Sharing Big Data Safely

Chapter 1. So Secure It’s Lost

What do buried 17th-century treasure, encoded messages from the Siege of Vicksburg in the US Civil War, tree squirrels, and big data have in common?

Someone buried a massive cache of gemstones, coins, jewelry, and ornate objects under the floor of a cellar in the City of London, and it remained undiscovered and undisturbed there for about 300 years. The date of the burying of this treasure is fixed with considerable confidence over a fairly narrow range of time, between 1640 and 1666. The latter was the year of the Great Fire of London, and the treasure appeared to have been buried before that destructive event. The reason to conclude that the cache was buried after 1640 is the presence of a small, chipped, red intaglio with the emblem of the newly appointed 1st Viscount Stafford, an aristocratic title that had only just been established that year. Many of the contents of the cache appear to be from approximately that time period, late in the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth I. Others—such as a cameo carving from Egypt—were probably already quite ancient when the owner buried the collection of treasure in the early 17th century.

What this treasure represents and the reason for hiding it in the ground in the heart of the City of London are much less certain than its age. The items were of great value even at the time they were hidden (and are of much greater value today). The location where the treasure was buried was beneath a cellar at what ...