This article from PR Watch may be useful for those groups doing advocacy
work. big brother is wired and he may be watching you.
kelly
URL: http://www.prwatch.org/97-Q1/internet.html#start
A Publication of the Center for Media & Democracy
Vol. 4, No. 1 / First Quarter 1997
The Public Affairs Council
Big Brother Gets Wired:
The Dark Side of the Internet
Your boss calls you into his office and hands you a phone number.
"Call your senator," he says. "I've got a piece of legislation that I
need killed, and I want you to lobby against it for me. Here's a
script spelling out what I want you to say. I'll just sit right here
and listen in on your conversation."
This scenario--a vision of dictatorial hell for employees, heaven for
corporate lobbyists--is not only possible but happening today on a
mass scale, thanks to companies like Gnossos Software.
In a leaflet for a product called "Net Action," Gnossos gives an
example of the way computer database and internet technologies are
giving corporations unprecedented control over the political
activities of their employees:
"Susan Michaels, Grassroots Director for ABC Corporation, comes to
work on Tuesday morning and is greeted with email from the Washington
office regarding an urgent legislative effort," the leaflet begins.
"An amendment is being offered to the telecommunications reform bill
which is against ABC Corporation's interests. The Washington Office
requests a Net Action alert for the House of Representatives. Time is
now 9 a.m.
"Susan drafts an email and reviews it with the Washington office until
10 a.m. At 10 a.m. Susan sends a corporate-wide email broadcast which
hits 10,000 desktops throughout the United States within 30 minutes,
using the internal email system. Susan requests immediate Net Action
messages to be sent to [log in to unmask] to be forwarded to
Congress.
"Between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. 1,000 employees (10%) take 5 minutes and
send an email with their name, address, and message to
[log in to unmask] Net Action properly formats the email and routes
it to the office of each constituent's legislators."
"At 5 p.m. Susan receives a thankful call from the Washington office
stating that the primary proponents of the planned amendment have
decided to pull the controversial amendment, in part due to grassroots
activity."
"The next morning Susan receives a file with the full list of the
1,000 respondents to the Net Action. In 10 minutes, she processes
these responses . . ."
This Orwellian scenario is no futuristic fantasy. It is a chilling
example of the dark side of modern technology in actual current
practice. Using the combined power of computer databases and internet
communications, corporations are "empowering" their employees by
ordering them to lobby en masse, while digitally recording their
activities so they can be "processed" and monitored.
This type of technological trickery was not only tolerated but
celebrated at the Public Affairs Council's "National Grassroots
Conference for Corporate and Association Professionals" in Key West.
In workshop after workshop, presenters stressed the importance of
using modern computer and communications technologies to the fullest
extent possible.
==========================
"Get employees to see
that they're not just
volunteering their time,
but that it's part of their job."
==========================
The sophistication of a company or trade association's database and
communications system is the key to the "grassroots" lobbying
technique. The first step is to store data on company employees and
retirees in a computerized database which is "enriched" with 9-digit
zip codes and matching state and federal legislative districts,
enabling the company to identify each employee's state and federal
legislators are, along with his or her voter precinct. Databases also
keep track of employee phone numbers, e-mail addresses, history of
political activity and contributions, special connections and
potential influence over specific politicians.
This database in turn is integrated into "campaign management
software," which keeps a record of each individual's political
lobbying on behalf of the company. Through the internet and automated
telephone technology, companies can rapidly "patch through" employees
to the offices of their elected officials.
"Corporate Action Networks"
The pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. is one of the companies that is
using the information superhighway to mobilize a "Merck Action
Network" of 8,800 company employees and retirees. Participants receive
a quarterly Grassroots Update and "Action Alert," and participate in
their industry-wide trade association lobbying network, the Health
Care Leadership Council.
Merck's Laura Romeau described how Merck leads the troops using its
own internet website. According to Romeau, the company deliberately
has avoided registering the website (http://congress.nw.dc.us/merck/)
on any internet search engine, so as "to preserve it as a membership
privilege" and to prevent "anyone else from going into it."
Merck's recent actions include generating 800 individual telephone
calls to Congress in order to lobby for "FDA Reform" (i.e. speeding up
pharmaceutical drug approvals), along with gathering 80,000 names in a
petition drive.
Romeau emphasized that Merck, in contrast to some corporations, is
"very careful about who, what, and how much we ask people to do,"
although she qualified this by saying "except during the health care
reform debate, when everything was on the line."
Whatever "very careful" means, it does not mean that Merck avoids
pressuring its workers into supporting its political positions. "Get
employees to see that they're not just volunteering their time, but
that it's part of their job," Romeau advised. She also advised fellow
PR pros to monitor the success of their grassroots efforts by "asking
employees for copies of letters and responses."
