Since the question of why removal might be sensible has been raised, I thought I'd offer a historical perspective.
From a 1966 BBC documentary:
"Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . .
I've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold."
The speaker is Paul Baran, of RAND Corporation, and the inventor of packet-based switching -- the technology which makes the Internet possible.
If you want to know who could possibly have forseen the negative consequences of universal information networks might have been: their creator did.
Baran's full archive of RAND publications are now freely downloadable from RAND, after I'd requested access in July of 2018, for which I'm immensely grateful.
From a 1966 BBC documentary:
"Well, he who has access to information controls the game. This is very dangerous. I think both your country and mine have never trusted the government completely. We do so for good reason. Here we have a mechanism that could be abused. Here we have a mechanism that would allow the creation of a dictator. . .
I've yet to see an expression by anyone in Congress about this new type of danger. In fact, we see proposals for centralizing information, we see proposals for rushing ahead into new, more efficient computer information systems, and very little thought is being given to the dangers of the misuse of these systems. . . I ask a lot of people about privacy, why they valued it, and I was surprised by the number of people who said "Well, I don't do anything wrong. Why should I worry about privacy?" And then, on the other hand, I think there's a more wise group that says, 'Privacy is really the right to be wrong, then go on and live the rest of your life, without having it mark you forever.' I tend to think this latter view is the view we should hold."
https://youtube.com/watch?v=FwaDvJYZTVk&t=29m31s
The speaker is Paul Baran, of RAND Corporation, and the inventor of packet-based switching -- the technology which makes the Internet possible.
If you want to know who could possibly have forseen the negative consequences of universal information networks might have been: their creator did.
Baran's full archive of RAND publications are now freely downloadable from RAND, after I'd requested access in July of 2018, for which I'm immensely grateful.
Backstory:
https://web.archive.org/web/20180725104347/https://plus.goog...
Archive:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/authors/b/baran_paul.html