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 actually been with us longer than we remember. Nervous System is a monthly blog that approaches issues of data privacy and cybersecurity from the context of history—to look to the past for clues about how to interpret the present and prepare for the future.

In 1887, Warden R.W. McClaughry of the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet (now Joliet Correctional Center) introduced a radical new idea. To keep track of recidivist offenders and identify prisoners of extra-special concern due to past crimes, he implemented a “database” of criminals. The database consisted of a collection of paper-based records containing pictures of prisoners’ faces, along with a set of facial and bodily measurements. McClaughry got the idea from a French policeman and pioneer of biometrics, Alphonse Bertillon.