Criticism continues over visitors center's data tracking decision

GILLETTE — A local board’s decision to use data to track economic impact has angered some county residents, and they made their voices heard at a meeting last week.
 
At a Campbell County Joint Powers Lodging Tax Board meeting Thursday afternoon, Jay Kinghorn, co-founder of Zartico, gave a presentation on the company and its practices before answering questions from the audience, many of whom were upset about the idea of their data being collected.
 
The nearly two-hour discussion only concluded after the board chair decided to end things because it had stopped being productive.
 
Residents criticized the decision, calling it unconstitutional, and they wondered why the government was getting involved in it, questioning if it was even necessary.
 
The visitors center plans to use a geofencing technology to track spending habits at the National High School Finals Rodeo this summer. It’s paying Zartico to gather data that’s already being collected to get an idea of people’s travel and spending habits during big events.
 
Zartico already has begun implementing the process. Zartico does not collect the data. Instead, it gets data from other companies that already are collecting data.
 
Zartico gets geolocation data from Near, which has the largest commercially available geolocation dataset in the world, Kinghorn said. According to Near’s website, it covers 1.6 billion unique user IDs in 44 countries. Zartico gets credit card data from another company.
 
Both of these sets of data are anonymized before they get to Zartico, Kinghorn said. The two sets cannot be combined to identify individuals. The data is not personally identifiable, Kinghorn said, and Zartico isn’t interested in individual user data anyway.
 
“We want to understand broad patterns,” Kinghorn said.
 
He explained that the data already is being collected because people opt in through agreements with their banks, cellphone providers and mobile apps. Companies pay good money for this data.
 
“The level of specificity you get from your cellphone providers, an entirely different animal, has a much higher degree of precision than geolocation data,” he said.
 
There is “vastly more personal information” out there, Kinghorn said, whether it’s on social media or a phone book. The data Zartico has is aggregated and imprecise, and is meant to show trends, rather than individual habits.
Zartico does not collect people’s addresses, banking information, social security numbers or any other personal information.
 
The visitors center received $131,000 this biennium from the Wyoming Office of Tourism’s Destination Development Program, which was designed to help communities develop and prepare for their visitors. This program is funded through the state lodging tax.
 
The visitors center is using $31,000 of that to pay Zartico this year.
 
Zartico only sees 5% of all devices and credit cards, Kinghorn said, adding that while this might not seem like a lot, it’s a much larger sample size than what a survey would provide.
 
Kinghorn said the 5% is an estimate that comes from the data combined with other statistics. For example, if an NBA game has 20,000 fans in attendance, Zartico sees about 1,000 devices for that game.
 
Commissioner Del Shelstad asked what data Zartico would have if he were an out-of-state contestant at the National High School Finals Rodeo.
 
Kinghorn said Zartico would know that there was a device from out of state that was at Cam-plex, and any restaurants, parks or other places where the device is going. It wouldn’t know that the device belonged to Shelstad, and it wouldn’t know how much he was spending either. The spending data comes from a completely different data set, which also is anonymized.
 
Is it worth it?
 
Many questioned the need for data that is so specific.
 
Jessica Seders, executive director of the visitors center, said that calculating an event’s economic impact is much more than looking at ticket sales or a hotel’s occupancy rates.
 
Not all visitors are the same. While some might go out into the community and eat at local restaurants and shop at stores, others might go back and forth between their event and their hotel.
 
“Those things make a really profound difference in terms of visitor spending and economic impact,” Kinghorn said.
 
Shelstad said the commissioners have asked the lodging tax board about the economic impact events have. While data tracking was not what he had in mind, he said the board is “trying to do the right thing.”
 
He used Camporee as an example. It’s been projected to have a $25 million impact on the community.
 
“It’s incumbent on us to know what these events that we just spent $3 million so far to bring to this town, what kind of cash and resources are being injected into our economy?” he asked.
 
It’s not just Camporee. Commissioner Kelley McCreery said the county and the city have big decisions to make for the future of the community, citing the master planning process that Cam-plex is going through right now.
 
“If we make a mistake, everyone in this room is going to come back and butcher us for making the wrong decision and spending money wrong when we believed somebody somewhere that we should (host an event) because it would make money,” he said.
 
Seders was asked if she knew that Zartico was getting its data from Near. She said she did not.
 
“Shame on you for not doing your research,” Sally White said.
 
Seders said it doesn’t matter where Zartico was getting its data from because she knew that the data was being collected anyway.
 

 
 
Criticism
 
Former representative Bill Fortner said this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.
 
“This is illegal and it’s against the law,” he said.
 
Some wondered if the data tracking was even necessary.
 
Sen. Troy McKeown said there is a system already in place for the state to track economic impact, and it’s called sales tax receipts from local businesses.
 
“We have all the data at the state to do this analysis, there is no creeping into people’s lives and gathering their personal data,” he said. “I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’m sure they’ve thought of this.
 
“There’s other reasons they’re doing the geofencing, in my mind,” he added.
 
“Is that not a better way than stealing it?” Jacob Dalby asked. “They’ll do it for free if you ask them.”
 
Claudia Urlaub, who was appointed to the board just two days earlier, said she’s worked in the retail industry, and “to say that businesses would do it willingly – I don’t know that they would.”
 
It would take a lot of time for stores to ask each customer what state they’re from, and the whole process “would be very labor-intensive.”
 
Dalby said it’s not as difficult as Urlaub was making it out to be, and that the visitors center shouldn’t care where state visitors are coming from.
 
“No, they’re not going to write down what state each person came from,” he said. “That is asinine. I can’t believe that was even a comment.”
 
He accused the visitors center of being lazy.
 
“The visitors center and this board sitting right here wants to go with this company because they’re lazy,” he said. “They’re too lazy to do what they were put in here to do.”
 
“Why do we need to know that someone from Missouri came to the rodeo?” McKeown asked. “We just need to know the number of people at the rodeo.”
 
Kasie Wanke, chair of the lodging tax board, said the visitors center has been tasked with spending advertising dollars wisely.
 
“If we’re going to advertise in other states, other countries, where do we use our marketing dollars where it’s most effective?” Wanke asked.
 
Dalby said he’s lived in Campbell County his whole life and wondered what Campbell County has that would be attractive to tourists compared to places like Yellowstone, where “there’s some pretty cool stuff.”
 
“Why do you want to advertise in Australia? What, they’re going to come here, look at a coal mine?” Dalby asked.
 
“You’d be surprised how many people want to come look at a coal mine and buffalo,” Urlaub said.
 
The visitors center organizes tours of Eagle Butte Coal Mine every summer. In 2022, 1,214 people participated in those tours.
 
“I’ve never, never heard anyone say anything about credit cards, that if I go to Walmart or Bomgaars or anywhere else, my information is used for something,” said Dalby’s mom, Kim.
 
McCreery said he likes the Constitution, but he doesn’t understand why people are getting upset over this. People allow these companies to collect their data, and “now we’re all up in arms over them doing what we said they could do.”
 
Dalby said McCreery and other commissioners are failing to uphold the Constitution.
 
“Right now, Campbell County is throwing the Constitution on the ground and burning it like Antifa did the American flag,” he said. “That’s you. That’s on each and every one of you.”
 
McCreery offered up a suggestion to anyone who doesn’t want to be tracked.
 
“All you’ve got to do is throw your cellphone away and your credit cards, and nobody will track you.”
 
This story was published on April 25, 2023.