The Independent View: Data preservation instead of data retention Ubiquitous personal communication technologies are here to stay. Because
of exponentially falling data storage costs, two contrasting states of
society can be envisaged. The default will be either that individuals
determine whether and when their history is recorded, subject to
exceptions, or data will exist about everyone all the time. This is the
policy choice between data retention and preservation, and it is a sharp
dichotomy.