Upon first perusal, Merck's website looks indeed like an appealing
model of computer-enhanced individual empowerment. It includes a
database enabling visitors to type in their zip code and see a list of
their congressional representatives. Other features make it easy to
quickly compose and send email. Rather than going directly to the
congressperson in question, however, the email gets routed through the
company's web server--a subtle way of signaling employees that their
messages can be easily monitored.
During a "Fundamental Grassroots" workshop, PAC staffer Leslie
Swift-Rosenzweig kept a straight face as she described employee
participation in company grassroots lobbying as "voluntary." She
added, however, that "some companies are putting grassroots activities
into their job descriptions."
==========================
"People will be anxious to please you.
They remember the one who hired them."
--Jack Mongoven, Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin
==========================
Jack Mongoven of Mongoven, Biscoe & Duchin was even more blunt. Asked
how public affairs officers could get more employees active in company
lobbying programs, Mongoven replied bluntly, "Get a letter from the
CEO or a company vice-president. . . . People will be anxious to
please you. They remember the one who hired them."
The Flip Side
Merck's annual grassroots budget is "$200-300 thousand per year,"
Romeau said--small in comparison to the company's lobbying and
Political Action Committee donor programs. At first glance, therefore,
the scale of Merck's Action Network may not seem terribly significant.
Keep in mind, however, that one out of every six workers in the United
States is now employed by a large corporation such as Merck and that
nearly all of the Fortune 500 are presently gearing up to "go
grassroots" with a vengeance.
Multiply the impact of the Merck Action Network by 500 and you start
to get a sense, not only of why corporations presently "rule," but
also how they plan to remain in charge well into the 21st century.
Corporations realize, however, that computer and internet technologies
also threaten to create forces beyond their control. "Many public
interest activist groups are way ahead of corporations," warned Samuel
A. Simon in a seminar titled "Learning How to Harness the Power of the
Internet for Your Grassroots Program."
To illustrate his point, Simon used an overhead projector to display
the interactive web sites of the Sierra Club
(http://www.sierraclub.org) and the League of Conservation Voters
(http://www.lcv.org).
Simon noted that information overload is increasingly making it
difficult to find anything or, conversely, to persuade the public to
pay attention to information broadcast via the internet. The solution,
he argued, is to "push your information in an inter-modal way, to
reach out to people in the way that they want to be reached (i.e. by
fax, pager, phone, or computerized e-mail.)"
Bell Atlantic, for example, uses an automated list server to feed
customized information to over 700 reporters across the country. When
registering with Bell Atlantic through Bell's internet site
(http:www.ba.com), reporters fill out a registration form that
specifies what kind of news story and angle interests them and how
they want to receive news releases, advisories, graphics and other
background materials. Armed with this information, Bell is able to
spoonfeed reporters just the information they need to write their
story.
"Have any companies here been attacked on the internet?" Simon asked.
Several people raised their hands, including a representative from
Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. "Then you understand," Simon said, "the
importance of having ongoing monitoring of what is being said about
your company."
Fortunately, he added, companies can "hire a young person
knowledgeable about computers for very little money" to help them
monitor what's being said about them on the internet.
==========================
"I feel a bit guilty,
because some of these new
technologies smack of Big Brother."
--Verne Kennedy, Marketing Research Institute
==========================
Services like Nexis-Lexis and Alta-Vista enable corporations to track
virtually every instance in which they are mentioned in the news or on
the internet. If corporations don't want to do this in-house, they can
hire other companies to do it for them. In fact, as Scott Parven from
Aetna Insurance pointed out, sometimes companies prefer to "hire
vendors to avoid tainting yourself."
We Have Your DNA
Dr. Verne Kennedy, president of the Pensacola, Florida-based Marketing
Research Institute, offered a keynote address on yet another high-tech
corporate intrusion into citizens' lives. Looking every bit the part
of the absent-minded professor, Kennedy started off his speech with a
rather peculiar apology.
"I feel a bit guilty, because some of these new technologies smack of
Big Brother," he said as he described what he calls "DNA Grass Roots
Targeting."
"DNA," in Kennedy's usage, stands for "demographic niche attributes,"
which MRI specializes in collecting from surveys, census records,
election voting data, consumer and credit data. A person's "DNA
profile" includes information such as his or her age, marital status,
number of children, length of residence, homeowner or renter status,
house value, net worth, number of years of schooling.
"Based upon a person's DNA, we can predict their reaction to a
specific message," Kennedy said. DNA profiles are "extremely good at
predicting behavior."
MRI specializes in selling this information to right-wing and
Republican Party political candidates, along with corporate marketing
groups.
Kennedy denied that his company uses confidential information such as
the bank credit records, but he admitted that "some less scrupulous
companies" are already providing this type of personal information to
their clients.
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