The same way that software, the nsa, and ubiquitous cameras with facial recognition changed surveillance, google changed knowledge discovery. The laws that wer

The same way that software, the nsa, and ubiquitous cameras with facial recognition changed surveillance, google changed knowledge discovery. The laws that were appropriate when surveilling a person meant dedicating a set of human beings to following someone, thus naturally limiting the scale, fall apart when it can all be done electronically at vastly higher scale for very little marginal cost. Similarly, the laws that worked when information was naturally forgotten because we had limited ability to index and discover it, ie you could always do deep background checks on someone, but it was very labor intensive and thus pricey, need rewriting now you can get the equivalent of an fbi background surveillance check by typing a name for tiny effort and cost. Hence jerks like Eric Schmidt suggest people should change their name if they want not to have youthful hijinks follow them around, yet is happy to use his billions and lawyers to keep his mistresses' stories off the internet.