Tom Wheeler

who a few years ago unilaterally said, you know, I don't think privacy is a social norm anymore and changed the rules at Facebook in terms of what kind of information they would gather about you.

And from privacy comes essentially everything else.

Out of that basis, that set of assets that are your information and my information, comes the ability to control markets because he who controls the asset, the principal asset of that market, which is data, the information, the private information, controls the market.

Gee, I think you and I probably look at different sources of information then because lots of – there is a huge percentage of American consumers who worry about their privacy.

I think to your point –

There is also a large, well, I haven't got any choice in this situation, which is a reality that I face.

I mean, you just hit on a very, very key thing here, Mike, that if I am going to get a service, a digital service,

As a condition precedent to receiving that, I have to sign away.

I have to agree on these multiple pages of small print legalese that in essence says, hey, we're not giving you the product until you turn over all your privacy rights.

Lawyers call that a contract of adhesion.

I call it, I have what you want, and I'm not going to give it to you until you give me your private information and allow me to follow you across the web anywhere.

I think we need some kind of basic rules.

There's nothing wrong with saying, what about if we just collected the information that's necessary to conduct the transaction?

That you go on Google and you put in a search and the information that's necessary for that.

And to answer that doesn't include, for instance...

your location and, um, and the last eight sites that you went to, but that's what gets collected.

So we, we, we've reached a situation where we just need some basic guardrails.

What are the rules?

And, um,

And those rules probably ought to be decided by folks other than those who profit by making self-interested rules for self-advancement.