With the aggressive pace of technological change and the onslaught of news regarding data breaches, cyber-attacks, and technological threats to privacy and security, it is easy to assume these are fundamentally new threats. The pace of technological change is slower than it feels, and many seemingly new categories of threats have been with us longer than we remember. Nervous System is a monthly series that approaches issues of data privacy and cyber security from the context of history—to look to the past for clues about how to interpret the present and prepare for the future.

 

Modern usages of computer technology to predict crime and allocate police resources have their roots in a 1965 initiative by President Lyndon Johnson. The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice was tasked with determining how to leverage computers to help solve the nation's "crime problem."