Gov. messages ( PSA's ) by cellphone -- Jan. 4, 2005
SMS text messaging ........ Public Service Announcements
The idea of governments using mobile messages to communicate with citizens is beginning to take hold.
In April 2003, the government of Hong Kong sent out a text message to six million mobile phones to quash a rumor that Hong Kong had been designated an "infected city" for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

The Netherlands, too, is building a network that will allow the government to issue alerts to cellphone users nationwide or within an area of a few city blocks. Citizens will be invited to sign on for the alert service. "You can direct a message to people who are close to an area where there has been an accident," and suggest they take another route, said Nanne Bos, a spokesman for LogicaCMG, which is creating the system.

In the past, he said, citizens have not been comfortable with the government having a back door to their personal technology.
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/01/03/business/text.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/03/business/text.html

The 'good' is oftentimes the enemy of the best

Citizen counting-- Jan. 4, 2005 " a cow-bell " ?
Meanwhile, Orange's French unit has sent SMS messages to 3,200 customers who were traveling in the area of the tsunamis on Dec. 25 and 26, asking them to contact the French Foreign Ministry.
France Télécom, which owns Orange, said that the French government had requested the text messages
to help account for its citizens.
It is possible to identify mobile phone customers who were in the area and had their cellphones on through the registration of their phone numbers in a database of "roaming" customers.
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/01/03/business/textbox.html
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/01/03/business/textbox.html