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Erasing David - a film about how to disappear completely



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Hove / Παρος
Apr 7, 2006
6,558
Hove / Παρος
This sounds like it could potentially be a really fascinating film about the UKs "Database State". Only China and Russia have more citizen surveillance than the UK. Have any of NSC's film bods heard much about it?

My name is David Bond. I am an average 38 year old, married with two children. We live in Hackney, London. I pay my council tax. I've never been in trouble with the police. There are no skeletons in the closet. Yet last year I went on the run from two private investigators whose job was to find and grab me. It was an experience I do not want to repeat.

Details about my family and me are on around 700 company and government databases. I am caught on CCTV cameras 300 times each day. Until recently I did not give this a second thought. Why should I worry? Then a letter from the Child Benefit Agency arrived. It said that they had lost my daughter Ivy's data – and with it my bank details. She was four months old.

Thirty years ago, very little data was kept on British citizens – but now all that has changed. With support from the Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, I have completed a feature documentary about the issues. It is called Erasing David. My producer hired Cerberus, a top firm of private investigators, to track me down. All they had to go on was my name and a recent photograph. I was to try to avoid being physically caught by them for 30 days.

My first move was to get out of the UK to leave a cold trail as soon as possible. I booked tickets on Eurostar in another name, and changed them to mine at the last minute. I visited Paul Rusesabagina in Brussels. Hotel Rwanda is based on his experiences. He has a strong aversion to ID cards. During the 1994 genocide, killers used them to distinguish Hutu from Tutsi at roadblocks. "You can never know how data will be used in the future," he said. "It is a very powerful weapon."

From there I went to Berlin and met with Jörg Drieselman, a survivor of Stasi surveillance and torture and the director of the Stasi museum. He is amazed at the lack of resistance by the British public to our growing database state. "It is very easy to establish a dictatorship, and to keep it alive," he told me. Drieselman also warned that if the investigators were any good, they would use my family to get to me.

Heading back to the UK, I had a bad feeling about my Eurostar ticket – and opted for the ferry. It was a lucky instinct. Cerberus was waiting for me at St Pancras station.

Over the coming weeks, I slept less and less, and became increasingly paranoid. Before setting off, I had visited Dr Daniel Freeman, an expert on paranoia, at King's College London. He warned that I would adopt a paranoid style of thinking while on the run – although, unusually, in my case there really was someone after me.

We are beginning to see the early victims of our brave new database world. I met a young woman, Emma Budd, who is persistently confused with a shoplifter by the criminal records bureau, and denied jobs. The stakes can be higher, though. Josephine Chong's son Robert killed himself after being wrongly arrested for an indecent act.

We all give away a little more data than we should. The congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic in central London – so why do the automatic cameras used store and share cars' movements with the police? Data is easy to collect and very hard to control.

I will not say whether Cerberus caught me within the month. Watch the film. But after the month was up, they led me into their control room. One large wall was covered with information about me. They had a detailed personality profile that allowed them to predict what I might do. And all this was publicly available information. All of this is out there about you, too. Our personal data is a profound possession of ours. We should keep it safe.
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http://erasingdavid.com/
 










Meade's Ball

Meade's Ball

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2003
13,618
Hither (sometimes Thither)
That could've been made about my works manager, David, who disappeared last year, before reappearing, as i've mentioned before, at the works Christmas do as Anna. He's most recently and rather unfairly been forced to resign, i hope with a pay-off. I saw a photo of his sexual alterations and i have to say he all of a sudden looked herself. I wouldn't, but he was one ugly man and a more acceptable lass.

- - - Updated - - -

That could've been made about my works manager, David, who disappeared last year, before reappearing, as i've mentioned before, at the works Christmas do as Anna. He's most recently and rather unfairly been forced to resign, i hope with a pay-off. I saw a photo of his sexual alterations and i have to say he all of a sudden looked herself. I wouldn't, but he was one ugly man and a more acceptable lass.
 




M

MattBackHome

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2003
11,736
Sounds like the Bourne Identity, but without the fistfights and in documentary form. Looks good!
 


father_and_son

father_and_son

Well-known member
Jan 23, 2012
4,646
Under the Police Box
Wasn't this on TV last year?

Fascinating piece of work but not really about "erasing" yourself just about running away.

Would like to see whether its possible for someone to go completely "off the grid" and live as normal a life as possible but without leaving the data trail behind.


I work in telematics-based insurance (black-box in the car monitoring behaviour) and so this sort of thing is very important to me. Personally I'm an advocate of zero-surveilance, not because I don't trust the current administration, but because I don't trust FUTURE administrations. The German Nazi party was voted into power in free and fair elections. Image the power the would have inhereted from the data available on citizens today!
 


G

Gwm

New member
Oct 25, 2011
391
I read the first two words and started to panic. I thought you wanted to lose Spanish Dave !
 














G

Gwm

New member
Oct 25, 2011
391
Erasing David
DVD release date: June 28, 2011
Genre: Documentary


I just found this on google. Is it not the same film ?
 










DavidinSouthampton

DavidinSouthampton

Well-known member
NSC Patron
Jan 3, 2012
16,641
Gwm said:
I read the first two words and started to panic. I thought you wanted to lose Spanish Dave !
Click to expand...

Personally, I was feeling a bit worried. Why should one suffer just because of one's name!
 






beorhthelm

beorhthelm

A. Virgo, Football Genius
Jul 21, 2003
35,358
i think this sort of thing is rather overplayed. most of those CCTV cameras are the corner shop you pass by and where you are on databases theres little to no cross referencing, even between government departments (there would alot less benefit and tax fraud if there were better links). most those databases will have the same info anyway, name, address, your bill, thats about it. the water company's details for you is not really very usfull if you are hiding on a caravan park in Skegness.

i think this is telling "They had a detailed personality profile that allowed them to predict what I might do". so really isn't this about how prviate detectives operate?
 


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Ⓩ-Ⓐ-Ⓜ-Ⓞ-Ⓡ-Ⓐ

Hove / Παρος
Apr 7, 2006
6,558
Hove / Παρος
beorhthelm said:
i think this sort of thing is rather overplayed. most of those CCTV cameras are the corner shop you pass by and where you are on databases theres little to no cross referencing, even between government departments (there would alot less benefit and tax fraud if there were better links). most those databases will have the same info anyway, name, address, your bill, thats about it. the water company's details for you is not really very usfull if you are hiding on a caravan park in Skegness.

i think this is telling "They had a detailed personality profile that allowed them to predict what I might do". so really isn't this about how prviate detectives operate?
Click to expand...

But that detailed personality profile had been built up by collecting freely available data stored on him, meaning anyone with access to the internet could probably do the same about you.
 


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