Great Escapes

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by me, Fraser McGruer for Aleph. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm here with Nick Hare, Jordan Fermanis and Peter Coghill of Aleph and this week we're discussing Daniel Khalif.

Speaker B: 00:00:25

Peter. Yeah okay so Daniel Khalif, a hot topic this week, the last couple of weeks. Certainly when we're recording. Yes well when we're recording, it's going to be old boring news when you get it. So he's an interesting seeming character, formerly British Army I think, but yeah he was being he was remanded in custody for pending trial at HMP Wandsworth in London, isn't it? Yeah. So on trial for terrorism charges including, I think there was something to do with having a bomb or a fake bomb or something and also breaking the Official Seekers Act. So quite serious stuff really and obviously wasn't going to be on bail

Speaker A: 00:01:23

pre-trial. So when he was in the army he wanted, while still in serving, he wanted to kill someone or to do a terrorism attack. I can't speak to that. The trial hasn't happened so we don't know the precise nature. I think he's an interesting character psychologically but that's not what we're here to discuss. He's got odd ideas. Probably a bit of a fantasist is my take.

Speaker C: 00:01:45

I hadn't realised what he had, wasn't there something to do with Iran as well? He was

Speaker A: 00:01:49

passing secrets. I think he probably fancied himself as an international super spy but that stuff I hadn't realised that it's relatively recent. Anyway, what we're here to talk about is

Speaker B: 00:02:01

his daring escape from prison and then being on the run for three days and then finally being picked up by the police. A quick rundown of the events then. So HMP Wandsworth to North Holt was basically his journey over three days. So he escaped at 7.30 in the morning and the prison contingency plans were activated at 7.50 so he had 20 minutes head start. So that basically means when he was detected missing 20 minutes after he'd gone. So in London that means he could get

Speaker A: 00:02:38

at least a couple hundred yards down the road. Yes, maybe 300 yards if he took a bicycle.

Speaker B: 00:02:45

So yes, so interestingly he had a little bit of a head start but interestingly the prison I'd say pretty good. It detected he was gone pretty reasonably quickly and then that activates plans presumably well rehearsed and automatic. So police get involved and everything else and perimeters get set up. Anyway, so he was fairly quickly worked out that he would probably have absconded in or attached to a food delivery truck which was stopped by police at 8.37 as far away as East Putney. Can you imagine? So they got there but he wasn't there but they did discover they discovered strapping and things which at the time they speculated he'd used to help support himself underneath the truck. So that was the first day and then various things. I don't think it's yet known where he went during that time but he was later picked up three days later in Northolt in North East London riding a bicycle along a canal path. There you go, cycling's bad for you it turns out. So it was Wednesday the 6th of September until the 9th of September when he was picked up.

Speaker A: 00:04:05

Was it a member of the public or do we know how he was identified? I think he was sighted the day before and then presumably then tracked. That's pretty good going. And I think it's something quite reassuringly British about it all. I feel like if he was in the States he'd have just been shot to pieces but you know they instead they just got him off a bicycle on a canal towpath in Northolt and arrested him. And he said it's a fair cop. Yeah exactly but it's a pretty ballsy thing to do. I don't mean escaping from prison per se but strapping yourself to the underside of a van to escape. I wouldn't do that. You know that sounds quite scary. So you know I think there's something inside everyone who really respects a good escape attempt and I think what we're going to talk about is not actually escape

Speaker B: 00:05:02

attempts but it's how you disappear once you've got out. I mean there were lots and lots and lots of false reports. I did read an article while this was all going on there were thousands and thousands of calls to the police and eventually a few false detainments as well of people and all over the country you know as far as north as sort of Shetland and places people have been picked up. You have a job getting there in three days.

Speaker A: 00:05:30

So it really does fire people's imaginations and clearly this is part of the issue of catching people is trying to, if you're the authorities, is dealing with the amount of information that's

Speaker C: 00:05:42

flowing in. Probably also you naturally kind of overestimate someone's ability to evade. I think we'll probably go into it but it's much harder to like pull something like that off than maybe people just expect like you can't just flee the country so easily. You know like you're actually quite limited probably in what you can do without going undetected. It's tougher

Speaker A: 00:06:05

than it looks. So what we want to talk about is how to do what Daniel Califf wanted to do which is disappear right. He wants to go off radar. He wants to sort of completely disappear and so I think what we want to talk about is how one can do that not as a guide but as a sort of well as what I don't know. There are some good reasons for disappearing as well which we might cover. Yeah but just exploring how difficult it is I think is interesting. Yeah exactly because

