IAPP Meeting • September 30, 2015

Sarah E. Igo

Associate Professor of History

Vanderbilt University

sarah.igo@vanderbilt.edu

Big Data, circa 1936

Signing of the

Social Security Act, 1935

post

Postmen delivering Social Security

number application blanks, 1936

Candler Building, Baltimore –

Social Security Headquarters

Dog tags

First

modern

privacy

crisis,

circa 1964

Alan Westin, Privacy and Freedom (1967):

“To its profound distress, the American public

has recently learned of a revolution in the

techniques by which public and private

authorities can conduct scientific surveillance

over the individual.”

-“telephone tapping”

-“electronic eavesdropping”

-“hidden television-eye monitoring”

-“truth measurement via polygraph”

-“personality testing for personnel”

-“dossiers of personal data”

“SSA’s records contain one of the

world’s largest concentrations of

personal data, all of it indexed

according to SSN, and much of it

instantly retrievable from computer

records.”

-Social Security Commissioner, 1977

“…loss of individuality, loss of

control over information, the

possibility of linking data banks

to create dossiers, rigid decision

making by powerful, centralized

bureaucracies.”