I didn't say delete. I specifically say I would like to annotate any personal data of me on the web with my preference for public release. My preferences may change over time.

I'm not asking to change the way the internet works or to pass any kind of law or anything. I'm simply purposing a standard way to, in one location, provide some feedback about all my data.

I would imagine that if we did this, at a later stage web applications would either certify that they followed this standard -- or not. No skin off my back in either case.

So for the case of the guy running for office, he'd just have one place to go to in order to say no, I really don't want to share that any more. And perhaps provide an explanation of what happened and why he feels the way he does. People would still be free to distribute whatever data they wanted, but a mechanism is provided to centralize new information related to me. Not the data, but a control block -- which apps can choose to use, ignore, display as an annotation, etc.