Thanks to the Wall Street Journal for this great review on their blog.

In ‘Erasing David,’ a Filmmaker Vanishes and Challenges Investigators To Find Him

By Michelle Kung

The first week of Austin’s South by Southwest festival focuses on film and interactive trends and events, so it seems only fitting that “Erasing David,” a documentary about online privacy, premiered here. The film, which debuted on iTunes and AmazonVOD the same day it opened at SXSW, centers on British filmmaker David Bond, who challenges two private investigators to find him — using only publicly available data — as he attempts to disappear for a month. “I thought it would be a lot more exciting and fun,” said Bond. “But it turned out to be quite a bit more freaky and paranoia-inducing than I expected.”

Bond first got the idea for the film in 2007, when he received a letter from the U.K. government saying they had lost his four-month-old daughter’s child benefit details, including her date of birth, address and bank account information. Concerned — and curious — about the state of privacy, civil rights and the database state in the U.K., he decided to make a documentary, though he wanted to structure it in a way similar to fictional thrillers like “The Conversation,” to make it compelling. Bond put together a team of filmmakers he trusted to shoot the investigators at work while he “ran.” He packed his bags in January of 2009, and found himself in the “really weird” position of having no creative control for a large chunk of his film.

The Wall Street Journal: In the film, you state that the U.K. is among the top-three monitored countries in the world.

It scores really badly according to the academics. For example, we have this thing that’s called the ring of steel around the financial center in London since the IRA bombings in the ‘70s and ‘80s. I feel like we have moved in the UK from being a beacon of liberties — being the birth place of democracy and the Magna Carta and all that –  to being like an example of how not to do it.

Your wife is pregnant in the film. Was it hard to convince her to go along with this?

It looks awful in the film, I know. But we planned the disappearance and there were lots of things in place before we discovered she was pregnant. It was a tough discussion but it was one where she kind of knew what we lined up to make the film happen. So she was very understanding. And as you saw, it wasn’t a bed of roses for her by any means. I’m still kind of on my knees groveling as we speak.

You’re releasing the film on VOD in conjunction with your premiere here at SXSW. Was that a purposeful move?

That was part of the attraction for us, absolutely, because we know how hard it is to take a documentary into the U.S. market, let alone on that has the added complication of being a British documentary with an unusual genre structure. We really feel like there is an audience out there in the US for the topic, and being able to access that interest online is an exciting model for us.

Given the subject matter of privacy, how much are you using social media to publicize the film?

We use it up to a point. We have to be very, very careful with our disclaimers around it. We never use people’s e-mails or anything else. We encourage people to set up not fake but spam e-mail addresses in order to receive information from us. I think the answer is we are really excited by it and we really use it.  But we are also very keenly aware of the privacy issues involved.

Gordon and the Whale review by Kate Erbland 13th March 2010

Rating: 8/10

Directors: David Bond, Melinda McDougall (co-director)

In ERASING DAVID, documentary filmmaker David Bond attempts to drop off the grid of surveillance life for thirty days. Increasingly dismayed about the content and quantity of personal information available to the world at large, Bond employs all manner of tactics to learn what is out there about him, how it was acquired, and how to stop it. Well-placed flashbacks show us just how it all snowballed until Bond saw no other way to truly discover the truth than to utterly subvert it.

In the early stages of his quest, Bond hires an amusingly able privacy consultant, who scares Bond by routinely popping up, either physically or via some sort of unexpected bit of technology (hello, baby monitor). What is at first somewhat funny and very interesting steadily builds into the tension that runs through the film. To make matters even worse (and to turn the film into a bit of good, old-fashioned chase story), Bond hires two of Britain’s best private investigators to track him down as he spend his month “on the run.” The PIs on his trail use good old-fashioned detective work to track Bond – they start with just his name, finding themselves rummaging through his trash, and pretending to be him on the phone. But the availability of information on the internet makes their job frighteningly and consistently easy. As if these stakes are not high enough, Bond also has a baby and a pregnant wife at home, who is none to pleased with his idea to strike out on such a ride in the final trimester of her pregnancy.

As David criss-crosses Europe and gets himself into increasingly close scrapes with his would-be captors, ERASING DAVID begins to feel legitimately frightening – both in terms of the physical chase and in terms of how Bond’s information has been so readily accessed. But of course there’s not just the basic issue of people knowing things about you that you may not feel you have expressly allowed them to know, there’s also the deeply unsettling possibility that this information will be misused. And it’s not just in terms of fraudulent activity, as Bond places a huge emphasis on false positives in government-gathered information. He meets young Emma Budd who, upon applying for a job, was the victim of a false positive on her criminal record – a person with the same birthdate and a “similar name” had a shoplifting conviction. She didn’t get the job and her entire life was turned upside down. ERASING DAVID is scary enough for the Bond family, but the consistent theme that this could happen to you runs deeply throughout the proceedings.

