UPDATE WASHINGTON – A group of public policy advocates issued a sweeping report Tuesday warning of Orwellian marketing tactics by interactive television firms and advertisers. The report recommends that federal and state governments enact new laws to protect interactive TV viewers' privacy.
"TV That Watches You: The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television," a 30-page report compiled by the Center for Digital Democracy and Privacy International, draws on company documents and SEC filings from firms such as Cisco, Microsoft and TiVo to outline the various strategies companies utilize to track the viewing and surfing habits of interactive television users.
"Through the development of hardware and software, [the companies] are creating a new TV infrastructure in the U.S. that will engage in unprecedented data collection, along with new – and potentially deceptive – marketing practices," CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester said in a statement. "In the face of industry opposition to any meaningful privacy safeguards, coupled with the obvious need for comprehensive protections, ITV poses a major threat."
Interactive television promises customers great convenience in TV program selection, along with Web-based services such as e-commerce, instant messaging and e-mail, all conducted through televisions equipped with digital set-top boxes. But companies also are touting their ability to track the channel surfing and Web browsing habits of interactive TV users, along with online shopping patterns, to build detailed marketing profiles. Digital media company ACTV is heralding technology that prevents channel surfing during commercials. Another company, Predictive Networks, says it can track individual keystroke and mouse habits to build "digital silhouettes" of different users of a single device.
"There needs to be a national debate about whether we want these technologies to be so intrusive from the beginning," Chester said. "The public has really not been informed."
Chester and his colleagues also released memos apparently prepared by the Association for Interactive Media, an industry group, that outline detailed voluntary privacy policies and self-audits of data privacy protections.
Ben Issacson, executive director of the Association for Interactive Media, called the study "pretty flawed," saying that it failed to take into account the protections afforded by an existing cable privacy law and that many of the services described were still being developed.
"Our organization is working on [privacy] guidelines and additional tools for anyone getting into the ITV space," Issacson said. "The industry is being proactive here."
The report calls on Congress, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission to update federal laws and conduct hearings and investigations into interactive TV marketing. It also urges companies to adopt "meaningful" privacy protections and to build such protections into ITV hardware.
