do with that data. What type of credit or insurance do you give me. What do you think of my political beliefs.

The real identity crises in the last 30 years has been the growth of the relational database. This type of database assumes homogeneity across all tables. A person is a person who can be linked to any number of equivalent tables and a conclusion (or segregation) can be drawn.

Take my own case. I had one year of very bad financial problems caused by divorce, the Tech Bust and other factors. However, before and after I have maintained a well paying job, steady employment, stable address, money in the bank. The relational database does not have the capacity to take into account catastrophic events because it just averages it all in.

It doesn't account for rapid changes in opinion or personality. Suppose I convert from being a Democrat to a Republican. "On average" I am still a Democrat, even though my current opinions would be 180 degrees from a Democrat.

The real problem is not the pervasiveness of the technology, but the complete archiac nature and brittleness of it. Object oriented databases may allow for heterogeneous data collection, as would XML documents. Then there is of course our self-written stories on Facebook and Twitter. Imagine if someday, Savings and Loan officers go to our blogs and read about us and our past and make credit decisions based on our own words! Our data capture techniques should be as individualistic as we are.

As far as privacy, I say "feh". I want people to know who I am. I want them to get as much as my story as possible when evaluating me. Let it all hang out...let everyone in the neighborhood (just like back in the 60s) know who each other is and what they like to do. Don't hide it, flaunt it!

There hasn't been any hope of privacy or anonymity since at least 1965, that I can confirm. Belief in such things is foolishness. Unlike the author, I did work in military intelligence way back in the 1960s. I had a clearance several levels above Top Secret. In fact, I was cleared to read anything that came through our facility. One day while on burn detail (where they burn all the classified waste paper in the king of all paper shredder-incinerators) I came across a book about the size of a large city phone book. It was stamped with all sorts of "Eyes Only" "Limited Distribution" kind of stuff so naturally that me and my buddies wanted to read it.

It turned out that it was a collection of political profiles of US citizens. It was apparently being maintained by branches of the US military and there must have been a number of these books around, because I was in a foreign country at the time where there was limited use for such a book.

I looked it over and determined that it was as illegal as hell. The military just isn't supposed to be collecting that sort of info on US citizens. But there it was.

I thought it over -- whether I should turn it in or not. I decided that, if I did, I would still be in jail and no one else would be punished. As far as stopping it, that was simply hopeless. Even if it had been exposed, there were simply too many protections built into the system to allow anyone to get any punishment for it.

Now couple that with something else interesting. Does anyone remember the Pueblo incident of 1968 when the North Koreans captured a US spy ship? Got any idea what the spy ship was doing? One of the things it was doing was listening to ordinary telephone conversations carried over ordinary landlines -- from international waters. That was 1968, before the advent of sophisticated electronics like hand calculators.

If I want to know anything about you, I can know it. I can record your private activities within your home with tools that are cheap enough for an average citizen to buy, and that would leave absolutely no trace that I had been watching you. If I can do that on an ordinary person's budget, then what do you think the government could do, any time they wanted to?

The bottom line is this: The only reason you have any privacy at all is because your life is too boring for anyone to bother looking. That's the truth. Accept your bare-nakedness and get over it.

Great article, keep up the good work.
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The step that most people who want to undertake this kind of experiment are remiss to take is the complete and total uprooting of their lives as they know it.

To truly cloak every aspect of daily life, one must begin an alternate life, adhere to it, and put away the past life. sever all connections with the people you knew, and start making new friends who know you under your alias.

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Thank you
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