Slipstream: Personal Data Takes a Winding Path Into Marketers’ Hands

“What’s in it for you?” said the flier from MS LifeLines, a support network for patients and their families that is financed by two drug makers, Pfizer and EMD Serono. “Strategies for managing and understanding your symptoms. Information about available treatments for relapsing M.S.”

The thing is that my friend, who requested that I keep her name out of this column, does not have multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system.

But last year, she did search online for information about various diseases, including M.S., on a number of consumer health sites. She also subscribed to an online recommendation engine where she looked up consumer reviews of local physicians.

Now she wondered whether one of those companies had erroneously profiled her as an M.S. patient and shared that profile with drug-company marketers. She worried about the potential ramifications: Could she, for instance, someday be denied life insurance on the basis of that profile? She wanted to track down the source of the data, correct her profile and, if possible, prevent further dissemination of the information. But she didn’t know which company had collected and shared the data in the first place, so she didn’t know how to have her entry removed from the original marketing list.

In our data-happy society, the case of the mistaken M.S. patient illustrates a lack of visibility for people interested in how information about them changes hands. When consumers fill out warranty cards, enter sweepstakes, answer online surveys, agree to online privacy policies or sign up to receive e-mails from brands, they often don’t realize that certain details — linked to them by name or by customer ID code — may be passed along to other companies. That can make it hard for people seeking to correct errors to find the keepers of their marketing profiles.

I was ruminating on that problem in Washington on Wednesday, when I paid a visit to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat, who has made consumer privacy one of his signature issues.

Americans, he says, should be allowed “to be left alone.”

In part, this belief stems from his own nature. He describes himself as an introvert, a person who would rather stay at home and listen to Bach fugues than attend Beltway shindigs. But mainly, he just thinks that privacy is a fundamental American right.

“The principles are remarkably simple,” Mr. Rockefeller said, comfortably installed in an armchair in his Senate office. Americans, he continued, should have the right to decide what kind of marketing material is sent to them and what other people know about them: “People have the right to be private insofar as it’s possible in the modern world.”

Earlier that day, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, of which Mr. Rockefeller is chairman, had convened a hearing on the status of an online privacy mechanism for consumers called Do Not Track. The idea behind it is that people should be able to turn on settings in their Internet browsers to signal advertisers, data brokers and other third-party operators not to collect information about their activities across the Web. Advertising networks and other entities would theoretically honor those don’t-track-me flags by restricting the amount of information they collected.

But years after the Federal Trade Commission recommended that advertisers adopt such a browser-based system, consumer advocates and ad industry groups still seem at odds over fundamental issues — including the very definition of Do Not Track. In an attempt to pressure the ad industry to get with the program, the Senate committee held a hearing.

“I want to get to the bottom of this controversy,” Mr. Rockefeller said in his opening statement. “I want the witnesses to publicly explain exactly what they believe has gone wrong, and what they are prepared to offer to make Do Not Track a reality for consumers.”

Yet he acknowledges that this kind of privacy option for online consumers, even if it eventually goes into effect, does not address a larger issue: the thousands of details that third-party data gatherers, who typically don’t interact directly with consumers, have already amassed about a majority of adults in the United States. For instance, there is no federal law that requires such companies to allow consumers to have access to and correct marketing data that’s been compiled about them. That is partly why the Senate committee opened an investigation last year into the practices of leading data brokers.

Mr. Rockefeller says the investigation is continuing.

So I decided — after asking permission from the friend who received the M.S. flier — to see if I could find out how erroneous information about her health status moved from one company to another. It wasn’t an obvious trajectory.

Erin-Marie Beals, a spokeswoman for EMD Serono, told me that MS LifeLines sends marketing materials only to people who have indicated an interest in multiple sclerosis and have provided their contact information either directly to MS LifeLines or through other programs, like online surveys or subscriptions. Ms. Beals pointed me to the firm that had provided my friend’s information — the KBM Group, a marketing company that specializes in consumer data and analytics.

Ultimately, Barbara Palmer, the senior vice president for marketing at the KBM Group, told me that her firm had obtained the information from a survey company whose online questionnaire my friend had filled out in 2010. That survey, Ms. Palmer said, asked general questions, including some about health interests. She said it also contained a specific disclosure: “By completing the health-related questions on the survey, you are consenting to the use of this information for direct marketing purposes.”

Ms. Palmer added that her company honored people’s requests to opt out of its file. The Direct Marketing Association also provides a program for consumers who want to opt out of receiving all kinds of pitches by mail.

At the end of the day, information about my friend ended up in the hands of at least two companies she had never heard of, let alone interacted with. Other companies may also have obtained the data.

