Now here’s a novel idea: how about if your Internet service (ISP), telecom, or broadband provider had to get your permission before they could sell your information and data to third-parties? That’s just what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler is proposing (full text of proposal below). What, you thought it was already that way? Think again, and the Internet, broadband and telecom providers are fighting it.

From the “we knew it was a good idea” department, based on the responses to our own article List of Phone Numbers that Telemarketers Use to Call You, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced this week that it will start publishing a list of telephone numbers which robocallers, robodialers, and telemarketers are using to make their telemarketing calls and robocalls.

A recent report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), following a 17-month investigation, reveals that, contrary to what Google’s position had been all this time, Google actually knew that their Street View drive-bys were sucking down people’s personal data through any open wifi routers that the Street View van encountered. And not just a little bit – but for nearly three years, between 2007 and 2010. Private data that was harvested from individuals includes email (the full text of!), passwords, sites visited, and other sensitive information. Until now Google had always maintained that they didn’t realize it was happening, and that it was an accident wraught by a single engineer at Google. Turns out that supervisors knew all along that it was going on. While the FCC concludes that Google did not break any laws, there was a heck of a lot of invasion of privacy going on, and, in addition, Google was slapped with a $25,000 fine for obstructing the investigation.

In a lovely “we told you so” moment, we can report that two key Federal agencies – both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) – are opposing the planned merger of AT and T and T-Mobile. We predicted Federal opposition to the merge when AT and T first announced their plans to takeover T-Mobile, and the Feds are opposing the merging for much the same reasons that we said that they would.

With the new “Do you owe over $10,000 to the IRS?” SMS text message spam making the rounds (ours came from 857-205-2199) we thought it would be a good time to remind you that cell phone spam (including SMS spam) is illegal, and there is a way to report it.