In just over a week on the run, Bond turns paranoid. But it’s not so much paranoia when he’s actually being followed, now is it? Paranoia turns to loneliness and wackiness. Bond acutely feels the pain of what he has only temporarily given up in his quest. And it does become a quest. Bond goes to ever-increasing lengths to hide – even setting off for a remote valley in Wales. But the point of this experiment is not for Bond to hide out somewhere remote, he needs to attempt a normal existence. He needs to prove it is indeed possible.

Is it? The film’s basic conceit already makes everything tenuous enough, but the film’s score, packed with building strings and pounding drums and ticking clocks, kicks ERASING DAVID up to a new level. There is something of great importance at stake here – and when it’s all over, it’s not just David who wants to be erased.

David and the PIs contributed to an excellent piece on this week’s Broadcasting House on Radio 4 (Sunday 22 November). Ace Radio 4 reporter Chris Vallance follows in David’s footsteps as he attempts to spend a day without leaking data…

You can listen again here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(22 November 2009)

The Erasing David bit is at 32 mins and 25 secs..

The radio piece also features the wonderful Nick Rosen. Nick’s website is full of cool articles, including easy tips on how to live Off Grid..

Seven ways to drop off the grid

by Liz Tramer

What would you do if I could tell you that I knew your mood on January 1, 2003, or your wife’s maiden name? What about where your parent’s lived, your food allergy or your personality type? You might think that this “big brother” society doesn’t exist, or since we’ve never met, I can’t possibly know that information. You’d be dead wrong. Erasing David proves without a reasonable doubt that we currently live in an Orwellian world, and most people are unknowing participants. When filmmaker David Bond received a government letter stating that his, and millions of others, data had been lost, including his name, birth date and bank details he was taken aback.David became curious about just how much personal information was available to the public. He decided to try and go off the grid for 30 days. His journey for privacy has astounding implications that will affect the way you conduct your everyday life.

When David received a generic letter about the loss of his “identity,” he began to wonder just how much information had been collected about him and how that information was obtained. His research led to a shocking discovery. There was a mountain of information on him. His moods were gauged on days by orders he’d placed on Amazon or from entries on the Internet. David wondered if so much data had been collected on his past activities, how easy would it be to track his future movements.

It wasn’t enough to just disappear; he wanted to know if he could be found. For this reason, he hired two private detectives to try and locate him once he tried to become lost among the crowd. David discussed the project with his pregnant wife and tried to convince her that this endeavor was being done both for their family’s future and to ensure their child’s safety. Once he had all parties on board, the race was on. Roles had been assigned: the detectives were the hunters and David became the hunted.

He snuck out of his home in the middle of the night and began his journey. Along the way, he realized that his phone, e-mail and credit card information all left a trail. The more time he spent around others, the greater the likelihood of information being revealed. Even a visit to his family and the locations he would consider safe, became places of discovery.

As the film progresses, David becomes more paranoid and incredibly isolated, leaving viewers wondering if the cost of privacy needs to be complete isolation. “At the time (of the experiment), I barely slept. I began to have paranoid thoughts about everybody I met or even passed in the street. I wondered if people were agents of the Private Investigators. I even began to wonder if my producer (and great friend) Ashley had betrayed me in order to make the film turn out a certain way,” David said.

As David faced loneliness and despair, the private investigators were able to gather birth certificate, marriage licenses, photos, and childhood information, and compile an accurate and revealing story of David’s life and personality. Through the public information the investigators gathered, for al intents and purposes, they were able to transform into David Bond when necessary.

Erasing David is a riveting game of cat and mouse. Director David Bond’s quest for anonymity reveals to viewers how much of your information is public, and the frightening future implications. Bond said that after completing the project he “routinely questions exchanges of data and information that most people don’t notice.” After watching the film, you will never look at filling out a form or surfing the Web the same way.

Immediately following its premiere at SXSW at 8 p.m. on March 12, Erasing David will be available for online rental across the U.S. for the duration of the festival. For more information, or to watch the video online, visit http://cineticfilmbuff.com/slate/erasing-david.

