The possession and disclosure of information debate is doing the rounds. gnome and I are positive about spreading it. Others, not so.

It is not new, to whine about impinging security cameras. And I understand there is a commercial imperative for some companies, specifically those with a profile as impressive as Google’s, to be conscious of their strength. To this end, we have seen some programs and programmes aiming to destroy information. At gnome we posted Suicide Machine, and The Economist recommends the data-liberation efforts of Google itself.

The loudest pro-deletion voice is that one yelling RIGHT TO PRIVACY. But mass data-storage is not a new threat either. Digital records have replaced material ones, but what sort of information do we give out online that we kept private before? And what sort of information do we give out against our will? Very little data is given out against my will, which I would not have given out offline. It strikes me that a fuss is being made over the Internet because it is the Internet.

And this is not just silly but also dangerous. Deleting information online has already caused problems for enquiry. Paper records are not possible to destroy with such flippancy. And online trails can be harder for lawyers or police to follow than offline ones. They may quite happily not exist, unnoticed.

The delay caused by, for example, the Public Records Act of 1958, will multiply this loss by an unknown (my guess is: a lot) before it is realised. Like other problems facing human society, mass digital information loss will probably hit when it is already too late.

posted by Ossie Froggatt-Smith