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Alex Webb

If Google and LG Like Smart TVs, So Should the Privacy Police

There’s a gold mine of user data to be harvested from these tricked-out televisions. Regulators have done little about it.

If smart TV’s time is coming, who’s protecting user data?

If smart TV’s time is coming, who’s protecting user data?

Photographer: David Paul Morris
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The world’s tech police have the opportunity to succeed in televisions where they initially failed with the rest of the connected world, and ensure that users retain a firm grasp on their data.

Smart televisions are nothing new. Nor is the shift in the platform wars, where tech firms duke it out for primacy of their operating systems, from smartphones to the television set. But the fact that Amazon.com Inc. is developing its own smart TV indicates that there’s enough value in the user data to offset the hardware’s otherwise feeble profitability – and that regulators should be quick to respond.