Abstract
Technological advancement and increasing data collection activities compelled the call for a National Data Center in 1965. Theoretically, the Center would increase efficiency and diminish costs, as the inefficiencies of information transfer between agencies and organizations steadily rose. However, a firestorm of criticism met the proposal from a number of sectors due to a perceived lack of privacy concerns, which eventually spelled the Center's demise. The destruction of an explicit locale for data storage and retrieval, however, catalyzed the formation of numerous implicit data centers that jeopardized privacy to a far greater degree than it was originally feared the Center would. The history of the National Data Center's demise and the subsequent construction of implicit data centers consists of a useful case study when considering the proper reaction to perceived privacy concerns regarding new technologies.Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to Vanderbilt Undergraduate Research Journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (linked here). By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are available for wide dissemination at no cost to readers, with proper attribution (acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal), in educational and other non-commercial settings. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process.
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