April 16-22: Privacy

Although the biggest news of the week may be AT&T's filing at the Federal Communications Commission on the acquisition of T-Mobile, we have to admit that, like many other people in DC, we're still reading through it to see how, as AT&T claims, 1) the transaction will benefit consumers and the economy and 2) the transaction will preserve and promote competition. So, instead, some brief notes on the issue of privacy. In the digital age, are consumers empowered to reveal and conceal information about themselves selectively?

Of course, much like chocolate and peanut butter, it is hard to keep to great issues separate in Washington (DC), so it may not be a surprise that privacy is an issue in the AT&T|T-Mobile merger. The Center for Digital Democracy believes the government should consider protecting consumers from location-based mobile ads as part of its review of the deal. CDD argues that the merger would give the combined entity access to a wealth of information about users' locations and mobile browsing habits that the firm could then use to target advertisements without consumers' consent.