Erasing David – You think you are being watched living in the United States. Well, the United Kingdom is the third highest surveillance state in the world and it is home to David Bond. As an experiment, David wanted to test the waters and see where his paper footprints say about him. What could bills and purchase habits online provide for the government or any interested party in tracking him down? So for a month he decided to investigate by leaving his life behind and dare a pair of experts to find him. Erasing David might begin like a Spurlockian exercise, but the discoveries are far more chilling than the fat and sugar intake of fast food. Despite the stakes being little more than a game between this particular mouse and cats, Bond’s film – a real-lifeRunning Man for those familiar with Stephen King’s (aka Richard Bachman’s) original story – still evolves into a thriller of some magnitude as our own paranoia of a superhighway becoming an invisible peeper into our private worlds comes front and center. Many of us still walked into a McDonald’s at some point, but we may think twice the next time the convenience of our daily lives might be making it opportune for the many Big Brothers out there to know more than we care about us.

by Charlotte

Erasing David is showing at next week’s SXSW and I can’t recommend it enough.

Filmmaker David Bond grew increasingly worried about how much information is held on us by organisations and the government and took the gutsy step of trying to go off the map for a month. He hired a team of private investigators to track him down and the film follows this journey. As someone living in Britain it’s a terrifying watch, especially in scenes where David manages to get hold of all the data held on him by communications companies and online stores. The film itself is thrilling, funny and although scary, highly entertaining.

Erasing David is one of the best films I’ve seen so far this year, and you should definitely check it out.

There are details below the jump of where and when you can see it.

Official Synopsis:

David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear – a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy – and the loss of it.

Once the bastion of freedom and civil liberties, the UK is now one of the most advanced surveillance societies in the world – ranked third after Russia and China. The average UK adult is now registered on over 700 databases and is caught daily on one of the 4 million CCTV cameras located on nearly every street corner in the country. Increasingly monitored, citizens are being turned into suspects. But if you’ve got nothing to hide, surely there’s nothing to fear?

When David receives a letter informing him that his daughter Ivy is among 25 million residents whose details have been lost by the government’s Child Benefit Office, he begins a journey that will see him hounded across Europe.

David soon discovers some alarming truths about what the government and private companies already know about ordinary citizens. He meets people who have been caught in the crossfire of the database state and have had their lives shattered.

As his concern grows, he makes a life-changing decision. He will leave his pregnant wife and child behind and put himself under surveillance for thirty days. The UK’s top Private Investigators are hired to discover everything they can about him and his family – and track David down as he attempts to vanish. Is it still possible to live a private, anonymous life in the UK?  Or do the state and private companies already know too much about ordinary people?

Forced to contemplate the meaning of privacy – and the loss of it, David’s disturbing journey leaves him with no doubt that although he has nothing to hide, he certainly has something to fear…

Erasing David is a documentary about privacy, surveillance and the database state.

Erasing David will be available on on iTunes and Amazon VOD during SXSW and will then debut on cable VOD two weeks later via the wonderful people at Cinetic.

For those in the UK it’s on release in cinemas from April 29th and will be shown on Channel 4 on the 4th May.

INDIEWIRE BLOG March 10, 2010: “@SXSW: ‘Erasing’ and ‘Crying’ trailers” by Matt Dentler features the film.

@SXSW: ‘Erasing’ and ‘Crying’ trailers
A few days ago, I mentioned two films that we’re launching out of SXSW 2010. If you’re attending SXSW, come check them out, and meet the filmmakers who are coming over from the UK. If you’re not attending SXSW, you will be able to watch Erasing David and Crying With Laughter on iTunes and Amazon VOD.

thanks to net.wars for this great review of the film.

Thanks to the kind people at OUTLOOK on the BBC’s world service for asking David in to talk about the film. Check it out.

Thanks to eFilmCritic for this interview.

