The Idea of a National Data Center and the Issue of Personal Privacy

A mid-1960s proposal to create a National Data Center has long been recognized as a turning point in the history of privacy and surveillance. This article shows that the story of the center also demonstrates how bureaucrats and researchers interested in managing the American economy came to value personal data stored as “data doubles,” especially the cards and files generated to represent individuals within the Social Security bureaucracy. The article argues that the United States welfare state, modeled after corporate life insurance, created vast databanks of data doubles that later became attractive to economic researchers and government planners. This story can be understood as helping to usher in our present age of personal data, one in which data doubles have become not only commodities, but the basis for a new capitalism. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Histories of Data and the Database edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Theodore M. Porter.

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Christoph Pilger, Lars Ceranna, and Christian Bönnemann (Eds.): Monitoring compliance with the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT)—contributions by the German National Data Center

Journal of Seismology ◽

10.1007/s10950-018-9772-7 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 22 (5) ◽

pp. 1335-1337

Author(s):

Steven J. Gibbons

Keyword(s):

Data Center ◽

Nuclear Test ◽

National Data ◽

Test Ban ◽

Nuclear Test Ban ◽

Test Ban Treaty

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Editorial

Journal of Income Distribution ◽

10.25071/1874-6322.40390 ◽

2018 ◽

pp. 1-4

Author(s):

Daniele Checci ◽

Janet Gornick

Keyword(s):

Income Distribution ◽

Data Center ◽

Research Community ◽

Final Outcome ◽

Special Issue ◽

National Data ◽

Blind Review ◽

The University ◽

Selection Of ◽

Cross National

The articles included in this special issue of the Journal of Income Distribution are a selection of papers originally presented at the first LIS-LWS Users Conference, hosted by LIS, the cross-national data center in Luxembourg. The conference took place at the University of Luxembourg in Belval, Luxembourg, on April 27- 28, 2017. The submitted papers underwent a process of blind review, and this collection of five articles is the final outcome. Taken as a whole, these articles constitute an interesting overview of the ways in which the research community uses the LIS-LWS Databases, which provide researchers access to microdata on income and wealth, respectively.

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