Schneier on Security has an interesting bit on identity farming today. The idea essentially runs that one can incubate rock solid fake identities if they have 25 years during which to fabricate the birth of children, open bank accounts in their names, fill out the relevant paper work to have them home schooled, and otherwise scatter little bread crumbs here and there (apparently this is also a premise common in Highlander fan faction as a plot technique through which the immortals continue to stay integrated in human society). It is through these techniques that one creates, as Schneier nicely phrases it, a data shadow for the fictitious identity. This all could work, right, because it is the data shadow itself that is the salient aspect of one’s existence as a citizen-consumer and not really their corporeal person as such.
As a good case in point – one that also reveals the absurdity of the US’s paper tiger homeland security initiatives — a Quebec business man who had his identity stolen, consequentially winding up on a US terror watch list, was ultimately able to circumvent the travails of security check point purgatory by changing his name from Mario Labbé to François Mario Labbé . It seems its created a bit of a fresh start for him: F. Mario Labbé can now pass through airport security unaccosted because of a vulnerability in, what we can perhaps refer to in a bit of biblical sounding legalese. the Several Databases.
It seems that this idea of a data shadow can be potentially quite powerful. It certainly has the ring of one of those buzz phrases that, like a sleak aluminum frame, can house either a powerbook or a fighter jet. Now what is wanting is for the notion to get caught in an updraft and to be transformed into the cynosure of public attention. At least, that would be nice.
