Center for Digital Democracy: Your TV Is Watching You

A report by a telecom consumers rights group decries the melding of Internet, TV and marketing that will be ITV. The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) believes privacy will be virtually ripped from the couch potato as he sits staring at the box. “This next generation of mass-market media—expected to be used by millions of viewers within the next few years—is deliberately being designed to record the viewing and spending habits of the viewer,” the group’s report states. According to the CDD, the sets (combined with existing databases) will be able to gain such information as the viewer’s age, discretionary income and parental status, as well as psychographic and demographic data. That information will then be collected and analyzed and made available to marketers, advertisers, programmers and others.

This can be achieved by offering price breaks in programming if the viewer will key in personal information. As on the Web, ITV will determine the viewer’s interest and provide advertisements that match the viewer’s tastes. ITV also will provide access to Web services such as email, chat, instant messaging—the whole drill. The big cable operators (Cox, Comcast, AOL-Time Warner and Charter) are on the bandwagon. Among the companies involved in the data collection techniques are AT&T, Liberty Media, Proctor&Gamble and Cisco.