No Place Left (or Right) To Hide
Posted by Jacques Chester on Wednesday, May 9, 2007
There’s a saying that the Internet senses censorship as damage and routes around it. This has become true of poor NYU Republican Ashley Heyer (Google Cache) who tried to defend her reputation with a DMCA takedown notice, only for the whole story to wind up on geek supersite Slashdot.
The basic story is that a blogging bartender has taken to posting scans of fake IDs she has confiscated. One of these scans was of a licence purportedly belonging to Ashley Heyer. Consequently Ms Heyer served a DMCA takedown notice, asserting copyright over the image.
Regardless of how this plays out, Ms Heyer’s political history will firmly include an episode where she tried to drink underage. As much as I feel that the US drinking age is utterly daft, the fact remains that it is harder and harder for people to get away anything – more importantly, it is harder to get away with hypocrisy.
I confidently predict that in 20 years time, there will not be a single new candidate about whom something damaging can be dug up on the Internet. Indeed, when I abandoned online anonymity sometime in 1998, I realised that I was forever placing in public view all the dumb, embarassing and often incredibly geeky things I was yet to say. Today I am able to enter my name into Google and see everything from my horrible early juvenesque science fiction stories to the latest posts here at Club Troppo or on my personal blog. In between there is a vast spectrum of fiction, political mutterings, economic conversions (several in fact) and even (forgive me O Lord) the odd bit of poetry.
Five years I was atypically visible in the various places in which the Internet is archived; like any active Internet geek I suppose. But today is the era of mass Internet, the age in which everybody lives some part of the lives online in view of the world. Glorious though it is, the previously invisible idiocies of youth will now be laid bare to all, sundry and punditry.
What will this mean? Will we be reduced to only selecting candidates who never use the Internet? Who lead lives of quiet, intense boredom? I doubt it. Perhaps instead we may be permitted to give up the notion common amongst the media and pre-selection committees that candidates must be spotless lambs. We all make dumb mistakes in our youths. Some of us make more than others. We need to admit that people change, that they mature, and ultimately that we must select people for what they are now, not for some fictionalised account of being born a perfect Laborite, Liberal, Democrat, Republican …
This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 1:50 PM and filed under Politics - international, Uncategorised.
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I predict that in 20 years timenow, before and forever more we will have candidates with every sort of chequered past.
Eg: George W Bush (drinking, albeit legally, to excess); Bill Clinton – would he have lost the 2000 election if he had been eligible to run?; Edward Kennedy – enough said.
Consider, if not convinced, or if more concerned with ‘ideological impurities’ (as your last para suggests): Rudy Guiliani as a serious republican candidate; Tony Abbot.
Posted on 09-May-07 at 2:04 pm | Permalinkthat first sentence should read:
Posted on 09-May-07 at 2:06 pm | PermalinkI predict that
in 20 years timenow, before and forever more we will have candidates with every sort of chequered past.The difference being that Bush’s uncomfortable history has been attacked and defended so much and virulently that there’s almost no-one left who really does know whether or not he skipped out on his Air National Guard service; Clinton was able to spin and obfuscate and dodge his uncomfortable past.
If Jacques theory holds true it may become harder and harder to spin when Google’s cache has the truth there in cold hard bits.
About the only group that could be thrilled at this are therapists, who are rubbing their greasy hands together at the thought of new patients coming in depressed at the visibility of their pretentious late-teens and early twenties…
“You called yourself what? Oh dear, hold on a moment…Miss Wilson, clear my appointments for the day. And get me a towel.”
Posted on 09-May-07 at 2:15 pm | PermalinkYou forgot to mention the 6 years of IRC logs I have.
Posted on 09-May-07 at 2:41 pm | PermalinkIRC logs? Uh oh! More bad poetry and youthful hitting on IRC chix.
Posted on 09-May-07 at 2:43 pm | PermalinkHow could one not Google ‘Jacques Chester’ after that post? :-)
Posted on 09-May-07 at 3:40 pm | PermalinkMy plan for total embarrassment continues!
