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missing
This page considers fake deaths, ubiquitous identification,
missing people and other perspectives on identity crime.
It covers -
It
supplements the discussion of anonymity,
privacy and surveillance
elsewhere on this site.
introduction
Preceding pages of this profile have considered appropriation
of someone else's identity, construction of a wholly fictitious
identity of 'editing' of an identity to remove an inconvenient
criminal conviction or add a desirable degree or two.
Perspectives on principle and practice are provided by
questions such as -
- do
people need to have an identity and has one form of
'identity crime' in totalitarian regimes simply been
resistance to categorisation or disregard of expectations
that all people will be identified by the state?
- how
do liberal regimes address refusal by individuals to
identify themselves, including instances where the person
has been charged with an offence and those where there
has been no charge? Is non-identication a basic human
right?
- what
happens when an individual does not know who she/he
is (eg because of trauma) and does not bear identification?
- how
do we deal with 'missing persons'?
ubiquitous identification
Recent totalitarian regimes have sought to reinforce social
control of populations - for example observation and delation
by neighbours or colleagues - through requirements that
all adults bear identity documents. Failure to carry an
identity card or a residence permit was treated as a crime,
one potentially addressed through an evening with the
Gestapo or a trip to the Gulag.
Removal of an identifier such as the Yellow Star during
the Holocaust was similarly an offence, albeit an action
that saved some lives. Ubiquitous identity document requirements
were apparent in liberal states during periods of military
or economic crisis, with for example citizens and aliens
in the UK and Australia carrying ID cards during the 1939-45
War.
Anxieties about pervasive identification was apparent
in Australian debate about establishment of a national
tax file number (TFN)
and a national health services number, resolved through
mechanisms such as non-provision of a TFN in some circumstances
would not be a crime but money would be withheld or that
health services could not be accessed at a concessional
rate if the national identity card was not provided.
Anxieties are also apparent in online fora regarding political
demonstrations, with people
questioning whether they must produce some form of identification
if requested by police. "Is failure to produce my
drivers' licence a crime"? "Do I have to tell
them who I am?" "What if I give a false name?"
Internal passports and residence permits in the USSR and
contemporary China were a direct means of social control.
They reflected practice in other states, where mandatory
cards embodied social and administrative hostility to
itinerants (people whose travel mean that they fell outside
the pattern of of identification on the basis of 'where
you live, who knows you'. That hostility might concern
gypsies, or 'wandering youth' or merely people with 'no
fixed address'.
Lack of address could mean automatically suspect when
crimes were committed (or merely suspected of being committed),
justifying preventive detention of 'nomads', "work-shy
asocials" and 'wanderers' and vagrants.
Users of Stickam, a live webcam chat site with more than
two million members, many of them teenagers, have been
bombarded this month with messages that mention Stickam
but promote pornographic live video sites.
unidentified living objects
In an age before advanced biometrics identification of
people assumed that individuals knew who they were (and
could communicate that knowledge to others) and/or that
they were known by others. What of instances where people
were out of contact with their familiars and where there
was some incapacity?
Documentation - from a passport or government access card
to something as mundane as house key - constructs identity
and provides a surrogate for personal memory. Some individuals
do not remember their own identity (because of, for example,
trauma or a condition such as Alzheimers), do not bear
identity documents and are isolated from colleagues, family
or carers.
Management of what Geoff Stewart gently terms "the
perpetually bewildered" has shifted from incarceration
('it doesn't matter that you don't know who you are as
long as we have you physically confined') to measures
such as RFID bracelets and subdermal
chips. Uniforms worn by inmates have traditionally
signalled to the general population that people have been
'lost' by their 'keeper' and should be returned to that
carer, who will identify them.
Recognition of people with no memory and no identifiers
varies. A preceding page highlighted
the example of Anna Anderson, fished out of the Landwehr
canal - sans paper, sans memory? - and 'recognised' as
the missing daughter of the late Tsar Nicholas II.
Another example was competition to claim one of the numerous
French 'unknown soldiers', discussed in The Living
Unknown Soldier: A True Story of Grief and the Great War
(London: Heinemann 2005) by Jean-Yves Le Naour, a tale
sadder than that in Hollywood amnesia fantasies such as
Unknown White Male (2005) and The Bourne
Identity (2001).
missing persons
Around 30,000 people are reported missing to Australian
police forces and non-police tracing services (eg the
Australian Red Cross and Salvation Army) each year. The
majority (approximately 28,500, with equal numbers of
males and females) are reported to police. Some 85% of
those reported to police are located within a week (95%
within a month), with the missing person making contact
or returning home in approximately 50% of cases. 55% of
reports concern children and young people; there are substantial
numbers of absences from institutions responsible for
adults.
In the US some 900,000 people are reported missing each
year. Around 790,000 of the 840,279 missing person cases
in 2001 were people younger than 18. As in Australia,
most absences were short-term.
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