The presentation covered the history of Data Privacy and Security back to the age of Prohibition and to a couple of landmark Supreme Court Cases: Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), and the landmark case that overturned Olmstead, Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967).

The Omlstead case was controversial because it gave the government of the United States broad-reaching powers to deny the people privacy in matters where they would naturally expect privacy. The case led to one of the most cited dissents in Supreme Court law from Justice Louis D. Brandeis.

Olmstead was 93 years ago, and Katz was 53 years ago, and quite a bit has happened since then. Back then, the law revolved around telephone calls, but the world quickly moved to networking and to the digital movement of information.

Olmstead was 92 years ago, and Katz was 53 years ago. Quite a bit has happened since then. Telephony has given way to the digital age and encryption systems have evolved to keep people’s privacy safe. The government’s and third party’s ability to intrude on people’s privacy has also evolved. As more robust encryption technologies have evolved, stronger mechanisms to crack those codes is also evolving.

At the same time, entire bodies law at the state, local, national, and international levels have evolved to try to keep up with technological advances and the reasonable expectation of privacy that people hold. At the same time, it is clear that the law and standards tend to lag the pace of technological progress.

Technological change has not slowed down. Encryption, once a tool to help with people’s privacy, has been weaponized to deny people their own information. Movements to the cloud and AI technologies promise to further disrupt the privacy space, with quantum computers threatening to wash away most of our prime number theory-based encryption systems overnight.