Erasing David

The description of this film refers to the hot issue of privacy, especially with the fast growing number of social interaction websites in mind. These websites leave too much opportunities for people to publish personal details, which may come to haunt them sooner or later. Any means to make people aware of the underlying risks can be considered useful and should be judged on their educational merits.

As a former (retired) security consultant I know how difficult it is to make people aware of issues like these. On the other hand, Internet providers and social websites do everything in their power to downplay these problems. The privacy policy of e.g. Facebook is infamous in being much longer than the American Constitution, even more uninviting to read from A to Z, and not easily understood in all its intricacies.

There are a three scenes that may achieve some awareness, and are worth mentioning for that reason.

Firstly, main character David takes a lot of trouble in finding out how much details are kept by institutions he knowingly has contacts with, like schools, government, telephone companies, etcetera. He asks them to print everything they have about him, to envelope it and to send it to him. After making categories he finds out, much to his surprise, that by far the largest pile is what is kept by private companies. Obviously, he has agreed to that in the past, but forgot that. Also is unclear what he agreed to precisely. There seem to be no limits to what they can do with the data.

Secondly, there was a discussion with his wife when he wanted to withhold his signature for enrolling their child in the fingerprint system that the school just bought. School managers he spoke expected a lot of the new system, but failed to see the issues set out by David. His wife had a similar "what harm can be in that" attitude, and his explanations were as seeds falling on unfruitful land (as worded in the New Testament).

Thirdly, near the end of the film, David sees with his own eyes how much data the two private investigators had collected about him in a few weeks time. It included information that he did not know even existed, or that he himself had forgotten a long time ago. Nearly everything was obtained legally and from publicly available sources. Only one thing (the hospital appointment) was the result of social engineering. Absolutely no hacking was involved in the search.

Overall, the film is a constant mixture of three interleaving story lines: earlier research by David, the chase by two hired detectives to find out his whereabouts, and some interviews with experts in the field. Throughout, there is a high percentage of viewer education, which may be considered "boring" by many people but unavoidable to get the main issues across. The same "boring" characterization may apply to David's own research, but it is a somewhat dramatized hence much less "teacherish". The actual chase carries the film. Though not ended the way I expected, it can be applauded as a very good attempt to make the whole film acceptable for average viewers.

But still, one may ask what the ideal target group is for this movie. It does not look commercially viable to run it in a normal theater. Similarly, it seems too long to get it programmed on a public TV channel. In general, I cannot think of an opportunity to show it to a broad audience.

If all else fails, can it then serve its purpose as part of an educational program in a school?? Maybe it can work, especially when followed-up by a discussion or writing an essay. As I said, every chance to educate younger people on this, is worth every effort.

British director David Bond decides to disappear, to "go underground", and hires top private investigators to find him within 30 days. On the first day of the pursuit he leaves the country and takes the opportunity to do interviews with various experts on surveillance and privacy. Meanwhile, the detectives, who at the beginning only had his name and photograph, by the end of the pursuit, collected a lot of publicly available information about him and his family. When, after 30 days, he goes into their office and sees what they know about him, he is shocked. This chilling documentary raises awareness about the degree of control and the accumulation of personal information in the hands of the government and corporations, and warns of the dangers of abuse of this information.

I liked this.

I feel that I need to add some comments in response to some of the reviews.

This film has been made by someone who wanted to carry out an experiment. It is clearly something he was intrigued about and an issue close to his heart. It was a way of expressing his own way of thinking and doesn't need the question asked about what the target audience is.

This was aired on More4 which carries many documentaries so I guess that is the target audience.

It is what it is and needs no more analysis than of the portrayal of the subject. I think the target audience is neither here nor there.

Filmmaker David Bond tries to see how much information is out there about him. He received a government letter about a loss of data that involved him and many of his fellow British citizens. He hires two private investigators to find him in 30 days and they're only given his name and picture. He leaves his pregnant wife and young child as he tries to disappear.

This seems to be a fun gimmick to highlight this issue for the documentary. However, the gimmick is muddled by a lack of structure. There doesn't seem to be too many rules for the chase. David is being deliberately naive. There is a bit of OMG shock going on. Some of it is truly eye-opening but sometimes he tries too hard. There are a lot of talking heads with opinions. There are a couple of passing stories with people who have identity issues. His uncovering of his private information is sometimes funny. The investigators don't have much charisma or great screen presence. This is a worthy subject if it's done right. This has some good bits but not much more.