The proliferation of intimate details about people’s health, financial or academic status — even when the data are correct — particularly troubles Senator Rockefeller. Although laws like the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act limit the use of people’s credit and medical records, data brokers are often able to compile consumers’ financial and health information through other means.

“One of the things that really disturbs me in privacy, or the lack of it, is the way that data brokers can go in and buy all your health records, your financial records — they can get it one way or another,” Mr. Rockefeller said during the hearing. “What is of you, they can have.”

He added: “We are talking about a very, very large industry here which can decide to do that and which is doing that.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.

Slipstream: Multiple Video Feeds Give Arena Fans the Comforts of Home

In a suite overlooking the home-side backboard, Chip Foley is watching the basketball game via live video feeds on his iPhone and iPad.

Mr. Foley is the director of building technology at the Forest City Ratner Companies, the real estate firm that developed the Barclays Center in Downtown Brooklyn and is a minority owner of the Nets. Last month, the center introduced the latest thing in virtual spectatorship: an app that streams three different high-definition video feeds for stadium visitors who want to use their smartphones and tablets to follow the game they have come to see in person.

The goal, arena executives say, is to reproduce the multiscreen experience that many fans have already adopted in the man caves of their dens or living rooms. Fans like Mr. Foley, for instance, whose home setup for events like the Super Bowl includes a 60-inch, flat-screen TV augmented by two laptops (one to follow the coaches, another for the overhead view), not to mention the iPad on which he monitors game-related Twitter posts. To compete with couch multitasking, Barclays Center has installed a high-density Wi-Fi network and multicast video technology from Cisco Systems, called StadiumVision Mobile, intended to power similarly speedy video streaming, tweeting and photo-sharing for fans at Nets games.

From instant replay technology to microphones that transmit players’ and coaches’ live comments, broadcasters have spent decades developing techniques to make fans at home feel as if they are part of the game. Now, some arenas like Barclays are adding a complementary strategy: “You are trying to replicate that experience you would have on your couch,” Mr. Foley says. Fans at Nets games, for example, can activate instant replays on the mobile feeds they are watching, a pause-and-rewind technique that mimics a remote control.

Live spectator sports involve a kind of communion — otherwise, why bother leaving the house? — that personal devices have the potential to dilute. Still, the professional sports industry may just be playing catch-up with screen-centric consumers.

After all, many fans already prefer watching magnified views on a Jumbotron to the miniature-seeming live play somewhere down below them. Likewise, some football fans now tailgate next to college bowls, bringing their own satellite dishes and TVs so they can watch the game from the parking lot instead of the stadium, says John Nauright, a professor of sports studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

And it’s not just sports. Many colleges now promote online courses over in-person lectures.

OVER the last several years, Cisco has tapped into this trend of audiences accustomed more to simulcast than to live spectacle; it has outfitted more than 100 arenas in 20 countries with its networks. One product, StadiumVision, is a video distribution system that allows the display of customized digital signs and videos on hundreds of monitors throughout an arena; the installation cost varies, depending on the site and the number of monitors, but it can cost several million dollars per stadium.

Sitting in the suite in the Barclays Center, Michael Caponigro, Cisco’s leader of global solutions marketing for sports and entertainment, says the idea is to keep fans continuously connected to the game via video monitors whether they are sitting in skyboxes, wandering concourses or standing in line at concession booths. Teams, sponsors and advertisers use the same video monitors to blanket stadiums with digital marketing.

The advanced system that Cisco installed in the Barclays Center extends that idea of continuous connectivity to individual seats, Mr. Caponigro says. It will also allow teams and brands to tailor mobile marketing to specific fans.

“We have placed two big bets with our customers, with video and mobility at the intersection of sport,” he says. Above and below the suite in the darkened stadium, smartphones glow and flicker out like fireflies. “We believe this is the new frontier of fan experience,” he adds.

To try out the new feeds, Mr. Foley, the director of building technology, clicks on the main video stream for the game on his iPad app, watching as Joe Johnson, the Nets shooting guard, disentangles himself from the pack, leaps, shoots and scores. During that play, Mr. Foley simultaneously watches on his iPhone a second, live video stream called the Slam Cam — a camera positioned directly behind the basket; a ball rockets into close-up view, hovers for a moment and then sinks through the net. A third device, an iPod Touch, displays a rawer video stream, from a hand-held sideline camera following the Bucks as they dribble back down the court.

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com. Twitter: @natashanyt

Slipstream: Legislation Would Regulate Tracking of Cellphone Users

THERE are three things that matter in consumer data collection: location, location, location.

E-ZPasses clock the routes we drive. Metro passes register the subway stations we enter. A.T.M.’s record where and when we get cash. Not to mention the credit and debit card transactions that map our trajectories in comprehensive detail — the stores, restaurants and gas stations we frequent; the hotels and health clubs we patronize.

