Tim Armstrong, former Berkman fellow and now a prof at the U of C, writes: “… the permanence of networked information has costs, too, which (like the benefits) are only beginning to be explored. Members of the generation just behind mine, who have grown up reflexively creating and posting information online, are learning that digital is forever — if you’re a job applicant (or even a camp counselor), anything that has ever been written by (or about) you online is, at least potentially, still there. (Back in my day, we used goofy aliases to hide our online identities; but I gather that practice has been fading.) Once information is online, it turns out, it may becomes quite hard ever to get it back offline again — the Wayback Machine preserves old web pages; Google Groups archives Usenet posts; and it’s only a matter of time before somebody comes up with the magic bullet that automatically archives IRC and IM conversations and makes them searchable. Even your deleted e-mails aren’t necessarily gone; they may still exist on backup tapes where law enforcement authorities can get them. The durability of digital content raises problems that touch on both informational security and individual privacy.”