AI, Surveillance and Privacy

Hello Athul:

Government surveillance has always over rode personal privacy!

AI just makes it easier to process the data.

The only thing a person can do is to reduce the number of crumbs you leave behind on your trail.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL

Hello Peter,

Fair point, but I wouldn't say surveillance always overrides privacy, there’s been real pushback and reform, especially post-Snowden.

AI speeds things up, sure, but it also raises awareness and demand for better tools.

It’s not just about leaving fewer crumbs, it’s about reshaping the system too.

Hello Athul:

I am sorry to burst your bubble but the situation is worse than you think.

As an example the other day my e-mail supplier advised me of a new service that one can buy - they can (for a price) find any message that one got or sent and DELETED three or four years ago. 

So DELETE doesn't mean it has disappeared.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL  

Hello Athul:

I am sorry to burst your bubble but the situation is worse than you think.

As an example the other day my e-mail supplier advised me of a new service that one can buy - they can (for a price) find any message that one got or sent and DELETED three or four years ago. 

So DELETE doesn't mean it has disappeared.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay FL  

Peter Brooks said:

So DELETE doesn't mean it has disappeared.

It never did. Since the advent of magnetic storage it's been challenging. Never mind things only being moved to a "waste basket" when you ask for them to be deleted - most underlying storage system don't actually delete even when you "empty the waste basket" - they merely re-allocate the storage area to a "available to be re-used list". Even if you physically over-write the area (e.g. reformatting), faint traces of the original magnetic patterns remain and although not noticeable using normal read/write heads, can be detected using the right specialist equipment. I remember many years ago visiting a defence research site and seeing piles of bare hard disc drives on top of filing cabinets - asking why they needed so many spares, I was told they weren't spares but faulty old ones - and as they might contain sensitive data and there was no way of being 100% sure it was unreadable, they had to stay on site.

    - Andy.

As they might contain sensitive data and there was no way of being 100% sure it was unreadable, they had to stay on site.

now solved by machines that bear a striking resemblance to a wood chipper, that convert sensitive hardware like hard disks  into sub-centimetre flakes... Very noisy though compared to paper shredding.

https://www.ironmountain.com/en-gb/services/secure-shredding

for example.

• Deletion Can Be Effective

  • In systems designed with strong privacy principles (e.g., GDPR-compliant or zero-knowledge architectures), data marked for deletion can be permanently erased from both active storage and backups, depending on policy and configuration.

• Recoverability Often Depends on Backup Policies

  • The ability to retrieve “deleted” emails typically stems from backup archives retained for business continuity, legal obligations, or user-side recovery, not from live storage. These backups are usually not indexed or actively accessed unless required.

• Privacy-Respecting Platforms Offer Stronger Guarantees

  • Services like ProtonMail, Tutanota, Signal, and Matrix provide end-to-end encryption and do not retain retrievable data after deletion.

  • Without access to encryption keys, even service providers cannot recover deleted content.

• Transparency and Data Governance Are Key

  • The core issue is not that “delete doesn’t work,” but that many services lack transparency in how data is handled post-deletion.