NFUN posted...
you would be able to know if anybody wanted to
Yeah, you would know, but how would you stop them? If the CIA wanted to disappear you even if you knew, you aren't getting out of it. TSA or boarder patrol will detain you if you try to leave the country. If you get onto any communication network the NSA will track you. The FBI will investigate anyone that might offer you help. Every time you dodge them with your knowledge you have fewer options of escape until eventually they will get you.
banananor posted...
why would anyone know you had the power?
If you use it to almost any extent some agency will eventually pick up on you. Unless you are satisfied just knowing and never telling anyone and never trying to profit and never helping anyone that needs it, you will eventually start to stick out like a sore thumb. You'd have to know all the secrets in the world and ignore almost all of them. Most people have a hard time keeping relatively mundane secrets to themselves... to not make yourself a person of interest you will have to keep thousands of murders and rapes to yourself
every year,
and that's just the start. You'd have to be a primary knowledge holder of all of those terrible crimes, but let's say none of that weighs on your conscious... You still can't use you secrets to make too much money. Governments tend to be much better at tracking financial anomalies than violent crimes. They'll track your investments, they'll even develop predictive algorithms to know when you're losing money on purpose.
There is no real way to use this knowledge without it blowing up in your face, at least over a long enough period of time. And there will be so much terrible knowledge that even the coldest of hearts will feel bad about doing nothing. And what if the secret you know is that the place you live will be subject to a WMD, do you flee and let thousands or millions of people die, or do you tell someone that can help what you know and... you're black bagged.
Realistically you either don't use the knowledge, and constantly have live with all of the worst parts of humanity while having little or no added power to help yourself... or you use the knowledge to help yourself or others and eventually someone looks into everything you have done and decides you are psychic or made an advanced AI or whatever. Whatever it is, it's going top be something the alphabet agencies will not just let go of.