marketing "privacy": a nonproblem?

[Vladimir Z. Nuri]

HF wrote a recent message about the "doubleclick" advertising
service. I don't know much about it but some things he mentioned
sparked my neurons. 

regarding privacy, it seems that there are a lot of different
views and specious arguments. we don't really have a clear idea
in our culture what privacy is or when it is really being 
invaded. is it being invaded when marketers create databases
of users and their preferences? this is a frequent topic of
conversation here. if we are on the side that says "yes", it
seems there is such an enormous industry pushing very hard
from the other side that a so-called "pro-privacy" position is
untenable. are marketers creating the equivalent of what TCM
calls "dossiers"?

I just had a brainstorm that perhaps the problem of marketing
clashing with privacy is completely nonexistent. what marketers
really want is to TARGET PEOPLE'S ATTENTION. they don't necessarily
want to know who those people are!! a rather paradoxical situation,
but the two are NOT the same. 

imagine that a marketer selling Widgets could send a direct mailing to 
people who have an interest in Widgets. now, currently what has
to happen is that marketers have to collect info on various people
and their interests, and then sort that for "widget interest" to
get their mailing list. but the overall database is in a sense
a dossier.

but what we should note is that the marketer DOESN'T CARE at all
about the real identity of the people he is mailing to. in fact
it is totally superfluous. he only wants to send his literature
to people who are interested in widgets, and he doesn't care who
they are or their other interests. in fact, marketers keep track
of "other interests" only insofar as they can be used to correlate
with what they are actually trying to screen for.

so what I am getting at is that I think "dossiers" tend to associate
a lot of information about a real person, in a way that people
can get info on that person given their name or whatever. the point
is that marketers don't really care who is who, and don't really
want to necessarily have a database that gives the real identity
of people. they only need a way of delivering their literature
to people with particular interests.

let me give an example to clarify this. suppose a database existed
somewhere that contained a total profile of me and all my interests.
but I am not called "V.Z.Nuri" in the database, but #3343. furthermore,
there is an "address" in that database, and it can be used to reach
me, but it is unique to that database and can't be found in any other,
and furthermore, no one can correlate that address with my real 
identity.

voila-- the marketer doesn't really want anything more than this. 
yet in a sense my privacy is completely protected. suppose that
police agent tries to query the database to get info on me. if it
really is secure, all he has is info that can never be tied to 
me. such a system creates a very important use for anonymous remailers.
of course digital cash plays a big role in this too.

in the same vein, it is possible for me to "buy" something from a 
company without them knowing that it was in result to them
sending information to so-and-so identity #3343. actually, it could
be set up that I tell them, "I am responding to your direct mail
ad campaign #1634" so they can gauge the efficacy of their advertising,
but they don't know who of their database was involved. 

when I think of "dossiers" I think of info that can be tied to
REAL PEOPLE. but it is quite possible to create an "interest 
distribution system" that would keep marketers happy but still
not be able to be tied to people's real identities. when one thinks
of the horrors of classic privacy abuse, one thinks of the way
the Nazi's grabbed (Dutch?) records to find jews, or the way the
NSA kept files on people and responded to Nixon queries for
radicals. but it seems to me it would be possible to create a system
in which people's interests are tracked, yet their real identities
are dissociated from that information. furthermore, you can dissociate
the mechanism to do so-- anonymous remailers have no connection to
companies that deliver info through them.

notice that much of the above can be achieved in cyberspace with
the use of a pseudonym. if you are signed up through a provider
that protects your identity (most of them do), then you can do
whatever you want in cyberspace and theoretically nothing can
be tied to your new identity. furthermore, if you think you have
accumulated too much "baggage" associated with your current identity,
you can always start afresh.

===

this will sound quite heretic, but I think marketing is actually a
very legitimate business and that cpunks might actually achieve some
of their goals by considering how to create a better marketing system.
in essence, marketing is the attempt to match up people with information
and products that interest them. in a way, this is a very similar
problem to trying to match up people to mailing lists and newsgroups
and articles/files that interest them. spamming is the cyberspatial
equivalent of a problem that existed before cyberspace: junk mail,
so to speak. 

is there an efficient system whereby suppliers and consumers 
can be matched up, but at the same time preserving privacy? 
it seems to me a key question of information technology, perhaps
a "killer app" in this area is just now waiting to be born.
that's all that marketers want, and in fact instead
of seeing them as agents of satan, we should just see them as trying
to fulfill customer desires with their own products-- the essence
of capitalism. the fact that marketers in our culture are so aggressive
speaks of how effective capitalism is.

people see junk mail as "junk", but notice that the junk is in
the eye of the beholder. what if you got on a direct mailing list
that sent you info on products you were considering buying anyway?
in a sense, "junk mail" is mail that we don't care about, not 
merely mail from marketers. we get mail from marketers all the
time that we appreciate!! if someone can create a more foolproof
system that preserves privacy at the same time, all worlds are
satisfied. you have the marketer happy, the consumer happy, and
the privacy protection too.

as long as one tries to defy marketers basic drive of trying to
target people with particular interests, I think this is fighting
the wind or trying to stop the river. but if one could find 
a way of supporting their basic motivation, the scenario becomes 
totally transformed.  building a marketing mechanism that preserves
privacy may do far more for privacy protection in the future
than a zillion remailers. I think the key is to analyze why people
*want* to do things that seem to violate privacy (such as marketers),
and then finding new ways of doing the same thing while preserving privacy,
rather than trying to defy their basic drives (such as collecting
information on potential customers etc.).

===

imagine a massive cyberspace system that was actually a database
of everyone who wanted to register, containing their interests.
it would be an accepted practice that all marketers could use
this system. people would register if the system was actually
effective in only sending them info that they really wanted to
see. it would be like an index into the population the
way Yahoo is currently an index into cyberspace. one could create
guidelines and measures by which spamming could be minimized.
the database might be able to minimize the effect of bad marketers
and indiscriminate mailings etc.  it seems like a very interesting
problem worthy of attention.  the returns for someone who could
pull off such a thing would be tremendous. 

I continue to believe that many problems that people are 
insoluable or in eternal conflict, such as marketers 
and privacy, could be harmonized with some sharp ingenuity.