'i arrest you for lying about your name and your birthday' - Identity, Character, Social Stability

And my immediate reaction is, what's he hiding about his original identity? If he just wanted to distance himself from his background, that's one thing, but what if he's hiding criminal convictions, debt, fraud, etc. What if he had another wife and children that he's run out on?

If you don't like who you are or where you come from, change your name by deed poll and be done with it. Don't nick someone else's.

I mean, maybe this is hysteria to fuel the identity card debate - but honestly, what would have prevented him from just getting a new identity card?

It is an interesting dilemma, though, how attached are we to our paper trail, how much does our paper trail of official identity define us. How difficult is it to change that identity? Does one have the right to change your legal identity?

I think in the digital age/information age, the thinking is that you *don't* have the right to change who you are from a legal standpoint. You are your assembled information.

Identity Assumption is one of those so called victimless crimes that if we all did, society would crumble.

Good fucking riddance. Byes.

I get Half-time! I Get Half-Time!

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I don't keep store loyalty cards because I don't want my buying patterns monitored - but honestly, they could do it against my debit card if they really wanted to, as I always pay by card.

Having worked in the Information Industry, I know how casually lots of people treat the Data Protection Act. So I try not to give information I don't have to. But every time you even use your debit card, you're creating a paper trail, so it's quite hard not to.

The only comfort I draw is knowing that there is such a huge amount of data flowing around it would be pretty unlikely that anyone would be able to harness it in nefarious ways. (Tombot to thread.)

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I think that the former is a legal matter which should be transparent. But the latter is just None Of Your Business. The problem is, where is the line drawn?

Where do sensitive matters fit in there? I'm alarmed by having to state my religion or ethnicity on official forms. I've been having a *real* problem with filling out medical history on applications for insurance to the point where I don't want to get insurance if I feel the questions are too invasive or the answers will end up somewhere they shouldn't.

So in his case the line I guess should be drawn where the victims of various sorts decide it should. His family will be in a horrible situation and I'd understand if they demand he be tortured until he reveals his true background (er, though not agree with it, obviously). But what if he lived his life within the law but with someone else's name? E.g. paid tax etc. What sort of discretion does a court have or should it have?

I usually am ok with religion/ethnicity etc questions on official forms because they're not supposed to be connected to the rest of the form i.e. the bit with your name on. Insurance is different I guess, because it's their business. I don't like it, but if I want their product I have to go with their rules. Ultimately if they can't assess the risk, they don't have a business and we won't have a private medical insurance market to take or, in my case, leave.

It could be debts, it could be a few dedbods!

I really don't understand the notion that you can live basically within the law using someone else's identity. I mean, I can understand what you guys mean by that, but, ehh: there are loads of obvious good reasons why people can't create fake identities (it allows you to circumvent the law in all sorts of ways), and so every day that you do it, you're breaking countless laws. You drive a car with a fake identity, and you're circumventing laws that might have kept your real identity from driving; you get a passport with a fake identity, and you're circumventing laws that might have kept you from traveling; etc. etc. So like even the everyday "lawful" things this guy did were actually pretty unlawful and dangerous.

isn't it relevant here that the guy has (generally) been setting up a stable identity & framework through work/family/economic activity, under and within the law, under one single name, for >20 years ?

(though the Lordy Lordy thing still makes me think he may well be delusional half-bonkers and/or duplicitous, but at the same time if there's a set of identities id like to see stolen and undermined and rendered meaningless through repetition and commonality it's the 'aristocracy': i'd quite like it if lots & lots of ppl decided to change their first names to sound like aristocratic titles...but i bet there's a law especially against THAT - i mean, that perticular form of social order must be preserved as well...)

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Baron, you are totally missing the point: it's illegal to assume a fake identity! Period! The dude did that, and every act he's committed for the past twenty years has been a fraud. Just because he didn't compound those crimes by taking huge advantage of people doesn't make them any less crimes.

And they are right, I think.
We all hate home
And having to be there:
I detect my room,
It's specially-chosen junk,
The good books, the good bed,
And my life, in perfect order:
So to hear it said

He walked out on the whole crowd
Leaves me flushed and stirred,
Like Then she undid her dress
Or Take that you bastard;
Surely I can, if he did?
And that helps me to stay
Sober and industrious.
But I'd go today,

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,
Crouch in the fo'c'sle
Stubbly with goodness, if
It weren't so artificial,
Such a deliberate step backwards
To create an object:
Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

i think that other than his birth cert, everything else is consistent. if he disappeared, it would be no different than anyone else disappearing.

p.s. shouldn't you be in bed?

No of course not. I was just speculating about why someone might want to reinvent their self.

I thought about Skinner. Does that count?