Speaker B: 00:06:34

I mean a parallel is all the people who go missing because they've had a head injury or they just decide that they've had enough of their life and they want to disappear. There's still quite a lot of those. So it's like some of those are probably similar to a Daniel Califf in the

Speaker A: 00:06:53

bic and was finally caught in: 2008

Speaker C: 00:09:57

Holt? No this is news to me. Wait tell all Jordan. He went for a swim I think it was in the afternoon sometime and was never seen again. Okay okay well a lot of these and I think we have to go with

Speaker A: 00:10:09

the Lucan one as well. At a beach I should say yeah not in a pool. Yeah yeah yeah. It would be really weird. Yeah a lot of the quite a few of those they're probably dead right I mean so I mean we don't know for sure but Lucan almost certainly dead. Well but I mean but he's you know he wasn't dead probably because of his age but you know it's likely that he died but it but he you know he he didn't he did genuinely disappear. Actually sorry Nick I'm getting confused because what probably did happen is that he probably did murder the nanny right sorry that's what I'm that's the bit that oh that's definitely what happened. Yeah he was running rather than him actually dying. I think he thought it was his wife or something anyway. Yeah yeah yeah so I'm getting mixed up. But yes he so he you know so the theory is he did disappear assume another identity and was never seen again but the best the best lead for Lord Lucan was a man called Jungle Barry who was identified as Lord Lucan about 15 years ago and then you know and that hit the national papers and then someone someone came up and said oh hang on I know Jungle Barry his name's you know Reggie and he was born in Barnsley or whatever but the picture of Jungle Barry this guy who was living out in Indonesia somewhere actually did look like it could have been a very hairy old Lord Lucan but unfortunately it turned out it was verifiably not him. What a shame. But anyway but but I think I think the question we want to ask is in Lord Lucan's day you rock up with your suitcase full of cash you buy an airline ticket there's no trail you can just fly abroad no one's taking pictures of you there's no CCTV there's no debit card more or less you've done it grow a moustache or in his case shave it off yeah and hey presto congratulations you've disappeared not so not so lucky if you try and do that today. Yeah no exactly right let's try and drill into this a bit I mean so far as we've been quite anecdotal someone needs to put some iron into our reinforced concrete Peter you're the guy for this. Yeah so I've got a few basic steps.

Speaker B: 00:12:09

re's in the years in the year: 2019

Speaker A: 00:12:51

police go yes that's a missing person and the police agree with you it's a missing person

Speaker B: 00:12:56

155,000 astonishing now what's even more perhaps equally astonishing four and a half thousand from that period are considered long-term missing in the sense that they haven't been found

Speaker A: 00:13:09

ah so the other so actually the vast majority of even people is get as far as a missing person's case we're still talking 90 95 plus percent of people come come come back yeah but hold on so is it so the missing person one is I mean what's the dividing line is it sort of um when does one turn into the other right so you've been away for three months and I think I'm not

Speaker B: 00:13:34

sure I haven't looked into the definition but essentially I think they are just not that that

Speaker A: 00:13:38

case has not been resolved yeah you know when you see it yeah okay they come back turns out they were just down the path yeah yeah even so whether it's yeah so anyway four and a half thousand people still quite a lot quite a lot so four and a half thousand people a year say it's quite a few it's quite a lot of people just disappearing right so where are they all well I don't know

Speaker B: 00:13:56

uite significantly in fact um: 1995

Speaker A: 00:15:09

five it's a pretty small number do we know how many were were subsequently recaptured

Speaker B: 00:15:15

t of them but at very most in: 2020

Speaker A: 00:15:28

eight people of the 16 who originally escaped at large after 30 days so that's 50 percent 50 percent and a lot of those might be actually quite low risk people for all we know yeah well and a bit of anecdotal data i was reading about um this prison escapes and things and by and large if if you if the the the expert was saying well if people stop looking for you they stop finding you right usually people are found if they want to be right they want right right right um uh so um yeah so

Speaker B: 00:16:00

so it's it's that's kind of one of the worst years the best years um most people are captured

Speaker A: 00:16:07

uh there's very few with more than more than sort of two or three being left at large after 30 days so people are captured pretty quickly okay but it's interesting in the dichotomy then between um prison escapees um it's getting less and less and less and if you want to find them usually you can um versus people just disappearing still four and a half thousand that's quite a few i think um and they stay out they stay missing um okay so that's the data what do we want to do with

