How does witness protection work in the age of internet and smartphones?
I understand how WP worked like in the 80s, you get a new set of documents, a phoney life story to back them up and relocate to a town on the other side of the country where it's unlikely you meet someone who could recognise you (hard to do if you've been printing your face on matchboxes).
But now it's seems impossible to escape the panopticon of the digital age: you can try very hard to stay off the social media (sus) but there will be someone who accidentally takes a picture of you while photographing their dog/kid and post it on the internet where it is trivially picked up by crawlers run by someone who really wants to find you.
Posted Dec 9, 2025, 9:57 AM UTC
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