Posted on 09-May-07 at 3:45 pm | PermalinkGo on Jaques, tell them what your parents put in the NT News !
Posted on 09-May-07 at 4:26 pm | PermalinkMaybe it’s the post budget slump but I couldn’t resist a small google of Jacques Chester + idiot. Surprising the number of hits returned.
Posted on 09-May-07 at 6:03 pm | Permalinkwoodsy — mostly funny letters from Dad, as I recall.
Posted on 09-May-07 at 8:42 pm | PermalinkAs her friend, I must set the record straight. Ashley is NOT a republican! She is a registered democrat and a member of the NYU College Democrats to boot.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 6:37 am | PermalinkDon’t break the law and you will be fine.
I can’t wait until she is older and expressing how bad underage drinking is.
Typical republican.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 6:38 am | PermalinkFrankie: Tell her to stop donating to the republicans. Because she is clearly on the donation list.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 6:39 am | PermalinkFrankie, dontdocrime;
Could either of you provide a link which settles her political affiliation? Then I could update the post. I followed the original story.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 6:43 am | PermalinkJacques – your google isn’t as bad as you think. Mainly Troppo plus your own blog, plus a bit of geek stuff. Maybe there’s more in Google News, but I suspect not much other than Troppo, your own blog and geeky stuff ;)
No worries, really.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 11:02 am | PermalinkI think what SL is suggesting is that in terms of searchable history that could potentially cause the subject to blush, she may very well have every single last one of us beat. And that if she can get over her history – such as, not starting an edit war on her wikipedia entry – maybe the rest of us can suck it up as well :- )
Posted on 10-May-07 at 11:16 am | PermalinkMark Pilgrim, geek provocateur, said re: this
The next logical step is to start preserving, transcribing, tagging, indexing, ontologising and generally applying semantics to everything any politician of any stripe says.
“Oh, you never said that? Well, this says otherwise. Accountability is a bitch, neh?”
Posted on 10-May-07 at 2:31 pm | PermalinkI should also point out that to the assorted nerdery here, the idea of a life lived offline seems quite ridiculous, however it’s the modus operandi for the vast majority of people.
Blogs, postings, etc. However popular are still largely a minority hobby – even in the West where internet is widespread. It’s easy to forget this I think, simply because you never see the people who aren’t online (of course), and they don’t pop up to explain themselves on blogs, forums, etc.
Personally, I think in most cases less anonymity is good. Obviously if I was blogging from China, no, but where there’s no compelling reason, I think it generally encourages better and more civil behaviour online – behaviour that takes into account the consequences of abusing someone, social and legal if need be.
Obviously, this only happens generally, they’re are several real-named idiots out there, too, but this isn’t so different to real life.
I decided to use my real name (when it’s relevant) online for precisely these reasons. Also, I believe you should be prepared to take responsibility for the things you say: If you can’t stand behind your opinions, how much are they worth?
Posted on 10-May-07 at 4:03 pm | PermalinkPublius disagrees.
I was going to post using patrickg as my name in order to prove a point, but it would be too much like being an arsehole. Anyway, on the internet, no-one knows if you’re a dog.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 4:11 pm | PermalinkHe does? The bastard. I believe I still have some wriggle room there with the “compelling reasons” clause. I would like to expand that clause to include things like WOW, etc. An grand elf or whatever called Darren Smith would be kind of weird I accept, but those situations aren’t truly anonymous, anyway, identity can be tracked.
Point taken, re: verifiability, but the fact is this rarely happens and is usually quickly corrected when it does.
Posted on 10-May-07 at 4:34 pm | Permalink[...] encomia on bitching in the modern world is indeed laugh-inducing. Jacques at Troppo, meanwhile, wonders if his entire life is online for the world to see, and suggests that those who expect aspiring pollies and public [...]
Posted on 10-May-07 at 8:04 pm | Permalink