Re: PRIVACY: Private traces in public places

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

(Sasha, good to have you on our list!)

At 3:26 AM 1/10/96, Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko wrote:

>  Sometimes, it comes as an unpleasant surprise to a person who
>looks for web pages referencing his own name, and finds, among
>other things, many of his explicit or controversial usenet or mailing
>list messages, old resumes that may contradict the current one,
>critical remarks of his high school girlfriend and former colleagues, etc.
>Knowing that this information is easily accessible to his new girlfriend
>and prospective employer may make him more than uncomfortable.

Remember a couple of years ago on the Extropians list when I claimed to
have compiled dossiers on people, from their admissions in posts about drug
use, infidelities, and other such things? Several of them got quite irate.


>All advice to such a person you may see on the Net mentions Net laws
>that should have been passed and personal actions that should or
>should not have been taken.

Not all such advice, because my advice has been different from this.


>How can people protect themselves from all this?
>
>Will people of the future all wear identical privacy suits, gloves and
>helmets and burn
>everything they have touched?
>
>Or they will just try not to do things they may later be ashamed of?
>(How do you know what you may be ashamed of 30 years from now?)

Or, the option I prefer: do what you gotta do, and screw those who claim
you should be ashamed of yourself.

Think of this as a screening process: anyone who is so offended or ashamed
for you (what a concept: "I'm ashamed for you") probably is not someone you
would want to deal with. Works for me.

I'm not trivializing the issue of search engines and archiving systems
turning up articles written, old posts, etc. Every couple of weeks,
sometimes more often, someone sends me a copy of one of my postings and
claims that someone else must be forging my name (recent posts on racial
issues, for example--while I'm not a racist, I despise quotas, setasides,
and preferential treatment for lazy people, of any race...this obviously
makes some people "ashamed for me" :-}).

These people, obsessed with political correctness, or having some notion
that consistency must be enforced, are the populist form of Thought Police.
Mostly I ignore these people pestering me to "explain" a post I made in a
group, and, if they persist, I add them to my filter file. I prefer this
liberated outlook to either of the two options you presented.

--Tim May

We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
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