Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
of Agriculture maintained independent computer databases, making it impossible for
economists and other social scientists to combine information about individuals. Carl
Kaysen, the chair of the committee, described it this way:
It is becoming increasingly difficult to make informed and intelligent pol-
icy decisions on such questions in the area of poverty as welfare payments, fam-
ily allowances, and the like, simply because we lack sufficient “dis-aggregated”
information—breakdowns by the many relevant social and economic variables—
that is both wide in coverage and readily usable. The information the Government
does have is scattered among a dozen agencies, collected on a variety of not neces-
sarily consistent bases, and not really accessible to any single group of policy-makers
or research analysts. A test of the proposition, for example, that poor performance
in school and poor prospects of social mobility are directly related to family size
would require data combining information on at least family size and composition,
family income, regional location, city size, school performance, and post-school oc-
cupational history over a period of years in a way that is simply not now possible,
even though the separate items of information were all fed into some part of the
Federal statistical system at some time. [62]
After Kaysen's committee recommended the creation of a National Data Center,
there was an immediate outcry from citizens and legislators expressing concerns about
possible abuses of a massive, centralized government database containing detailed infor-
mation about millions of Americans. The US House of Representatives created a Special
Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy, which held hearings about these issues [63].
In the early 1970s, Elliot Richardson, the secretary of the US Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare, convened a group to recommend policies for the development
of government databases that would protect the privacy of American citizens. The secre-
tary's Advisory Committee of Automated Personal Data Systems, Records, Computers,
and the Rights of Citizens produced a report for Congress, which included the following
“bill of rights” for the Information Age [64]:
CODE OF FAIR INFORMATION PRACTICES
1. There must be no personal data record-keeping systems whose very
existence is secret.
2. There must be a way for a person to find out what information about the
person is in a record and how it is used.
3. There must be a way for a person to prevent information about the person
that was obtained for one purpose from being used or made available for
other purposes without the person's consent.
4. There must be a way for a person to correct or amend a record of
identifiable information about the person.
5. Any organization creating, maintaining, using, or disseminating records of
identifiable personal data must assure the reliability of the data for their
intended use and must take precautions to prevent misuses of the data.
