The Beast of Business (1968) and The International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines

Harvey Matusow was an odd character. In the 1960s, after his confusing stint as a communist-turned-FBI informer-turned-whistleblower, he found himself involved in the underground scenes in New York and, later, in London. It was in London where he founded the International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines.

In support of this organization, Matusow published The Beast of Business in 1968. The book begins by explaining that "abolition" doesn't exactly mean abolition:

The purpose of the International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines is not to do away with positive uses of the machine, or of the computer in society. After all, the computer does have a good, healthy and constructive function in mathematics and the other sciences, and in solving certain problems facing, for instance, scientists, architects, and engineers. 

But when the uses of the computer involve business or government, and the individual is tyrannized, then we make our stand. ... The ISFADPM is not opposed to [computer] use in the laboratory, assembling mathematical formulae, working for the physicist, the chemist, the engineer. But when the government starts to use the computer for ends (which are planned) such as filing banks of information, complete dossiers on every individual in a country, you end up with the kind of Big Brother State predicted by George Orwell in 1984.

Matusow describes a bright line between using computers in hard sciences versus soft sciences. He was not necessarily alone here -- privacy concerns over computers in the social sciences had been raised years earlier. Then the tone quickly changes, with a manifesto warning against the loss of personal freedoms via obedience to technology. (This manifesto is vaguely reminiscent of another more famous one.) 

Manifesto

Of the International Society for the Abolition of Data Processing Machines

You are a member of society. That society is made up of free citizens and free people. These free people through free elections have determined that their free institutions will continue to exist. They have declared that, if necessary, they would defend their right to live with their freedom, in their free way, and continue to enjoy the benefits and privileges which are guaranteed to citizens in free countries.

It is upon you and your friends, faced with an over-technological society, that the future of your country rests. Your country and your society have been placed in jeopardy: their defence is possible only if you face up to the challenge presented to you by the abuse of the computer.

In the transition from non-computerised life to life in a Big-Brother, computerised society you may at first feel confused. It is the purpose of this book to help you over these rough spots as rapidly as possible and to lay the foundations for your successful career as a Computer Fighter.

Making a good Computer Fighter is no different from making a good citizen. The rules are the same - Know Your Own Job, Know your enemy and be ready to step into the job of the man ahead of you.

Most of the book is presented as a series of anecdotes, none of them sourced, many of which sound like urban legends. An example: "A major computer installation in Denmark ran into trouble in the summer of 1968. It seemed to go haywire and was giving out all sorts of mis-information. Upon investigation, specialists found the computer's ailment was SUNSTROKE." (I was unable to find any further information about this incident.) 

One of the final sections of the book is a "guerrilla warfare manual for striking back at the computer", which includes the following helpful tip: "Women going into a room with a bank of computers are advised to wear a lot of the cheapest perfume they can find - filling the room with an odour which can affect many allergic computers."

Given Matusow's general eccentricity, I'm guessing he wrote most of this with a straight face. It's a weird and interesting time capsule of the early confusion and fear caused by computers. 

The Computer and Invasion of Privacy (1966): Part II

July 28, 1966: Burton E. Squires comments on "artificial intelligence". (Obsolete spellings of "programer" and "programing" are in the original source.)

One often hears the remark that computers can do only what they are told to do. While this may be essentially true, it is practically false. Such a statement completely ignores the speed and complexity of problems that can be handled by a modern digital computer. It is, in a sense, like saying that an automobile won't take you anywhere you can't walk. Now, an automobile is about 15 times faster than walking. A modern computer is about a million times faster than paper and pencil. 

However, a computer is a machine, not an animate being. As an automobile performs no better than the skill of its designers and driver, a computer performs no better than the skill of its engineers and programers. Some of these programers are extremely skillful and sophisticated. They can write programs which give the computer a kind of "artificial intelligence." In such programs the computer is allowed to operate in a simulated random manner, to evaluate the effects of these random operations, and to modify its own operating program. As a result, the computer can literally write its own programs for the direct solution of a difficult problem. By such means it is sometimes said that computers "learn." After a short time even the programer has little knowledge of what the machine is actually doing, and he may be unable to predict the future behavior of the machine. The machine is able to learn because it was programed to do so according to a specific learning theory. In this way the intellect of the programer is still operating. 