Speaker C: 00:16:38

rn there was a scandal in the: 1840

Speaker B: 00:19:02

london i've came across various estimates that seem to range between nearly a million these owned well yeah so the best ones i could find were um 130 000 cameras owned by authorities i local government government um police etc but one one in a one per hundred people one per hundred people and then the higher estimates 900 000 uh are that includes privately owned ones so people's houses which

Speaker A: 00:19:32

they can access if they want the powers of the state exercise well not as easily as you might really but um i mean what we're saying is you can't really go uh down the road yes without appearing

Speaker B: 00:19:42

on a camera somewhere yeah we should be which makes me inclined to think that uh that daniel's three day uh uh three three day vacation was quite quite an achievement it is actually yeah

Speaker A: 00:19:56

yeah yeah it feels like it's me i mean i'm sure there's you know obviously there's cameras not just in london but um and i feel we're edging towards well how do you do this then um get get out of london feels like the first thing or don't start in london um but but look let's go on when i was thinking about this yeah okay so getting out of london does seem like intuitively the right thing to do because there are fewer cameras but but assuming that they have an inkling of where you might have gone and they probably will do because you know there's only

Speaker B: 00:20:26

so many train stations there's only so far you can get um there's only so much they'll have a fairly good idea of what your um your means are um whether or not you have accomplices who can help you out or whether you're acting alone how much money you've got all those kinds of things so they can model you to work out how far you can get and where you get like where you could go

Speaker A: 00:20:47

so they'll but assume they can they have an idea they can narrow the search to say they think oh you've probably gone up to peterborough because you've got a friend there you suddenly got

Speaker B: 00:20:55

fewer people to sift through than you do in london yeah and um they uh that that when they when they're conducting manhunts you know they they deploy uh ground-based officers dogs etc search dogs but also they've got what the what the uk military were called i i star they've got

Speaker A: 00:21:15

helicopters with thermal cameras on there so as soon as you're like fewer people you there's fewer heat blobs to look at kind of struck me is it so you'd be you're kind of easier to find i think yeah when you're with fewer people around well i think because there's the physical side

Speaker C: 00:21:30

but then there's also i think there's the digital footprints that you leave as well there's like the you know like you you need to buy things you need to communicate with people um you you know like it's it's i think it's very difficult to practice good kind of cyber hygiene whilst you're also trying to evade the authorities you know so i think the you have to yeah i guess i'm just saying that there's you're kind of fighting on two fronts you're trying to like evade physical yeah um capture but then also stay kind of anonymous digitally as well yep because there's

