Americans’ Privacy Was Toast Since The Nineties

Privacy is on Americans’ brains.

We hear it all the time: advertisers, the media, social media, ISPs, and search engines are spying on you. However, of all the industries mentioned, complaints about the media’s snooping appear to be far less concerning than its fellow culprits. Perhaps scrutiny directed at the media is not so harsh, as relationships between the television advertising industry and cable TV networks are often considered benign. Needless to say, the latter is the furthest from the truth. It’s naive to think that the upper echelons of media do not know what kinds of ads are running on their network and how that particular content is being acquired. America, the media is compromising your privacy, too.

QUESTION posed to Google’s AI: How did the 1996 telecommunications act degrade Americans’ privacy?

ANSWER provided: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 degraded Americans’ privacy primarily by unwittingly creating a legal shield for tech companies to mass-collect personal data and by fueling massive corporate consolidation that concentrated user data into very few hands.

QUESTION posed to DuckDuckGo’s AI: How did the 1996 telecommunications act degrade Americans’ privacy?

ANSWER provided: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 led to increased media mergers and reduced regulations on media concentration, which raised concerns about privacy as companies gained more control over personal data. Additionally, provisions in the Act, particularly those related to the Communications Decency Act, were criticized for potentially infringing on free speech and privacy rights.

This may also interest you: “US Journalist Sentenced for ‘Betraying His Country‘” | And this, “Mass Surveillance Is Dangerous for American Communities (Reforming the Section 702 Spying Regime)” | And this, “Trump’s DHS is using an obscure law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions” | And this, “The Government Uses Targeted Advertising to Track Your Location” | “Microsoft Teams hit with a class action lawsuit for allegedly collecting voice data — violating Illinois biometric privacy laws” | And this, “Not sure whether you can publish information illegally obtained by a third party?” | And this, “PBS Standards” | And lastly, this, “Are Bloggers Journalists“