One of my favorite series of books is Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat. In those, the hero is an ethical thief that often uses the future societies foibles against them. In one of the books, for instance, he notes that the easiest place he could pull a con was in a location that had thousands of cameras. This was because with that many cameras, you had to have that many people watching them and inevitably, they'd miss just enough that you could do a great deal before they caught on.
Obviously, Harrison had no idea when he wrote those books that technology would advance to the point where yes, actually, you can have a pair of "eyes" watching everything. There was something else i though about when i read those books. "What did they do with the tape?" In my youth, i figured that there had to be huge vaults of recorded tapes that could be summoned to show the steps leading up to and including whatever action that would be later analyzed. Of course, that's the tiny fraction of a decimal of a percentage of the actual total of recorded imagery that would quickly add up to something that'd make that warehouse in Raiders of the Ark seem cramped.
Thing is, i've been thinking more and more about my data footprint. Not about not leaving one (FAR too late for that) but making sure it's shaped the way i want it to. Way i think about it, we're all leaving a few warehouses full of tapes behind us.
The more time you spend on line, the bigger your data wake. You leave bits and pieces of data about you that can be used in ways that you can't really imagine. Suppose that you've met someone at a conference and had a spirited debate about a topic. You do a bit of harmless research, check out a forum or two, and otherwise contend yourself with whatever curiosity you like. Perhaps you continue your debate via email or on your groups forum.
Then the unforeseen happens, and a national tragedy hits which happens to center exactly on the topic you two were discussing. Let's make it even more interesting by saying that either you or your new co-conspirator have tenuous ties to the perpetrators. That's enough for you to become interesting to at least one federal agency who may start looking for more information about you. Perhaps the agent on the file might delve into the Internet Archive to see what else you've expressed interest in, start reading your blog, or even get a warrant or some other document to pull your search histories and other bits of info.
Hmm… are you sure all those porn sites you visited had models that were over 18?
For the most part, i think i've been pretty good at leaving a fairly clean trail behind me. Granted, i'm not particularly happy about how some sites think of disks like clay tablets and never built in a real "delete" function, but then, i don't tend to use such sites for that reason. i mean sure, it's possible that the disks for known colos could be easily reclaimed, but what about those supposed shipping container data centers? Figure those die off too, but it's not like a bad server can wipe a disk that's malfunctioned. Those will probably make for some interesting data clumps for some future digital archaeologist.
Granted, i tend to be overly paranoid about a lot of things. But then, that paranoia usually pays off for me, so i respect it. Still it's better to safeguard for the future than fight the fires of the past.
