Phil Agre Department of Information Studies University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 90095-1520 USA pagre@ucla.eduThese pages contain about forty messages that I sent to the Risks Digest during 1994. Most of them appear with the header of the issue of Risks that they appeared in. Some do not, either because I forgot to save the relevant issue of Risks or (in a few cases) because Peter Neumann chose not to publish them. (Let me know if you come up with the missing issue number for any of the published ones.) The pages do not contain any of the responses that these messages received. (The ones about risk perception research, calling number ID, targeted campaigning, and the high-tech university all provoked extensive discussion, both on and off the Risks Digest.) A few of them do, however, contain my own replies when these added useful information or clarifications. Although I am not entirely happy with the phrasing in each of these messages, particularly with regard to the intensity of some of the rhetoric, I have refrained from editing them.
Here are the messages about privacy issues:
Calling Number ID debate (advocating per-line blocking) Computer telephony (software for business use of CNID) Data mining (privacy concerns in transaction databases) Intelligent Transportation Systems (transportation industry conference) IRS (assessing data leaks) Orwell was off by 499 channels and what to do about it (video services) Rental cars and financial derivatives (two articles) Security is not privacy (cigarette companies and reporters' travel records) Some privacy notes (ubiquitous computing and marketing databases) The digital individual (special issue) Tracking (rental car tracking) Wellness turned on its head (medical records)Here are the messages about other consequences of databases of personal information:
Campaigns and Elections (databases and targeted campaigning) Gambling (transaction tracking and addiction) Joe Camel's 10,000,000 best friends (more on databases and addiction) The high-tech university: 500 channels, all alike (a worrisome vision)Here are the messages about ideologies of technology:
Computer mess at Greyhound (reengineering gone wrong) Irrational risk research (risk perception) Risks of cliche collisions on the information superhighway (highway metaphor) SimCity (article on limits of simulation) Spelling correction (dangers of political simulation) Uninterruptable thought patterns (language and power supplies)And here are the messages about everything else:
Computer model of Haiti (mapping social divisions) CPSR Annual Meeting (announcement and web pages) Derivatives (the economy is wound up real tight) Desktop check forgery (drifting to a virtual world) Getting help on the Internet (a how-to) Intel plant in Albuquerque (report from an activist group) It's a real world out there and the Internet is part of it (free speech) Scams (the new world of international telecom) Subjectively, it's eerie (high-tech auto sound) Tactical research (PR uses of science) Well-regulated militias (using the net) Wild agents in Telescript? (agents and viruses)Go back to the top of the page