

The Computer Data Bank: will it kill your freedom? (1968) - TriinT
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/06/05/the-computer-data-bank-will-it-kill-your-freedom

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patio11
Tech marches on:

 _5,000-word dossier for each of 200 million Americans on a single, 4,800-foot
reel of one-inch plastic computer tape. It would take no longer than four
minutes to find an individual file, and a print-out would follow in moments._

Interesting to hear when a 4 minute seek time on an index would have been
considered short, on a data set which was merely 8 terabytes or so. By
comparison, that wouldn't hold all the photos uploaded to Flickr. Yesterday.

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maurycy
Depressingly accurate.

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zeynel1
I found it interesting that writers in the 60s saw that computers and software
(database or data banks) were like the early 20th century railroads and
telephone companies. I somehow thought that modern similar views such as by
Eben Moglen (steel = software) <http://www.geof.net/blog/2006/12/10/eben-
moglen> were new. Interesting nevertheless.

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LogicHoleFlaw
I was floored to see that this article could have been written yesterday, with
only minor revisions. We are still dealing with the same problems, 40 years
later.

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m_eiman
It's also interesting to note that it's not a major problem, even after fourty
years. Sure, we're registered in more databases than we can count, but the
amount of data is also a sort of defense against abuse; it's like a school of
fish using their numbers to "hide" from predators.

~~~
zeynel1
Nice metaphor. But Electronic Frontier Foundation appears to disagree: "New
technologies are radically advancing our freedoms, but they are also enabling
unparalleled invasions of privacy." <http://www.eff.org/issues/privacy>

~~~
m_eiman
Yes, massive abuse is -possible-. But it's just not happen very often, at
least as far as I know. When was the last time you heard of someone being
blackmailed using information found this way?

The worst cases of information abuse I've heard of in Sweden are medical
personel (sp?) reading the journals of famous people, and I think that someone
at a telephone company checked who his girlfriend talked/texted with and/or
where she was. I'm sure that there's more that we don't hear about, but it
appears to be a fairly limited problem.

The biggest problem I see is that we're building a very useful infrastructure
for abuse if something like Stasi (hah! was going to write "the Nazis", but
stayed my hand in time) should come to power. Then they won't have to spend
time building a surveilance apparatus, and can get on with the harassing right
away.

