Trent Lott comes to mind, when we consider the permanence of a celebrity/politician’s statements, of course. Few of us who were alive in 1980 have to be concerned that any of our statements from that year will come back to haunt us, let alone some of our more obscure comments, aimed at audiences that we feel might be sympathetic. But that won’t be the expectation of the generation of kids growing up today. Even their most casual instant messages will be ‘on the record’. Anil Dash

—Privacy Through Identity ControlAnil Dash)

During the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings of the early 1990s, when casual comments that either Thomas or Hill had made were dredged up and scrutinized under a microscope, I remember hearing stories that students in the law school at U.Va. were stealing each other’s notes from bulletin boards and papers from the stacks of papers to be returned, on the odd chance that opinions voiced might one day become controversial, and potentially lead to the downfall of a rival. On an interesting side note regarding the Lott/Thurmond controversy, conservative attack dog Ann Coulter writes: “Back when they supported segregation, Lott and Thurmond were Democrats. This is something the media are intentionally hiding to make it look like the Republican Party is the party of segregation and race discrimination, which it never has been.”