"Looking at this solely as a geek and not taking into account the legal issues, any information that has been publicly available on the net at any point should be considered permanently public."

I believe this to be true, although without regard for the details of this case, because I look at it from the point of view of censorship. When taken to the extreme, in a world where there is no censorship of any kind, a person cannot even censor themselves, given that nothing ever made public could be permanently deleted.