Making of ‘Erasing David’: Tintin looking for some privacy in Brussels

I made a small contribution to ‘Erasing David’, a project by filmmaker David Bond. For a month David is testing the boundaries of civil liberties by deliberately destroying his identity. Is it possible to disappear from ‘the system’ anno 2009? To push this experience a little further, he has top private detectives tracking him down. Instead of digging a hole to easily go underground for a month, David seems to keep a normal life style. He contacted me via text messaging (UK mobile number) and paid for our lunch with his credit card (yes, there is such a thing as ‘free lunch’ during the credit crunch We met at the rooftop of the Old England art nouveau building, which now houses the Musical Instruments Museum. If David is really paranoid about privacy, using a mobile phone and credit card seem bad ways to remain digitally unnoticed…However, it would be interesting to learn if those private detectives managed to get hold of these sensitive data.

Making of ‘Erasing David’: Tintin looking for some privacy in Brussels from Toon Vanagt on Vimeo.

We discussed facial recognition, finger print technology, on-line search logs & cache, social networks, activity stream events, micro-blogging, geo-tagging, ccTV, PKI key signing and many more privacy related topics. I pointed David to the latest iPhoto feature (part of Apple’s iLife09), which introduces facial recognition into consumer software. It is easy to imagine similar or even more powerful facial recognition features on Flickr, Facebook, Netlog and Google Images. We “name tag” the people we recognize in our album and these ‘application providers’ complete the tagging effort on the rest of ‘their’ online picture collection. Are you sure there are no pictures out on the internet, in which you prefer to remain anonymous?

Being British, David was amazed by my Belgian indifference to carry an electronic identity card. It must not have helped that he just interviewed Paul Rusesabagina (the hotel manager of Hotel Mille Collines, whose extraordinary actions were the basis for Hotel Rwanda) who learned him that during the 1994 genocide at road blocks a Hutu- or Tutsi-label on a Rwandan ID, were not a matter of iLife, but of real life or dead.

David really wanted to know “Is there anything on your Belgian ID card now, that could prejudice you in the future…Even if it is hard to imagine?” I had never given that question much thought, but even without information on ‘race’, religion or sexual preference, I must admit my card does hold my place of birth (Bruges in Flanders) and preferred administrative language (Dutch). “Ethnically” that would easily classify me as being ‘Flemish’, a 10% minority in Brussels, but a majority in Belgium. Nobody in his right mind expects Belgium to ever fall apart in a violent way… But then again, neither did the Rwandan people… Anyway, negative future consequences for my language indicator are the least of my concern. Being multilingual, I could even choose French as administrative language in Brussels…but my very Dutch first name would always give me away at a road block.

How paranoid are you about your ID card? Should we be more concerned about the data it contains in the event Belgium ever drifts apart?

PS: ‘Erasing David’ is a cinema documentary for Channel 4. I realize this post creates a small breadcrumb for those private eyes on the lookout for David. Since he left the building, there is need to go looking for him here anymore…

Tags: Belgian ID card, David Bond, Erasing David, Privacy
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