SXSW 2010 Interview: “Erasing David” Director David Bond

by David Cornelius The South by Southwest rundown on “Erasing David”: David Bond lives in one of the most intrusive surveillance states in the world. He decides to find out how much private companies and the government know about him by putting himself under surveillance and attempting to disappear – a decision that changes his life forever. Leaving his pregnant wife and young child behind, he is tracked across the database state by two ruthless private investigators, on a chilling journey that forces him to contemplate the meaning of privacy – and the loss of it. Just what is “Erasing David”? “Erasing David” is a feature documentary. I wanted to ask how much of our personal information is floating around in government and corporate databases? To find out, I went on the run for a month and set two of the world’s top private investigators the task of tracking me down, using only publicly available data. What inspired you to attempt this challenge – and document it? When my daughter was a small baby, a letter arrived from the UK government. It was an apology – they had lost her and my data on a CD (it included her name, date of birth, address and my bank details). It really spooked me and I started noticing the growing number of press stories about the database state. I read some research from the London School of Economics that said that the UK is one of the three most intrusive surveillance states in the world. That’s when I decided it was time to make the film. I wanted to know how much private companies and the government know about me by putting myself under surveillance and attempting to disappear. I guess saw it as an adventure which I hoped would make a point. What I didn’t realise was that the experience would be profoundly unsettling and transformative. There’s a “chase movie” vibe to this whole thing. Did you plan from the start on taking this approach, or was the suspense an unexpected result of the challenge? We were pretty sure that given we had a hunter and a quarry, there would be some chase-driven tension in the final film. That said, our initial plan was that the chase element would be a relatively small segment of the film and that there would be much more discussion of the issues. In the edit, we discovered that watching a real-life chase is really compelling, so we went with more of it! I was really surprised at the effect that the challenge had on me. When I look at the film now and see myself looking pale and gaunt it takes be back to how frightening it was at the time. There’s a good reason why people use the phrase “he has a hunted look” – I really had a hunted look! One thing I noticed was that for the whole time I was running away, I had a really stiff neck. A doctor told me that this is a common symptom if you are constantly in “flight” mode. Basically it is your body telling you to look behind you! So at the time, I barely slept, I began to have paranoid thoughts about everybody I met or even passed in the street. I wondered if people were agents of the Private Investigators. I even began to wonder if my producer (and great friend) Ashley had betrayed me in order to make the film turn out a certain way (he hadn’t, by the way, and he’s forgiven me for thinking that!). By the end I had started talking to myself and was showing signs of deepening paranoia. The really freaky thing was that this didn’t just stop after the chase. For a good few weeks afterwards I found it really hard to sleep and settling back into family life was much harder than I thought it would be. The long term effect of making the film (it is over a year now) has been the most profound. I routinely question exchanges of data and information that most people don’t notice. This can be a pain – but it is also really liberating: I better understand the Faustian pact we have with governments and corporations. And I am resolved to fight my and my family’s corner when it comes to letting others learn about, profile and map us. Why did you decide to place yourself at the center of the story instead of just staying home and working on a simpler “talking head” style documentary? I love “talking head” documentaries, and I think we could have treated the issues that way. Sometimes, though, I wonder whether people who are not into the issue can struggle with such a treatment. I wanted people who are really not worried about the database state to enjoy the film and for it to draw them into the issues. To make that work, we needed a strong personal story that highlights the boundary between individual and state. I was already into the debate, I had a young family, I was cheap to hire: what can I say, I gave myself the job… Is that nepotism? Just how hard it is to film yourself while simultaneously trying to remain unnoticeable? I tried to look like a terrorist. I mean a tourist. I had a small HD camera that looked like a tourist camera and I basically hid behind it. It should work fine, but then the paranoid UK government introduced a law so now anyone taking a photograph of a police officer or certain types of building can be deemed to have committed a criminal offence, so you do have to be really careful with the “tourist” cover. There is definitely something paradoxical in the film. I’m trying to hide – to erase myself – whilst simultaneously filming myself and then screening the results. I like the paradox though. I think it reflects what we all feel – that it would be great to be recognised, but also great not to be… What got you started making movies? I’m colour-blind and I made a short film called “Lions are Green” about the experience of seeing the world differently. Colour-blind people may well see the world the same as other colour-blind people – but because they are in the minority, no language develops to describe how it looks. That’s how I got started and I think it’s the same challenge of how to express a minority feeling that keeps me going. Any lessons learned while making this movie? Ask and it might happen. We asked Michael Nyman to do the music. It turned out he’s a privacy campaigner and he said yes. Are you nervous about coming to South by Southwest? This is Erasing David’s US premiere and I’m thrilled that it is happening at SXSW. I’ve wanted to come to the festival for years. My friends are really jealous that I’m attending. So, yes, nervous but really excited. What’s next for you? We’re developing various ideas at the moment. The linking theme is how the individual relates to the group – and how the group shapes the individual. That’s what interests me. Watch this space! Finish this sentence: If I weren’t a filmmaker, I’d probably be… …sorry, does not compute. Beatles or Stones? Beatles. In ten words or less, convince the average moviegoer to watch your film. Erasing David: thriller documentary. You’re in data danger. Be afraid. “Erasing David” has its U.S. premiere as part of the SX Global series. It screens at 8:00 PM March 12 and 11:00 AM March 16.