Moral of the story: to really disappear, you're going to need to go live in a forest somewhere or move to the high plains of Tibet.<p>Potentially useful information, if there's mobsters after you.<p>The RFID tags in tires is a perfect illustration of why it's going to be practically impossible to live in the modern world and cover all your tracks. I certainly didn't know there are tags in tires (which, BTW, is a nifty idea), and there are doubtless hundreds of other tracks I leave. Who could possibly cover them all? It would be like trying to make a sieve water-tight, except you don't even know where half the holes are!<p>Now, if we're talking about the NSA and not mobsters, and you are less concerned with being un-findable than you are with hiding your activities- there are different games you can play, and I'd bet you could be more successful. Behave in an ordinary fashion 99.9% of the time. Just look at the intelligence operations sixty years ago. Spies didn't hide in holes so no-one could find them, they blended in.
I worked for a big company where security was a big thing. I had to have an ID badge to enter the building. My boss once admitted to requesting the logs to determine if people on the team were really showing up on time to work. So I was aware the information could be used in let's say a predatory fashion for things not immediately obvious.<p>However, I once had an ugly run in with another employee I did not know while in the parking lot. I went to security to look at film and try to ID them. We were not able to ID the employee. We checked film from the stairwell I exited through and caught a glimpse of the person, but you only had to swipe your ID to get in, not to leave. So, no, there was no timed ID badge record to match the picture against.<p>I was surprised by the outcome. Given the ID badges and security cameras, etc, I had expected a Star Trek style set up. No, not remotely.<p>I am well aware info can be used against people. That mostly scares me in cases of hostile intent. And where you have hostile intent, it almost does not matter what info they have. They can spin it as something bad anyway.<p>At this point, I think being innocent is mostly not a defense either. I hope things change. Currently, there is a lot of assumption of guilt and, to me, that is the real problem.
<i>Ritter, for instance, recently met an insurance executive who always pays for meals with cash because he believes some day that data will be linked to his coverage. “I’m not saying this is a definite thing that happens,” Ritter says. “but I don’t see any definite reason why it couldn’t."</i><p>Don't let it stop there. Buying a six pack for the weekend? Watch your healthcare premium go up by like 0.001% or something like that because insurance companies have calculated precisely how likely one alcoholic drink will cause them problems down the road in terms of them administering costs related to alcoholism or something. Very scary stuff.
A horrible article.<p>Offline? The lady has a tech-startup in SanFrancisco.<p>Untracked? Still possible to track her. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. If you want to buy a house, you're going to need credit, if you want credit then you're going to be tracked. That's just the way it works in developed nations.<p>It is one thing to be mindful of security. Protecting your data, understanding the limits of cryptography, not giving away important information via social media or to people who don't need it, is all important things to know.<p>In a digital world you leave behind a digital footprint. Having one isn't the problem. Controlling it is.<p>edit: Being untraceable is impossible and a thing of the movies. The moment you are born and issued a birth certificate, your digital footprint has started.<p>The thing to remember is that isn't a bad thing...
I find it very odd how they do not include "proprietary software" in that list. Because that is where true freedom ends. Anything offline can actually be online. And you wouldn't know. Because it are proprietary closed circuit systems which you do not know the intent of.
Basically, if you can be observed by a person, then you can definitely be "tracked" by a computer.<p>The thing is, I've never been that upset about this. Technology has only made something that was <i>possible</i> into something that's now <i>feasible</i>, namely observing the public actions of many people to determine what they're doing.<p>I've always known, even as a kid, that if we scattered many small detecting devices (cameras, microphones, RFID tags) throughout the world, something that is not illegal or bad in and of itself, that we'd pretty much all be track-able.<p>Did no one think that putting RFID chips all over the place might make a rough point cloud out of nearly everything in the world? Or that simply by interacting with any computerized system it's possible it can be tracking literally ever <i>bit</i> of your interaction with it? Or that it's possible to make cameras so ubiquitous as to make most of the world monitor-able?<p>Seriously, did the world not see this coming? I know one of the first things I thought of when I saw lots of security cameras somewhere like the airport as a kid was <i>"I bet you could design something to track all the people in this airport using those cameras. That would be sooo cool."</i>
> Facebook and Twitter already run photos posted on their sites through a Microsoft-developed system called PhotoDNA in order to flag those who match known child pornography images... "Every time you upload a photograph to Facebook or put one on Twitter for that matter you are now ratting out anybody in that frame to any police agency in the world that’s looking for them,"<p>This was news to me. Jezus, everyone on every photo?
Trying to remove tracks is precisely the wrong thing to do. You have to keep a trackable presence of some sort or you will look suspicious and receive extra scrutiny.
"Friends can be an impediment to a life off the radar."<p>Top 1% of the super paranoid indeed. While I understand the reach of the government and the lengths they'll go to gain information - this article is absolutely ridiculous to me.<p>I like my friends, I like to travel, I like to do things. Effectively letting the government control your life because you are afraid of what they MIGHT do? Give me a fucking break.
OA might have unpacked 'being tracked' a little.<p>Is it a time line of spatial locations?<p>Or just what I bought for lunch today (therefore one coordinate at a specific time)?<p>Or a super set of entries in multiple databases?