Theorry you are totally weirding me out with your weirdness here. The guy stole an identity in 1983. Of a person born in 1962. Who was presumably roughly his own age. So he'd had probably 20-25 years of building his own real identity before switching to a new one. Nothing is consistent -- he transferred from one legally-recognized identity to another, to the point where police weren't even sure who he "actually" was! I am really just totally baffled as to why anyone would think this was at all something that needed to be defended or worried about.

i like those points - yes, if ppl started changing legal/bureaucratic identities all over the place it would screw up alot of our present structures and i can't imagine how things would work otherwise either

but isn't the 'the crime is already committed by doing that very thing' somewhat tautological ?
i was wondering about why it should be that way...

and in *this case* the guy didn't assume the identity of anyone who could be hurt by that action, he didn't assume an identity to gain access to any other person's life arrangements or finances or social status (until the 'lord' thing), he hasn't committed any other crimes (i think) for which that other person could be blamed or held to account since they no longer even exist

the guy wanted a passport - i imagine he would have been quite happy to get an identity card (in fact do switzerland have them already ?) - he seemed to want stability and was quite happy to be traceable for >20 years - does this sound like a 'criminal character' ?

but yes by doing so he does in effect escape from possible consequences of possible past actions - he is guilty of breaking a law based on a principle that if ppl act like this it is too difficult to maintain social order and accountability and it makes other kinds of criminal activity easier - but i can't lose the sense that until he in particular is shown to have done so for that purpose, and not just imagined or assumed to have done so for that purpose, there's something unfair going on...

(in which case if he turns out to be a swine - sod him)

And due to having a rather uncommon first name, someone at the Inland Revenue put her down on the National Insurance database as a man, which nearly led to her being charged with benefit fraud because "it says so on the computer."

Which is all something of a tangent to this case, but it shows how important bits of paper with our name on them are to our everyday lives.

e.g. in a database

Table Dude
dudeid# | surname | firstname
9384 | dude | some
9385 | person | another

you can change your name
dudeid# | surname | firstname
9384 | dude | some
9385 | dude | some

everything still works

but
dudeid# | surname | firstname
9384 | dude | some
9384 | dude | some

fucks it all up!

man.

Twas an unusually good episode last night.

(very many xposts)

let's break it down: what constitutes your identity? afaict, other than things which are not centrally registered, like dna, appearance, it comes down to:

-birth certificate
-things you can only get by showing this (passport)
-things you can only get with things like the passport, driving license

unless this guy *reverts* to *another* identity, he's not in a different position, if he murdered someone, than anyone else.

but isn't that the case here? he hasn't been jailed for anything other than passport fraud as far as i can tell

point is he can't, isn't it? he doesn't have any ID to say he is is former identity, i don't think. all of his id says he is who he's been living as for 20-odd years.

unless this guy *reverts* to *another* identity, he's not in a different position, if he murdered someone, than anyone else.

well he would be in a different position, but that's not even the point. i mean, it's something you KNOW you're not allowed to do. So why do it? Why?

If he did murder someone. He can go boo hoo that guy is fake, and then turn up elsewhere with his real birth cert., get his new passport, and yay josé. It's not whether he did it.

he told you that did he? ;)

errrrr, i'm sure we've all done things we're not aloud to.

i'm not in a position to comment, but i don't see what's so traumatic. it's just a name and a dob.

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and when you get caught doing them you get done for it. like this guy did!

i think his job was his.

some of us are asking why, not how or what-if

nabiscothingy's nice point:

Ah and one last: what I'm hearing here sounds to me about like the equivalent of saying "apart from driving without a license, this person didn't speed or run over anyone or anything, so why presume that she did anything wrong?" But there are sensible reasons from the beginning why the license is required, and so as soon as you drive without it, then yes, you have done something wrong and dangerous, whether or not you then go off and run over old people or whatever. Maybe the guy isn't hiding from some consequence of some previous action -- but the point is that you're not allowed to switch identities in large part to keep people from doing that, so he's broken a sensible law, even if he had no good reason to break it.

sort of not really sure this is applicable though since a licence (at least in the uk) is required proof of competence to do something that is dangerous to a degree of qualified safety
(is it true that driving licences are/were issued in some states/places in US on a much easier basis - or is that history?)

(it was (still is?) quite legal to drive without a license on yr person in the uk - you just had to be able to present it to a local police station within a week or so)

but yes i like it as an illustration of the principle of:

no 'actual' harm done
versus
but 'actual' harm *is* the practice of making it easier for ppl to get away with (and therefore more likely to commit) *your* defn of 'actual' harm

one of the exasperating things is that that's not been made clear

there have also been interviews with police going on about how he 'may have committed heinous crimes in the past' and such - and speculation that sounds right on the verge of Guilty until proven Innocent

and the fuss/outrage over his identity switch purely as an act in itself is quite interesting

On the BBC story, yeah of course the man should be jailed. It's fraud. And he looks dodgy anyway.

that's correct. so yes, you can quite happily steal someone else's car and joy ride it etc. and all the police takes down is your licence plate number. or just put a fake licence plate.

once again. you can do it, but when you get caught you're still fucked.

Remember that episode of the Simpsons where Principal Skinner admits in front of the whole town that he's a 45-year-old virgin, and everybody believes him because nobody would lie about being a 45-year-old virgin?

Well this little confession is a bit like that, really.

Now just mentally expand that from the small issue of driving to the giant issue of life! I mean, credit fraud, insurance fraud, terrorism, theft, cons, smuggling, bigamy, and on and on -- as soon as you game the stable-identity system, you're making it way easier to do each of these things, and way easier to get away with it. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't think it was totally reasonable of the state to make it deeply illegal to fuck with that system: you can change your name, change your life, whatever, but when you do official shit you are you, and you can't lie about it.

I mean, maybe a better analogy is this: if someone crawls through your window, makes a cup of tea, watches some television, and leaves -- are you really gonna be like "well, apart from the breaking and entering, I guess he was mostly law-abiding and normal?" It's violating sorta basic sanctities of who is who, who lives where, who's accountable for what.

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