[liberationtech] Auto expiring document/files & 'rights to be forgotten'

Thu Jan 26 11:29:46 PST 2012

Thanks Todd, this sounds like a great option, and very enlightening for
other applications.

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:31 AM, Todd Davies <davies at stanford.edu> wrote:

> I don't think this is a crazy question, Frank. What you are asking can be
> implemented through encryption of the document, for example, that requires
> a password requiring third party validation that could expire, or the
> document could be automatically deleted if we can control where it is
> stored. As others have pointed out, it is impossible to guarantee that the
> data will not be accessible in the future, through format conversions,
> copying, printing, encryption breaking, backup drives, corrupt confidants,
> etc. But whether that is relevant depends on how many people have an
> opportunity to circumvent the expiration, as well as their ability
> (including legal ability) and motivation for doing so. A medical patient
> whose daily life is monitored might produce reams of data every day, for
> example, and the patient might want the data to "expire" after some time
> has elapsed. If these data are stored on private servers accessible only to
> a few people (patient, doctor...), and access is restricted to a controlled
> environment such as the medical providers' facility, it could be made very
> unlikely that they will leak past the expiration date. Things like
> contracts and legal regulations can come into play here. The patient would
> need to understand what type of data protection is being provided, but that
> should become a matter of common literacy. As more and more private data
> get stored (see the book *Total Recall* by Bell and Gemmell), and our
> ability to anticipate what might be useful in the future diminishes, I
> think scenarios like this will make more and more sense.
>
> Todd
>
> Todd Davies                   ***  email: davies at stanford.edu
> Symbolic Systems Program      ***  phone: 1-650-723-4091
> Stanford University           ***  fax: 1-650-723-5666
> Stanford, CA, 94305-2150      ***  web: www.stanford.edu/~davies
> USA                           ***  office: 460-040C
>
>
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012, Frank Corrigan wrote:
>
>  Keeping the threat simple to say individuals personal data, that may
>> have little Public interest but of concern to the individuals concerned.
>> This just one scenario.
>>
>> I can see I need to think through the suggestions more carefully. Maybe
>> the goal that could only be reached would be to frustrate access to
>> someone who accesses the document after an expiry date, without ever
>> seeing it before.
>>
>> Frank
>>
>>
>>
>> ----- Original message -----
>> From: "Brian Conley" <brianc at smallworldnews.tv>
>> To: "M. Fioretti" <mfioretti at nexaima.net>
>> Cc: liberationtech at lists.stanford.**edu<liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>> Date: Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:52:44 -0800
>> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Auto expiring document/files & 'rights to
>> be      forgotten'
>>
>> I've asked for the specific use-case because I think most of what has
>> been
>> said by others should be obvious, and I think it may not apply to what
>> Frank is asking. But I guess we will see!!
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 10:44 AM, M. Fioretti <mfioretti at nexaima.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>  On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 16:08:15 PM +0000, Frank Corrigan wrote:
>>>
>>>> Does anyone know of any free resource that can make a PDF document, for
>>>> instance, inaccessible after a certain data, Most Digital Rights
>>>> Management (DRM) software prices are too prohibitive to make them a
>>>> practical solution to individuals.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think the request is simply impossible to satisfy at any price, both
>>> for technical reasons, and for reasons of other kinds not mentioned
>>> yet here.
>>>
>>> The technical reasons, already mentioned, all come down to the fact
>>> that the only way to do what you want is to have full, absolute
>>> control on ALL the computers that may ever receive the document, in
>>> order to reduce them to dumb internet kiosks or Web-TVs. Otherwise it
>>> would be trivial to roll back the clock, or **automatically** take
>>> snapshots and feed them to an OCR program, etc.. And people would race
>>> to do it and break the format, just as it happened with the
>>> "green-because-unprintable" WWF format (which I covered at
>>> http://stop.zona-m.net/tag/**saveaswwf<http://stop.zona-m.net/tag/saveaswwf>
>>> )
>>>
>>> Then there is the fact that, at least for certain classes of
>>> documents, PDF is wrong to begin with, and there is an active movement
>>> to get rid of it, at least as the only format in which documents are
>>> published online. I am talking of public sector information, and of
>>> the Open Data movement that is pushing worldwide to have all those
>>> data (also) in raw, machine readable, open formats available online.
>>>
>>> Which means that, if it became ever possible to make such a PDF, it
>>> would be irrelevant for those data, because people would simply make
>>> their copies of the same data in those other formats.
>>>
>>> Marco
>>> --
>>> Digital Rights Courses and Publications: http://mfioretti.com
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>>
>>
>> --
>>
>>
>>
>> Brian Conley
>>
>> Director, Small World News
>>
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>>
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-- 

Brian Conley

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http://smallworldnews.tv

m: 646.285.2046

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