I don’t have the resources of Wired magazine, so I won’t be able to do a real life experiment like Evan Ratliff. Plus, I asked my wife if I could try to vanish and she said, “You do and you better stay vanished!” So we’ll have to use our imaginations.
Army of the 12 Lunch Meats
Remember the manifesto on the evils of baloney sandwiches? Let’s say I’ve decided it’s time to stop writing and take action.
Army of the 12 Lunch Meats
My Plan: First, I will recruit an army of “soldiers” who share my views on sandwich meats. Then, we will defeat baloney sandwiches. And then we will defeat portobello avocado with sun dried tomato mayonnaise sandwiches. And when we have done that, we will be supreme sandwich beings!
Now that I have my plan, let’s look at how I will advance my cause without revealing my identity.
Email Address
Like I said in my last post, the first step is to get an anonymous email address. I’ll use this later to open other accounts.
Also, email accounts can be used in a sneaky way to exchange information without ever sending an email. I can just give the password for the email account to each of my sandwich soldiers. When I want to send a message, I login, write an email and save it as a “draft.” My soldiers login, check the draft folder and read my message. No transmission of an email so no way to “track” the sender or recipients.
Next, I’ll setup a Facebook page to recruit people. I’ll use my free anonymous email address to setup the account, and I don’t have to give any personal information. The five students recently arrested in Pakistan allegedly used Facebook to link up with their terrorist groups, so it should work just fine for me.
Public Internet Access
I’ll use public computers and a U3 USB thumb drive whenever I need to do some 12 Lunch Meats work online. If the public computer I’m using doesn’t let me plug in a thumb drive, I can use an anonymous browsing site like Hide My Ass!.
Prepaid Visa/MasterCard
I’ll use these for online purchases or any purchase that would track my movements, like gas, food, etc.
PayPal
I’ll use my email address to setup an anonymous PayPal account, and I can load it up with a Green Dot MoneyPak card that I can buy at the grocery store with cash. This will give me an additional option for online purchases, and I can use PayPal to transfer money to my hoagie hoards.
Prepaid Cell phones
Prepaid cell phones will allow me and my fellow sandwich nuts to communicate directly if we need to. We’ll just buy new ones occasionally so we can’t be tracked.
Also, we might need to conduct some illegal activities to help finance our war against inferior sandwich meats, and our cell phones can help with that too.
Finally, a cell phone number can help project a sense of legitimacy if we decide to run any kind of confidence scam, and when people figure out they’ve been scammed we can just throw the phone away.
Second Life
My army can use free anonymous Second Life accounts to do all sorts of things. We can exchange money between members, have online meetings, maybe even run some Second Life scams to help fund us. There are no police in Second Life, so we don’t have much to worry about. If an avatar does get caught, no big deal – we just create another one. Plus, it’s not even clear whether something done in Second Life would BE a crime in real life. Isn’t it a game?
My Getaway
Finally, if I think the authorities are getting too close, I’ll buy a netbook with one of my prepaid credit cards. I’ll use it to hack into some random person’s computer through his unsecured wireless router. I’ll copy my manifesto and all my other documents to his computer. I’ll log into all my accounts (and send some emails) using his internet connection. Then, I’ll make an anonymous call to the police to complain about “some weird guy ranting nonsensically about sandwiches or something.” When I’m done, I’ll ditch my prepaid cell phone and the netbook in his garbage can.
Then I’ll just start all over again.
So, there it is. That’s my plan. Oscar Mayer, look out!
Monkeys?