Many people have a fear about “where” their data is. The questions that they should be worried about, in my opinion, are not about who currently owns the physical machines where the zeroes and ones that represent their data are stored, but rather who has control over the right to look at, or distribute that data.

This site promises the impossible, since there is no way that they can remove material from the Internet Archive, to people who don’t know any better. In its tone, and its appeal to the clueless, it reminds me of government anti-drug propaganda from the nineteen fifties.

The question about how notions of privacy can be maintained, in what some are calling a “surveillance culture” and others (including me) are not, is both interesting and complex. It has permeated some of the discussions on the ePedagogy course, and indeed Christina and others are currently working on a project that looks at this topic.