Erasing David
“A documentary about privacy, surveillance and the database state.
David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear, a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy and the loss of it.”
Erasing David is a documentary about one man and his family who were one of many thousands who received a letter in 2007 following the loss of data from a key government department.
That lost data contained the details of David, his young child and his wife, who at the time of filming was pregnant with their second child.
In order to see what information is available about him and his family, David tasks a team of private detectives to track and locate him on his 30 day mission across Europe and the UK in which he aims to live a normal day to day life undetected travelling by air land and sea to evade capture.
The private investigators comb over every inch of David’s life from his own past and present as well as his close and distant family and friends.
David also investigates what information none government organisation can and do hold on him as well as government departments. This covers a wide spectrum ranging from private sector organisations such as Amazon.co.uk and Google to government departments such as what data London’s congestion charge system holds individuals as well as the British Passport office.
David gathered this information following submitting freedom of information/ subject access requests to these organisations. The information David received back detailing exactly what private and public sector departments held on him and his family was quite overwhelming.
This documentary is a great in sight into what is held on each and every individual in the current digital age in the UK and shows exactly what many more people should be doing to see exactly what is out there in the public domain about them. As David discovered, any individual piece of information about him or his family would be dismissed by even himself as meaningless, however with all this data together staring him in the face, it really does show what is out there for all to see if they really want to know.
The Erasing David DVD can be purchased or downloaded from the Erasing David website.