Computers now under construction will be able to process pictures as readily as present computers process linguistic information. A whole new era of information handling is upon us. It is quite reasonable to speculate that within the next 10 years computer terminals will be as commonplace as color television sets are today. There can be little doubt that the establishment of a Federal data center could bring greater economy and efficiency to Government operations. It could do much more. It could make available to the executive branch immediate and up-to-date information summaries on all aspects of our national, business, and personal lives. Whether this can be done without violating the rights of individuals seems difficult at best and unlikely at least.

The Computer and Invasion of Privacy (1966)

In 1965, a National (or sometimes, Federal) Data Center was proposed, which would permit centralized management of statistical data collected by various U.S. federal agencies. The goal was wider availability and better correlation of statistical population data for social science researchers. The evolution and ultimate failure of the proposal is documented by Rebecca S. Kraus.

The House Committee on Government Operations heard testimony on July 26 - 28, 1966 about the the proposed Center and its potential privacy risks. Some remarks from Paul Baran are in line with modern security practice.

If the computer industry is to avoid external regulation, then it behooves everyone who is involved with time-shared systems handling potentially sensitive information to start working, or a[t] least thinking, about the problem of privacy. The computer industry should take the initiative and the responsibility of building in the needed safeguards itself before "Big Brother" is forced to do it himself...

To be more specific, what safeguards do I envision? Of course, we do not know all the answers yet. But, clearly, there are steps that we should be considering, including:

Provision for minimal cryptographic-type protection to all communications lines that carry potentially embarrassing data -- not super-duper unbreakable cryptography, just some minimal, reversible, logical operations upon the data stream to make the eavesdropper's job so difficult that it isn't worth his time...

Never store file data in the complete "clear." Perform some simple -- but key controllable -- operation on the data so that a simple access to storage will not dump stored data out into the clear. 

Make random external audits of file operating programs a standard practice to insure that no programmer has intentionally or inadvertently slipped in a "secret door" to permit a remote point access [to] information to which he is not entitled by sending in a "password."

When the day comes when individual file systems are interconnected on a widespread basis, let us have studied the problem sufficiently so that we can create sensible, precise ground rules on cross-system interrogation access.

Provide mechanisms to detect abnormal informational requests. That is, if a particular file is receiving an excessive number of inquiries or there is an unusual number of cross-file inquiries coming from one source, flag the request to a human operator.

Build in provisions to verify and record the source of requests for information interrogations.

Audit information requests and inform ·authorities of suspected misuse of the system.

This is followed by some discussion on aggregated and anonymized ("statistical") information vs. personally-identifiable information, and how personal information might be protected by legally-mandated system design.

Mr. HORTON. [I]s it possible technically to design a system so that only statistical information could be utilized or be furnished and thus protect the-so-called individual information?  

Mr. BARAN. If you say I know all the questions I want to ask in the future, perhaps. But if you don't, that means you have to keep the information in raw form. This is the most efficient way of keeping it. 

Mr. HORTON. I am assuming you are an expert in this field (the field of computers and what they can do. I am asking you from a technical standpoint whether or not it is possible -- in other words, could we pass a law that would require the construction of a computer that would only produce statistical information that would be foolproof insofar as individual information was concerned?

Mr. BARAN. "Foolproof" is a rough word. I think we could build safeguards to make it difficult. How effective they are, I think, requires a level of detail that we have not examined yet. 

Mr. HORTON. The point I am trying to make is that I think any law Congress would enact to safeguard the right of individuals in this area would depend to a large measure upon the state of the art. 

Mr. BARAN. That is right. 

Mr. HORTON. With regard to the technical aspects, I do not think we have sufficient information to protect the private individual in the computerized systems. 

Mr. BARAN. That is right. The technical art is changing very rapidly in computers. The speed of the computer is going up tremendously. The cost is coming down. The size of the memories is expanding very rapidly. As we look to the future we could probably see increases of size of computers -- perhaps on the order of 10,000 times as powerful as today's computers.