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Lobbying activity has increased recently by American communications and cable companies seeking fewer restrictions relating to consumer privacy. The industry wants to be able to sell information about customers to third parties. One significant change the industry wants is to shift regulation authority from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC (News - Alert)).

Opponents of the proposed change say that it’s yet another intrusion on individual privacy. The situation is bad enough with Google, Facebook (News - Alert) and the NSA tracking everyone – why add more to the mix?

The industry will argue that the Googles and Facebooks of the world benefit from less privacy regulation. As technology improves and companies’ services evolve, the overlap between comapnies is more than it ever has been. Therefore the Comcasts, Verizons and AT&Ts should be regulated no differently.

One consumer advocate disagrees:

“This is a power grab,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocate. “The companies know the FTC is basically toothless. They have Facebook and Google (News - Alert) envy.”

One solution being promoted by the privacy activists is that cable and phone companies should be charged a fee payable to the customer whenever that person’s information is sold for marketing purposes.

This does not really solve the problem from the privacy activist’s point of view. What’s to stop the phone or cable company from increasing their service fees and passing the costs of using the information right back to consumers? It’s the opposite of having your cake and eating it too, because the cable or phone company gets to use consumer information and the consumer pays a higher bill.

Google was recently the defendant in a class action complaint about the privacy of their Gmail service. In a motion to dismiss, the search engine giant’s attorneys quoted a 1979 Supreme Court case, Smith v. Maryland.

That case involved the use of devices that track phone numbers when calls are made. The Supreme Court ruled that the use of such devices used by the phone company are not considered searches under the Fourth Amendment, and are not subject to warrant requirements.

The quote Google cited came in the decision:  “a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties.”

This quote was used as the basis for Google’s argument that non-Gmail users should not have any expectation of privacy when sending emails to Gmail users.

The recent news from cases like Google’s, the NSA and the lobbying efforts of the phone and cable industry should be alarming to privacy rights supporters. It’s not just limited to the US – a recent law in New Zealand opened the door for domestic spying. The only avenues where privacy activists can go to have their side heard is by doing their own lobbying or taking companies who don’t respect privacy to court.