‘Big Telecom’ action ushers in Big Brother

There are probably two ways to look at a recent move by Republicans in Congress to permit companies like Verizon, Comcast, Frontier and others to cavalierly sell your personal online information to whomever they want.

You can shrug with a helpless, “Whatever.” Or you can be outraged that you are being cybermugged by corporate greed.

Let’s go with some rip-snorting indignation.

The House and Senate have approved legislation that overturned a perfectly reasonable Federal Communications Commission rule that would require cable and phone companies to obtain your consent before they sold your personal information such as your browsing history, shopping habits and other data unique to you to third-party interests.

And of course, President Donald Trump is primed to sign the virtual Peeping Tom act into law. So much for all that fake populist, man-of-the-people flap-jawing.

With all of the other crazy stuff going on in Washington, the move by Congress to violate your privacy could easily slip by under the radar.

We live in an age when millions of Americans are eager to violate their own privacy on a daily basis by constant postings on social media detailing with mind-numbing dullness the full banality of their lives. So what difference does it make if a cable provider wants to sell information to an adult “toy” manufacturer that you’ve watched “Fifty Shades of Grey” once a week for the past the year?

But it should. It’s the principle of the thing. Little wonder the concept of privacy rights is lost on Washington.

Because of the wonders of technology, we have become conjoined to our laptops, iPads and cellphones. We conduct our banking over the Internet. We can open our garage doors, adjust a thermostat and check security cameras in our homes. We text. We tweet. We buy stuff.

Now, broadband companies have been given unfettered access to all your data. You are no longer merely a customer. You are just a marketing research widget.

Your personal data now becomes available to the highest, unseen bidder. Every time you pay your monthly cable bill, you are also paying for the privilege to be spied upon and sold off to all manner of businesses who want to exploit your information.

And there is nothing you can do about it. The legislation passed by Congress includes a provision that would prevent the FCC from ever issuing new regulations to protect consumer privacy. These guys think of everything, except you.

The assault on the privacy of Americans who are at the mercy of their cable and phone providers has been referred to as “Big Telecom.”

That sounds too benign. This most certainly marks the arrival “Big Brother,” all wrapped up in catchy, glossy commercials extolling how much the communications companies love you and what a big happy family we all are. But they know better. They are capturing your thoughts, your desires, your relationships. They likely know you really hate your brother-in-law. Don’t try to deny it. “Big Stasi” perhaps? Knowing that your most private conduct expressed online is merely fodder to be bought and sold for profit can have a chilling effect on your freedom of speech. You have a right, as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis observed, to “be left alone.” Brandeis was very suspect about the growing power of corporations to intrude upon the private lives of the citizenry. And this was long before the Internet arrived.

Somewhere, Justice Brandeis must be weeping.