President Trump has killed the first real protections for commercial privacy that Americans have online. Phone and cable giants, allied with the GOP Congressional majority, have just voted to overturn the historic consumer-data safeguards adopted last year by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). AT&T, Comcast, Verizon—the country’s dominant providers of high speed broadband—along with industry and Congressional GOP allies, intensely opposed the new FCC rule. Why?

Americans lost a crucial right today as the GOP-controlled Senate voted to overturn the only federal protection that could have protected their privacy online. This is a key victory for lobbyists from the ISP monopolies, such as AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon. These companies have built a “Big Data" business model to track—and profit from—our every move online. Today, Americans who use personal computers, mobile phones and other online devices are the victims of continuous monitoring of their digital activities.

Phone, Cable Giants Build Digital Data surveillance systems to better spy on consumers.  

9 reasons why they are lobbying Congress to kill your new privacy rights.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

As marketers think about reaching their audiences at the right moment with the right message, music streaming offers a powerful channel to seamlessly activate CRM data and engage customers during high-impact moments. Today at RampUp 2017, Spotify and LiveRamp™, an Acxiom® company, are partnering to enable marketers in the U.S.

Making a key big data move, Comcast has quietly scooped up a small video metadata specialist to delve deeper into the programming that it delivers, improving the viewing experience for subscribers while opening up possible new advertising revenue opportunities for the giant US MSO. 

Mattel, Inc., the leading global childhood play and development company, today announced a new strategic partnership with Alibaba Group, the world's largest online and mobile commerce company. Leveraging Mattel's iconic brands and expertise in play as well as Alibaba's wealth of data and insights into the Chinese consumer base, the expanded partnership aims to re-shape the way parents in China think about play.

After a long and fair rulemaking process during most of 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted ground-breaking privacy rules last October protecting the personal information of broadband Internet service customers. Both industry—including powerful phone and cable companies that provide the majority of broadband connections—as well as consumer, civil rights, and privacy groups, had ample opportunity to make their case—which they did.

Statement of Jeff Chester, Executive Director
Center for Digital Democracy
February 7, 2017

This is a case study of Facebook's work for Judicial Watch illustrating how the media, digital advertising & social networking company uses micro-targeting and tracking for political causes. 

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Established in 1994, Judicial Watch is a conservative non-partisan government watchdog organization that promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and law. It has filed lawsuits against the last several US presidential administrations.