Back when I was in school—and I’m talking here primary and secondary school, not college—I and my fellow scholars were repeatedly warned that poor grades or excessive tardiness or the common practice of chewing gum in class were offences that would go on our “Permanent Record,” and that, once recorded, could never be erased and would follow us throughout our lives and make it difficult, if not impossible, to get decent jobs or bank loans to buy new or even used automobiles.
In short, blemishes on one’s Permanent Record were to be avoided at all costs. I imagined, at the time, that these documents were stored in yellow-brown manila file folders arranged alphabetically in dark green filing cabinets in the principal’s office and were promptly forwarded whenever an individual changed schools or moved to another town or even another state. Of course, when one grew up, these no doubt ever-fattening files would be delivered to any prospective employer, college or technical school admissions officer, or military recruiter without those individuals even having to request them.
When I had completed my schooling I don’t remember ever worrying much about where my Permanent Record was kept nor who had access to it. It was out there and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, now. For all I knew the whole Permanent Record thing might have ended at some time in the 1960s since the threat from teachers seems not to be a part of later generations’ collective consciousness. Be that as it may, I believe now that the Permanent Records for my generation were most likely kept in Washington, D.C., and were, in fact, the documents upon which the much-hated J. Edgar Hoover based his infamous files. And while I have today neither the patience nor the inclination to apply under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain what I imagine would turn out to be a thick and scurrilous copy of my own FBI File, I am of the opinion that all those old paper-based Permanent Records are now stored—like nuclear waste—in a huge bunker inside some mountain somewhere in Utah and that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to those documents.
Now it’s the year 2013 and we know that Permanent Records are real. And they are permanent. They are not kept in filing cabinets anymore, but rather stored in “the cloud”--on government servers in various places. They are digital and contain everything we do or say or, probably, think.
Privacy is a thing of the past.
In short, blemishes on one’s Permanent Record were to be avoided at all costs. I imagined, at the time, that these documents were stored in yellow-brown manila file folders arranged alphabetically in dark green filing cabinets in the principal’s office and were promptly forwarded whenever an individual changed schools or moved to another town or even another state. Of course, when one grew up, these no doubt ever-fattening files would be delivered to any prospective employer, college or technical school admissions officer, or military recruiter without those individuals even having to request them.
When I had completed my schooling I don’t remember ever worrying much about where my Permanent Record was kept nor who had access to it. It was out there and there wasn’t anything I could do about it, now. For all I knew the whole Permanent Record thing might have ended at some time in the 1960s since the threat from teachers seems not to be a part of later generations’ collective consciousness. Be that as it may, I believe now that the Permanent Records for my generation were most likely kept in Washington, D.C., and were, in fact, the documents upon which the much-hated J. Edgar Hoover based his infamous files. And while I have today neither the patience nor the inclination to apply under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain what I imagine would turn out to be a thick and scurrilous copy of my own FBI File, I am of the opinion that all those old paper-based Permanent Records are now stored—like nuclear waste—in a huge bunker inside some mountain somewhere in Utah and that the Freedom of Information Act does not apply to those documents.
Now it’s the year 2013 and we know that Permanent Records are real. And they are permanent. They are not kept in filing cabinets anymore, but rather stored in “the cloud”--on government servers in various places. They are digital and contain everything we do or say or, probably, think.
Privacy is a thing of the past.
