IT’S starting to look likely — given news reports about her interest in fake names and disguises — that if Casey Anthony gets out of jail as scheduled this weekend, she will do her best to avoid the public eye and join the list of runaways that has recently included James (Whitey) Bulger, Ratko Mladic, Osama bin Laden and certain state senators from Wisconsin.

Ms. Anthony, 25, was found not guilty this month of killing her toddler daughter, but her acquittal in Florida was followed by death threats and extralegal convictions in the nonstop court of cable television.

Should she decide to lie low, she would be following a tradition in America, which, despite the craving of many of its people for publicity, has a long history of its citizenry going on the lam. It would seem that, in the national lore, there is a fugitive or worse for every self-promoter — or so such absconders as Eric Rudolph, D. B. Cooper and Bonnie and Clyde suggest.

The question is, of course: How does one perform a vanishing act these days? In an age of smart phones and GPS — not to mention anonymity-piercing paparazzi and celebrity magazines — is it really still possible to disappear?