Date: Tue, 6 Sep 94 18:33:14 PDT
From: RISKS Forum <risks@csl.sri.com>
Subject: RISKS DIGEST 16.39

RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest  Tuesday 6 September 1994  Volume 16 : Issue 39

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Date: Mon, 5 Sep 1994 18:37:31 -0700
From: Phil Agre <pagre@ucsd.edu>
Subject: Some privacy notes

The September issue of *Smithsonian* magazine includes a long article on
"ubiquitous computing" research at Xerox, with some attention to the moral
issues relating to tracking and monitoring.

The 5 Sep 1994 issue of *Business Week* has a cover story on database
marketing.  Like most *Business Week* cover stories it's a superficial rehash
of items you might have seen elsewhere.  But it might be useful as a summary.

Finally, here is a wonderful quotation from a much longer article by Edwin
McDowell, ``The scrambling is on for off-season tourism'' (*The New York
Times*, 5 Sep 1994, business section, pp. 17-18) on off-season tourism
marketing:

  "Another reason for the growing success of off-season strategies is that
  "states have become a lot more sophisticated with their data bases", said
  James V. Cammisa Jr., a travel industry consultant in Miami.  "They know
  where the peaks and valleys in their tourism operations are, and they know
  how to market the off-season effectively.

  "Kentucky's data base showed that only 350,000 of the 2.5 million Canadians
  who drove through the state last year stayed overnight.

  "Our research showed that 83 percent of them come from January to 
  June, headed for Florida, South Carolina and the beaches of Alabama and
  Mississippi", said Robert Stewart, the Commissioner of Travel Development
  for Kentucky.  To entice more of them, Kentucky officials will soon hold 
  a press conference in Toronto and Canadians will be offered a card giving
  them discounts at hotels, restaurants and attractions along three of
  Kentucky's interstate highways.

  "Also for the first time, Kentucky is using direct mail to bolster anemic
  winter occupancy rates in its 15 resort parks that offer overnight
  accommodations year-round."  (page 18)

This kind of database marketing is worth thinking about in the context of
rapidly advancing proposals for thoroughgoing instrumentation of cars and
roads under the rubric of "intelligent vehicle-highway systems", particularly
given that most of the marketing organizations mentioned in the article are in
fact government agencies using commercial methods for the benefit of private
businesses.  

Phil Agre, UCSD

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End of RISKS-FORUM Digest 16.39 
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