Each of these represents a kind of knowing trade, a conscious consumer submission to surveillance for the sake of convenience.

But now legislators, regulators, advocacy groups and marketers are squaring off over newer technology: smartphones and mobile apps that can continuously record and share people’s precise movements. At issue is whether consumers are unwittingly acquiescing to pervasive tracking just for the sake of having mobile amenities like calendar, game or weather apps.

For Senator Al Franken, the Minnesota Democrat, the potential hazard is that by compiling location patterns over time, companies could create an intimate portrait of a person’s familial and professional associations, political and religious beliefs, even health status. To give consumers some say in the surveillance, Mr. Franken has been working on a locational privacy protection bill that would require entities like app developers to obtain explicit one-time consent from users before recording the locations of their mobile devices. It would prohibit stalking apps — programs that allow one person to track another person’s whereabouts surreptitiously.

The bill, approved last month by the Senate Judiciary Committee, would also require mobile services to disclose the names of the advertising networks or other third parties with which they share consumers’ locations.

“Someone who has this information doesn’t just know where you live,” Mr. Franken said during the Judiciary Committee meeting. “They know the roads you take to work, where you drop your kids off at school, the church you attend and the doctors that you visit.”

Yet many marketers say they need to know consumers’ precise locations so they can show relevant mobile ads or coupons at the very moment a person is in or near a store. Informing such users about each and every ad network or analytics company that tracks their locations could hinder that hyperlocal marketing, they say, because it could require a new consent notice to appear every time someone opened an app.

“Consumers would revolt if this was the case, and applications could be rendered useless,” said Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican, who promulgated industry arguments during the committee meeting. “Worse yet, free applications that rely on advertising could be pushed by the consent requirement to become fee-based.”

Mr. Franken’s bill may seem intended simply to protect consumer privacy. But the underlying issue is the future of consumer data property rights — the question of who actually owns the information generated by a person who uses a digital device and whether using that property without explicit authorization constitutes trespassing.

In common law, a property intrusion is known as “trespass to chattels.” The Supreme Court invoked the legal concept last January in United States v. Jones, in which it ruled that the government had violated the Fourth Amendment — which protects people against unreasonable search and seizure — by placing a GPS tracking device on a suspect’s car for 28 days without getting a warrant.

Some advocacy groups view location tracking by mobile apps and ad networks as a parallel, warrantless commercial intrusion. To these groups, Mr. Franken’s bill suggests that consumers may eventually gain some rights over their own digital footprints.

“People don’t think about how they broadcast their locations all the time when they carry their phones. The law is just starting to catch up and think about how to treat this,” says Marcia Hofmann, a senior staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco. “In an ideal world, users would be able to share the information they want and not share the information they don’t want and have more control over how it is used.”

Even some marketers agree.

One is Scout Advertising, a location-based mobile ad service that promises to help advertisers pinpoint the whereabouts of potential customers within 100 meters. The service, previously known as ThinkNear and recently acquired by Telenav, a personalized navigation service, works by determining a person’s location; figuring out whether that place is a home or a store, a health club or a sports stadium; analyzing weather and other local conditions; and then showing a mobile ad tailored to the situation.

Eli Portnoy, general manager of Scout Advertising, calls the technique “situational targeting.” He says Crunch, the fitness center chain, used the service to show mobile ads to people within three miles of a Crunch gym on rainy mornings. The ad said: “Seven-day pass. Run on a treadmill, not in the rain.”

When a person clicks on one of these ads, Mr. Portnoy says, a browser-based map pops up with turn-by-turn directions to the nearest location. Through GPS tracking, Scout Advertising can tell when someone starts driving and whether that person arrives at the site.

Despite the tracking, Mr. Portnoy describes his company’s mobile ads as protective of privacy because the service works only with sites or apps that obtain consent to use people’s locations. Scout Advertising, he adds, does not compile data on individuals’ whereabouts over time.

Still, he says, if Congress were to enact Mr. Franken’s location privacy bill as written, it “would be a little challenging” for the industry to carry out, because of the number and variety of companies involved in mobile marketing.

“We are in favor of more privacy,” Mr. Portnoy says, “but it has to be done within the nuances of how mobile advertising works so it can scale.”

A SPOKESMAN for Mr. Franken said the senator planned to reintroduce the bill in the new Congress. It is one of several continuing government efforts to develop some baseline consumer data rights.

“New technology may provide increased convenience or security at the expense of privacy and many people may find the trade-off worthwhile,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote last year in his opinion in the Jones case. “On the other hand,” he added, “concern about new intrusions on privacy may spur the enactment of legislation to protect against these intrusions.”

E-mail: slipstream@nytimes.com.