Random thought of the night, how difficult/costly do people think it would be to have a decker delete all the files pertaining to your identity so that you'd be SIN'less? I don't just mean the SIN but the data it indexes, the backups, everything. Since I don't have access to my books, I'm not sure whether it mentions anything about this or not.

On the one hand all you have to do is follow the SIN and delete the information, which is a lot less difficult than creating an identity whole. But on the other, it's still a large undertaking and you have all those, possibly off-line, backups to do as well. Off the top of my head I could see it being anywere from half as, to as fully expensive as buying a fairly high rating fake SIN.

I don't know if there are any references, for at the moment I'm too lazy to check my collection... But I'd imagine it'd be a hell of an undertaking... things I could see you having to go after to delete:

- Government Records (Including any government he/she was a citizen of prior, and all corps)
- Education History
- Medical History
- Birth Records
- Employment History
- Criminal History (Even if they're clean, chances are they're in some cop database somewhere)
- Election Records
- Religious Records (Baptics, Communion, etc)
- Housing Records
- Purchase Records
- Record Clubs
- Consumer Databases (you know, the big massive lists all corps keep to toss spam and flyers at)

Heck, the list goes on and on... much easier to just fake a death... because even if you hit all these sources, people remember the person, not just the SIN... if they hear of the person's death, well they can put it in the past...

Then again it'd be a hell of a Decker team run.

That's what I figured. But if you have whole groups devoted to faking and planting all those different files, I figured they might be able to do the reverse as well. :o/

True, but most groups, no matter how dedicated, still don't have an in to all of the files out there... they build the core, and rely on the nature of data tracking to fill in the rest (the marketing, consumer reports, etc)...

Don't forget that in addition to actual documents, there's evidence of a person's SIN and the SIN-related documents that are in all kinds of buffers and caches all over an electronic world. Getting rid of references to a SIN is almost as important as getting rid of the SIN itself (otherwise Joe-Soon-to-Be-SINless can prove that at least he existed, even if according to (the lack of) current documents, he no longer exists)

Either way, it's a huge challenge. I mean, it took a dragon's efforts for Lars J. Matthews.....

"The easiest and most difficult thing for a mole to do is nothing at all."

The problem with erasing all trace of someone from the Matrix a la Angela Bennet is difficult to say the least. All you need is someone with data held off-line and is periodally up dated or checked to blow a hole in that cover up.

However to plant or fake an ID is simpler, you do not need to clean up/fake everything, just the parts you want. Age is easy, find someone who is roughly the same age/metatype/sex as your client who has recently died/disappeared etc.

Planting a new ID is also considerably simpler since what you need is a "traceable" datatrail. For example, if someone has lived his whole life in the Outback, the only datatrail he might have left is his ID, maybe driver's license, he might even have no bank account.

You don't need to get rid of everthing. Just the things like the fingerprints, thus your 'deleted' SIN can no longer be linked to you. Delting the list of your last credit card purchases is hardly necessary.

Are you kidding? That's an undertaking in itself... think, even in this day and age, how many people have your fingerprints...

I know of at least three police departments that have mine, plus the military, and the government itself (security clearance)... and I don't have a criminal record...

If you get your prints run by any law enforcement or military, odds are the FBI has it archived and then EVERY law enforcement will scann across it in a databas search through an AFIS or similar system.

That's asuming you're American... in my case Canada's little Intelligence outfit, the one intelligent enough not to allow TV Shows/Movies about them, has them...

deleting all records of a person in a fully computer-indexed society?

well, it's highly likely that there are as many database entries for a SIN as there are governmental and private organizations that would want to keep track of someone, and at least some of these databases would cross-pollinate. also, some of these records would be behind the kind of Matrix protection only afforded to Security concerns.

if this is for a Corporate, that might cut down the number of target systems, due to unification of records.

but the big question, for UCAS citizens: who is the origin point, administratively, for issuing SINs? how is it done, how does the new record propogate to everyone who needs to have it from day one?

Logically, someone with no fingerprints will be flagged as having an invalid SIN, so any transaction involving this account will be traced.

Yes, but we are talking about getting rid of your SIN. The SIN of John Doe has no prints - but who is John Doe? It's not like you are going to use the SIN afterwards. Even better would be to put some other fingerprints, etc into the SIN. Then you would have as much using it as if you were claiming to be me. Not to mention it will probably irritae the database less.

I'm assuming you are not stupid enogh to try to use your SIN after you have it delted. Joe's accounts are now locked, Mr Sinless (who has a different face, different prints and so on that Joe ever did) is doing fine with certified cred.

Was this about deleting your own SIN or someone elses? You could really frag someone over by deleting parts of their record, because, presumably, they wouldn't know about it until they were wanted.

the simple way to get oneself deleted is to declare oneself dead somehow. just make sure that you have cleared out any accounts and so on first

Problem is, I don't see a SIN actually being deleted for some time after it's flagged as dead, so as to minimize the problems with errors or to enable lookups for a reasonable time period thereafter for purposes of estate distribution or what-have-you.
In fact, basic information such as SIN, name, birthdate/birthplace, deathdate/deathplace, and maybe a few more details will probably be stored either permanently or for a duration sufficiently long as to be effectively permanent for running purposes.

~J

I think it would be easier and cheaper just to change your gentic code than to try and sift through a desert of data for the 400,000 scattered grains of sand that make up your record.

On the subject of SIN evasion, rather than deleting fingerprint records, why not use this cheesy old BBS phile?

Favorite line: "I haven't personally done this, but have been assured by someone who has as to its reliability."

Enough nasty burns to your fingers will leave scar tissue there, which will lack the whorls. I had no right index fingerprint for several months due to a scar that eventually went away.

~J

It would take a long, long time, but, with the help of a couple of good Daemons, it could be done. Maybe in as little time as a month, I'd say.

But unless you're doing it yourself, and you're really good at what you do, you'd have to pay someone a lot of money.

The various countries may like to think they have some control, but it's really GOD who pulls the strings.

~J