International Law

Bits explains the size of our individual digital shadows:

The digital universe ? the pile of digital information that includes everything from e-mail to YouTube videos ? is growing faster than previously thought, according to a new study from the research firm IDC.

IDC now estimates that, at 281 exabytes, the digital universe in 2007 was 10 percent larger than the firm had projected a year ago. And the world?s assemblage of all things digital will grow at a compound yearly rate of 59 percent through 2011. That adds up to a tenfold jump over five years, to 1,800 exabytes. (Not that there is any real way to visualize it, but an exabyte ? a billion gigabytes ? is said to be 50,000 times larger than a digitized Library of Congress.)

Big numbers, sure, but not too surprising. Recent estimates of the growth of Internet traffic, for example, range from 50 to 100 percent a year.

   But the intriguing finding was that all the ambient digital information about you ? a person?s ?digital shadow,? IDC calls it ? now exceeds the digital information that you generate yourself by sending an e-mail, taking digital pictures, viewing a YouTube video, and so on.

The digital shadow information includes credit-card trails of purchasing behavior, names on mailing lists, Web surfing histories, even surveillance images captured at airports, urban centers, traffic crossings.

?It?s a byproduct of living more and more in a digital age,? said Alex Manfrediz, an analyst at IDC. ?There?s no way to really escape this unless you?re a hermit.?

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