Speaker A: 00:22:05

people looking for you in that realm as well yeah i think we need to draw three separate cases because the strategy you need to use is going to be very different depending on what you want to do right sorry nick before you go ahead so we're into this yeah we're asking now right we want to disappear how do we do it nick so um worst case you're being hunted by the authorities daniel khalif type situation and and why that's the worst case is because they can use things like the regulation of investigate investigatory powers act to get hold of things like bank records and phone records and you know images on films so you you really got that's the hardest case there is so perhaps we should use that as our kind of you know base case and and then then work you know work out out to make that easier if you're not being hunted by them if you're being hunted by someone else you don't want to be fat so this might be you know if you're in an abusive relationship or something and you're trying to uh disappear from them but you think they're going to come on your tail substantially easier not easy but substantially easier because then they're not going to have access to all of those cool things they're not just going to be able to subpoena your phone records etc um then the probably the easiest case is you just want to disappear right so you you you just want a new life and and so then the danger is not necessarily that someone's going to come and come after you but that you might accidentally be found right so um and i think the the key difference in terms of the overall strategy there is if you're being hunted the key aim is uh to be unpredictable as peter was saying as soon as there's predictability then you're in trouble so the sort of overarching strategy needs to be guided by doing things that not just that people won't expect but almost which are random you need to you need to okay where am i going to go roll a die go there kind of thing um whereas if you're trying to disappear it's really just about distance you're trying to put distance whether that's virtual or real between you and someone who might find you um so that's that's that's the sort of overarching strategy there but i think in terms of if if you know like what we're trying to do is almost the reverse of authenticating someone you know if you're trying to positively identify someone the the classic sort of triad of things you use are something you have something you are and something you know right so you could almost reverse that and say okay so what we could do is get rid of things that i have that had to do with my former life that is you know phones passports then also things that you are that's the hardest thing you know very difficult to change the way you look not impossible but but you know hard um and then uh the the thing you can't not gonna be able to ditch is something you know and that's that's uh an interesting an interesting one whether there are talk to me more about that bit what do you mean well reinvent your if you know if you know if you happen to know things that would give you away as uh or happen to have skills or you know uh there is those are the things that are going to be hardest to shake off yeah you know like the kind of you can imagine a denouement in a in a film where someone gives the game away but you know in in um in the great escape when they're when they're queuing up to get on the bus and the guard says in english good luck and they say oh thank you very much and uh you know because they because they outed as being english speakers but you can imagine sort of someone uh oh you you seem to be very good with you know chopping that carrot turns out that they're a you know a former chef or so you see what i mean like so i'm just saying that if you think about those things you've got getting rid of stuff you have you know easy getting rid of things you are harder getting rid of things you know impossible right so anyway there we are that's that's my i'm setting the scene really with that that's how we should think about the the sort of levels of strategy here so very hardest case we gotta we gotta escape from the authorities how do we do it okay so look this nicely leads us on i think we've more or less rounded off actually but there's just such an obvious question that we need to explore right which is if we're happy to sort of bring this to a conclusion more or less which is this which is we need to make this more or less practical not quite practical but here we are four of us okay um for for whatever reasons that we won't go into that we we need to escape we need to disappear and and it's going to be that worst case scenario it's the government the authorities are after us yeah yeah um like the a team yeah yeah exactly well except we're not a team um we're individuals okay and what i want to discuss if you think this is a good question show you guys as quickly as i can yeah yeah no yeah right i quite i don't know well the feeling's mutual um i want us to talk about the way peter is like the mr t of the whole setup yeah i mean i mean in a sense the va baraka's yeah he kind of is actually yeah he is yeah yeah that's right i think jordan is face uh i'm obviously hannibal which makes you howling mad murdoch i think it works rather i'm happy with that i'm happy with that well i was going to say how do we fare almost in a competition on our own how do we think peter does on his own how long will he last how long will yeah which one yeah i prefer that actually yeah okay i mean i i'll just kick off which is to say my thing is go remote all right um and it is tricky because you need to live you need to sort of get by in life you know but basically you just have to turn into a kind of caveman um and you have to go more or less fearable because most of the ways that you're going to get caught out tend to be technological this is the kind of ted kaczynski strategy oh is this what he did oh yeah yeah yeah in a shed in the middle of nowhere yeah and that's what you kind of have i that would be my tactic just get as far away from people and cameras and tech as possible you have to live like a wild person there are downsides which is it's a pretty miserable existence like a wild place sounds like idyllic yeah well yeah but also um you know there are still people in wild places um and they will get recognized but i think i generally speaking you know that is my approach and just stay away from everyone actually as as you were just about to sort of allude to um you are actually in some senses conspicuous you you rely on being actually physically not found but if someone says why is there a guy living in the shed in the middle of that word then that stands out a lot more than just being a yeah just being some guy in a flat absolutely so these are the things that need to be teased out a bit and i think this sort of changing physical appearance and stuff like that sort of definitely blends into that and but also you know there is definitely a bit where you have to go full-on feral but then that let it ease off and you start to sort of become you can't be completely invisible you do need to sort of interact with people somehow but at a later date kind of but um yeah when it's cooled down when the yeah yeah yeah it heats off yeah now um i mean in terms of how we would all fare and stuff i mean i mean so that's your strategy but yeah yeah exactly

Speaker C: 00:28:59

so jordan what's your methodology it's almost the opposite okay i think i'd go more with like the blend in with the crowd kind of idea i think i think i would probably try and um because i think as we were sort of saying with that living in the shed thing it's like it's so radically different from your current life that i feel like it stands out too much it's too obvious but almost if you do something like kind of adjacent to your existing life so that you can you can live that new existence very honestly and faithfully it might kind of and then if you do all the technology stuff like you're very careful with your communications you kind of assume a new identity and that sort of thing but i think you want to you want to be able to you want to be able to disappear convincingly i think the only way to do that is to kind of have have your new existence closely resemble your old yeah that's what the undercover police say isn't it like the

Speaker A: 00:29:51

best lies are the ones which have a bodyguard of truths exactly yeah and then and then if you are

Speaker C: 00:29:56

kind of yeah if you are someone suspicious you know it's suspicious of you or something you've got kind of things that you can convincingly say yeah there's nothing too anomalous about yeah yeah um so i feel like i would try and develop that persona a bit more um you know yeah maybe steal

Speaker A: 00:30:15

an who who faked his death in: 2002