If you’ve not seen the film “Erasing David” and intend to watch it and don’t want it spoilt then please stop reading now, as I’ve just finished watching it and really the man problem couldn’t erase an etcha-sketch without assistance – so I feel the need to rant and highlight a “few” of the mistakes he made.
OK so just in case you’ve not seen it the premise is that David is rightly worried about how much data there is out there floating around about him. So to see how bad it is he hires some detectives to try to find him during the 30 days for which he intends to disappear. He does this leaving a pregnant wife and a small child at home which really isn’t the best starting point.
However before going into the mistakes too much, the amount of data he gets back via “subject data” requests from the likes of Amazon and the such is about as scary as I’d expect. The Doctor claiming that the NHS database and a list of clinics you’ve attended couldn’t be abused to track you or gather data on you was really rather naive.
OK now onto the mistakes roughly in order that he made them or at least in order that I recall them – these are pretty much all things I’d hope anyone really trying to disappear wouldn’t do. For the purposes of this rant I’m tending to assume that the detectives didn’t have any super secret backdoors as really everything they did was pretty low tech.
Facebook:
From what was shown on the film not only did he not close down and delete his Facebook account (at least as much as possible) much of it wasn’t even private. So left lying around for the detectives were loads of pictures and a list of friends which gets them off to a nice head start.
Toptip If you really want to vanish do what data tidying you can first.
Plans:
The numpty wrote down what he planned to do the first few days
“Leave country for 24 hours then come back”
this was then thrown away in the normal rubbish without being even torn up let alone shredded or burnt.
Toptip don’t write down your plans on how to vanish and then leave them lying around for people to find.
Guest Video blogs:
He got out of the country and met up with a privacy blogger who he let film him with the understanding that the video wouldn’t be put on line until he was “long gone”. Oddly the detectives found this and were able to work out when it was taken – and thus were he was at a given time.
Toptip Do not appear on video blogs, TV radio stations or in fact make any sort of broadcast public appearance – no really.
Travel:
He was actually quite sensible here using walk on cash fares and catching ferries, avoiding planes and even the Eurostar. Of course he then borrowed a friends car (which to be fair he got away with) but just when you thought he was doing something right he manages to blow it by throwing away the tickets again intact in his fathers normal rubbish.
Which will shortly brings us to the next point.
Toptip Be careful of how you throw away travel documents, receipts and anything else at all.
Friends and Family:
He borrowed a car from a friend, then went and visited his dad – allowing the detectives to gain access to his travel documents and build up a better picture of his movements and was planing on visiting his mum in a house they had under surveillance. This is not clever – but sadly wasn’t the dumbest thing he did.
Toptip Do not visit close friends and family whilst on the run.
Mobile phones:
Oddly they didn’t try just calling his mobile, as he seemed to keep the same phone and number through out – well it was a blackberry. He didn’t have a disposable mobile and from some of the footage you’re kind of led to believe he kept it on a lot of the time.
Toptip New phone, new number and keep it turned off when not in use.
E-mail and the web:
Despite what was claimed in the film your ISP may well not have records of all the sites you’ve visited and certainly may not have records of who you’ve exchanged mail between. This is definitely something that is easy to avoid if you want to – via many mechanisms. That said if you’re on the run don’t open e-mails from the people after you and more than that don’t visit websites they point you at. However if you must do both of those things but somehow haven’t managed to garotte yourself by accident when tying your own shoe laces then please don’t visit their website repeatedly from different places on your travels.
Toptip E-mail can be watched and websites log all sorts of data when on the run be careful what you visit and don’t use a well known address – or more simply don’t be a retard.
Accommodation:
Apart from staying with Family he did quite well here, paying cash for hotels, and sleeping in dodgy huts in the middle of no where or even sleeping rough. Far from ideal but as a means of making your movements less traceable a good plan. But really buying a second hand camper van for cash has got to be easier.
Going back home to visit your wife:
OK so this was done for a TV show and his wife was ill and thus I utterly understand why he chose to do it. That said he did choose to do it, which really was tantamount to turning himself in. Whilst the detectives did a nice job of social engineering to find a likely place to intercept her they could just as well have followed her and saved on thier phone bill at the cost of shoe leather.
Toptip If you want to vanish you can’t go back unless you’re giving yourself in.
At the end of the film one of the talking heads said she expected an average of 14 days and he did 18 which was really good. This puzzles me if he managed 18 days with the number of mistakes he made what are other people doing to bring the average down further? Or was the talking head meaning 14 days to hide from the state where as he seemed to be hiding from 2 detectives in an office.
So yes the surveillance state is encroaching and needs to be rolled back, as amusingly David Blunkett appeared on the film to support, and yes the various corporations that collect data on us are no better and if it ever all gets linked together we’ll be pretty close to living in a goldfish bowl. However if it actually worries you that much and you do actually want to try to vanish there are some really really simple mistakes you can avoid that anyone who’s watched more than two spy movies should be aware of. David sadly it seems despite talking to “experts” before hand didn’t ask the advice of a 5 year old and has never watched or read any sort of thriller in his entire life.
I can’t help but feel this film would have been far more powerful if he’d not made it quite so easy on them, as ultimately just watching his Father or Wife would have been sufficient to catch him with no other effort and no use of the database/surveillance state.
