9 - One woman's battle to prove she isn't dead
What happens when a system becomes so large, that the fundamental cost of admission (being alive), can be falsely-flipped like a binary? Damning a life into a purgatorial state of invisibility? It's bizarre that judges can, within court sessions, stare at a living person without having much power at all. This happened in the case of an Ohio man, his life becoming like a Kafka novel:
"We've got the obvious here. A man sitting in the courtroom, he appears to be in good health," he said, finding that he was prevented by state law from declaring Mr Miller legally alive. "I don't know where that leaves you, but you're still deceased as far as the law is concerned."
It feels like having no undo button for something that could really use it.
Reading this reminded me of attending DefCon 23, back in 2015, and attending a conference talk titled: "I Will Kill You." A bit dramatic, eh? But the presentation was really about digital murder, and the real life Walking Dead. It even included "baby harvesting," which meant creating real identities (social security cards, life insurance, etc.) on non-existent babies because of problems in the birth and death system.
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