The next stage in the possible invasion of privacy is data storage.
Data storage is becoming cheaper and cheaper. This is a great
thing when consumers want to store personal content like digital
pictures, tax records, and other accounting info. The bad
news is that data storage has become so cheap that there is little
incentive to throw data away. The majority of these systems
are built to collect and aggregate data automatically, without
much emphasis on error checking or data correction.
Data, both correct and incorrect, can now live on forever—
errors in credit reports, medical histories, purchases, and travel
records can all be accessed long after you have forgotten or
even knew of them. Trails and histories of what actions took
place and what content was accessed or requested become
almost permanent. The digital world is unlike the physical
world in that it doesn’t forget the past until told to erase it. In
the physical world one can be reasonably assured that eventually
nobody will remember you ever visited that “unique” store
or alternative nightclub back in college. Now, however, there is
a digital trail back to those questionable Web sites that lives
practically forever. (Or until someone deletes it, which could
take even longer.)