I was researching family history years ago and was surprised by a story of a distant relative who left his family, moved two towns over, and started life again under a slightly different name, Parkinson. He raised a second family. It wasn't until years later that a grand-daughter put the pieces together, partly through DNA testing. It seems wild to think someone could do that now. Today you need to document your existence from birth just to do basic things — draw a paycheck, get a SIM card, rent a house. I like people being accountable, but I wonder if it isn't a real loss that you can't decide to start over with a new name in a new town and try to be the person you want to be, free of baggage. You've got a permanent record that follows you everywhere.
I've been reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to my lads — published in 1876, set in the 1840s, and it's even better than I remembered. There's a scene where Tom and Huck pass tobacco to Muff Potter through the bars of his jail cell while he's being held on murder charges. He was getting a rough trot, but at least he had the dignity of people choosing to speak to him and share small comforts. That basic human regard for someone — even an accused man — feels like it belongs to another world now.
And that same impulse to strip dignity away keeps expanding. Reading this headline, banks being conscripted as immigration enforcement — it's the quiet creep of the same thing into ordinary life. Every tool at the government's disposal gets turned on people eventually. First the accused lose their humanity, then the rest of us lose our privacy, account by account, record by record.