Posted on 10/25/2016 9:57:30 AM PDT by Tilted Irish Kilt
They know how you browse the internet, your favorite TV shows and where you shop and travel.
Data collected by internet and media companies is a powerful tool, and the big mergers planned by AT&T with Time Warner and Verizon with Yahoo offer those firms more data that can be used to target consumers with content and advertising.
Privacy advocates say the prospect of firms using all that online and offline data without safeguards could be alarming. (emphasis mine )
"Twenty-first century media is all about the ability to gather information on a single individual regardless of where they are—whether they are using mobile phone or watching TV or in a grocery store," said Jeffrey Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy, a privacy rights group.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
AT&T chief executive Randall Stephenson said the deal would offer better choices to both consumers and advertisers.
"We'll develop content that's better tailored to what specific audience segments want to watch, when, where and on which device," he said.
"And we'll use the insights to expand the market for addressable advertising. Addressable advertising is far more effective and more valuable both to the advertisers and to our customer.
There is no such thing as “Privacy”.
There hasn’t been for longer than some people voting in the next election have even been alive.
I agree. I’m really very mixed on the whole thing.
If we believe that privacy is achievable, then we want security in place, and we want our election votes to be private, and all sort of “common sense” stuff. We deserve our privacy, don’t we?
But if the truth is that there just ISN’T any privacy, then what is the point? The security is simply inconvenience. The voting procedure is simply a black box in which you can’t tell for sure if they counted the results honestly.
It’s really hard, IMO, to know if privacy is at all real or simply a comfortable lie we tell ourselves.
But I will say this: voter fraud and political corruption would be non-existent if there was no attempt at privacy and everyone knew everything. Chief Justice John Roberts just bought a million dollar house. How did he manage that? I sure would like to know.
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