How "Archive" Became a Verb

Abstract

Public concerns and expert testimony in the congressional hearings about networked computing and the potential for data abuse were perhaps overwrought. Orwellian visions from critics that predicted "1984 by 1970" were highly implausible. Numerous studies of government agencies' data operations commissioned around this time found that most did not have comprehensive information about data sources, storage locations, or formats. Most of these congressional hearings and subcommittee reports--including reports from federal agencies and the National Academy of Sciences--argued that the invasion of privacy and abuse of data banks were not inherent in the transition to computerized systems and automated recordkeeping. Still, many legal critics' predictions, as well as the public's concerns, turned out to be sounder than social scientists and data managers of the time believed. For decades, stakeholders inside and outside government lobbied for more information about the government's recordkeeping practices and data archives. Throughout the reports and rebuttals, experts and data specialists struggled to locate where the risks of accessing data in aggregate actually resided, and where safeguards should be placed in the data lifecycle to preserve privacy.