Just wait until we have like 14 billion people on Earth and we really start to lose control of all of these systems. I can see it now on NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt in 2040:

Lester: “A gang of so-called Shadow People staged a protest today, saying that they’re really alive. Are they? Here’s Suzie with more”

Suzie: "Lester I'm here in front of the capitol building today with a group of protestors who claim to be shadow people, and they want Congress to fix it. I had a chance to interview one of the members of this group:"

Suzie: "Sir can you tell us why you're protesting today?"

Protestor: "So I'm not sure what's going on but I just can't do anything. I went to renew my license but the system says I'm deceased. I don't have any of these documents to prove I'm alive. I'm like hey I'm right here talking to you ya know? But they just tell me I'm dead. I don't know what to do about it so that's why I'm here."

Suzie: "Sir can you tell us, are all of the members of the protest today, the so called Shadow People, actually dead?"

Protestor: "No! That's what I'm trying to tell you. We're not dead. I'm right here talking to you. That's why we're protesting."

Suzie: "It seems that way. Sir. But when you went to the BMV and found out you were dead, what was that like? Did you feel any different? How did that affect you personally?"

Protestor: "I'm not dead!"

Suzie: "Back to you Lester"

When you run out of social security id:s and start to have collisions.

They do recycle SSNs! I had a project where we used the death master files (they use to be more free/public, now https://ladmf.ntis.gov looks like they have a fee ). It was really interesting data pull sequences of users with the same SSN, similar names, and different birthdays. The users with typo SSNs were interesting too.

when the database is so large, it cant be parsed in a human lifetime

Sure, it feels like that to the victim of the forgery. But, the state isn't denying [0] that some human is alive. The evidence available to it asserts that the human is an impostor attempting to adopt an indefensible identity, as in the article. Presumably, the human would need to provide evidence that discredits the forgery underlying the state's belief (ex dental records, genetic evidence).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seeing_Like_a_State

It's only a superpower in theory. In practice, the IRS has sued people for benefits collected from a not-really-dead person [1] without restoring that person to the land of the living. And then there's a case where a supposedly-dead person was given the death penalty [2].

If the state has an incentive to punish you, it will find a way.

[1] https://loweringthebar.net/2014/08/feds-say-legally-dead-is-...

[2] https://loweringthebar.net/2014/09/legally-dead-man-sentence...

obviously the superpower would be functioning in India - and just as obviously at some point you would do something big enough that they would have to do something about it. Probably the something like what was done in the movie Brazil when someone was legally dead but still alive.

Why assume India's government is any different from any other. There is no India's government. There's 100000 government departments that barely work together.

If you get one, responsible for enforcing the law, to punish you it is not going to make another department realize and admit its mistake and undo what they've done. It's just not.

Not in the US. Not in France. Not in India.

the implication was that if you did something big enough for some authority to say 'ok you are not dead you are alive' they would rectify the situation by expediently making you dead.

Then you would not have the problem of other departments needing to admit their mistake.

Except it'd be one department noticing you did something big enough and another department needing to admit it's mistake (and I might add: and now less inclined to do so it since you did something big) ...

>obviously the superpower would be functioning in India

The supposed kidnapping was a ruse, which the police saw through and just treated as a family dispute.

Most kidnappings are intra-familial, at least in the US—mostly related to child custody disputes. Are you saying that the police shouldn't get involved in those cases, either?

No, I’m saying the police did look into it, as they should, and found that in this case it wasn’t a serious issue but just a stunt. If there had been any genuine intention to harm or detain the child then of course it should have been prosecuted, but it seems that there wasn’t.

^ Sadly, kidnapping charges have huge consequences. They were designed to prevent a "kidnapping" in which a person tries to steal and keep a child. These laws were not designed to punish a parent returning a kid from a Yankees game late.

>They were designed to prevent a "kidnapping" in which a person tries to steal and keep a child

Aren't most of these kidnappings also intrafamilial? Even if you throw out the "parent returns a kid a bit late from an activity" cases, I think there are many more parents trying to take kids to another state to keep them full time despite a custody agreement otherwise than there are strangers just nabbing kids in parks or what have you.

Obviously they are saying that yes.

Given the corruption involved, doing that would likely end up with you becoming actually dead. The police are usually involved in these scams in the first place.

I think in real life it goes “you are under arrest for kidnapping and impersonating a dead man.” The police choosing not to get involved is probably the least likely outcome, ordinarily.

No it's not a superpower. They'll just throw you in a gulag or the equivalent and wash their hands of it. After all, you do not exist.

Ah that would be a great movie, but it’d be hard to suspend disbelief. Most likely you would just be treated as an unidentified person instead of untouchable.

Honestly, this was the most infuriating part of the whole article. Instead of helping the victim, the police turned on him.

If this happened to me the gloves would be off. I would threaten to kill them. If that didn't trigger them to attack me first, I would follow through. If the law of the land is not just then we are bound by a higher justice to act.