Can you disappear in surveillance Britain?

[cali]

David Bond wanted to see if it’s possible to vanish so one day he packed his bag, got into his car and kissed his wife goodbye
David Bond and family

(Phil Fisk)
Jean-Paul Flintoff


Back in January last year, David Bond packed a rucksack, kissed his pregnant wife Katie and toddler Ivy, climbed into his Toyota Prius and drove away from home. Nobody knew where he was going – he didn’t even know himself. One thing he was sure about was this: “I’m going to leave my life behind and disappear,” he said.

A 38-year-old Oxford graduate with a solid if unspectacular career in media, Bond wasn’t your typical runaway. But then, you might have said the same about Will Smith in Enemy of the State, or Robert Donat in The 39 Steps – two of Bond’s favourite films. For Katie, left alone with a toddler, his disappearance could not have come at a worse time. “I had to juggle the childcare and work,” she says, “and I was seven and a half months pregnant.”

Bond might never have thought of running away if he’d not received a letter, some months earlier, informing him that his daughter was among 25 million Britons whose records had been lost by the Child Benefit Office, along with bank details and other private information.

He “became obsessed”, Katie remembers, about the amount of information on him and his family that was already out there. As he looked into it, he found that the UK, once a bastion of freedom and civil liberties, is now one of the most advanced surveillance societies in the world, ranked third after Russia and China. The average UK adult is now registered on more than 700 databases and is caught many times each day by nearly five million CCTV cameras. Increasingly monitored, citizens are being turned into suspects. Within 100 yards of Bond’s home, he discovered, there were no fewer than 200 cameras.

Before going on the run, he made 80 formal requests to government and commercial organisations for the information they held on him. He piled the replies on his floor, appalled by the level of detail. The owners of the databases knew who his friends were, which websites he’d been looking at, and where he had driven his car. One commercial organisation was even able to inform him that, on a particular day in November 2006, he had “sounded angry”. It was more than he knew himself.

<snip>

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article7096105.ece

[asdjrocky]

1. This is a really interesting story.

Thanks!

[asdjrocky]

2. Just finished the whole story.

I can not wait to see the movie.

[Divine Discontent]

3. the more you read, the more highly disturbing it gets....

truly unnerving they know nearly EVERY ACTION.

[grasswire]

4. I have always said that the data banks will...

....be our downfall. When dissent is criminalized, liberty will be dead.

[sharp_stick]

5. That's exactly where we are headed

I was in NY a few weeks ago, downtown and not even close to a touristy or "questionable" neighborhood and I counted 6 cameras at a single intersection. In Boston, near the common I counted 10 at an intersection.

[jberryhill]

6. Just think if we lived in tribal villages

These kinds of threads always make me wonder - what are the social circumstances in which humans are moat appropriately designed to live?

If this guy were, say, an Amazonian tribesman, he would also be constantly under surveillance and everyone he lived with would know pretty much everything about him.

It begs the question of whether living in mass anonymous isolation is how we are intended to live as a species. Muchof the discussion assumes this is so, but the state of affairs assumed to be "normal" is something of a social artifact which only arose through specialization of labor and use of technology.

Was the theme song to Cheers - "isn't it nice to go somewhere where everyone knows your name" - a threat of some kind?

This guy abandoned his pregnant wife and child because he developed a paranoid obsession. Nobody seems bothered by that.

[SmileyRose]

7. I could be wrong but I think the difference is

that in a small town or tribal village you personally know everyone and know what to expect. You generally see the bad shit coming ahead of time and know exact who is trustworthy and who isn't.

It's one thing if the lady down the street saw you picking a gnat out of your nose while watering the rose bushes. By morning no one will care. It's a whole other thing if a film of you doing so is permanently stored in some database you know nothing about and used by God only knows you that you never met to negative impact your life at some unexpected moment.

[snagglepuss]

9. +1

[cali]

8. well, he didn't really abandon her

and there's a difference between the tribal village you're describing and a state as far as surveillance goes. I live in a very small village and I still get surprised by how much people know about me (and everyone else). I don't really mind that.