Washington wants your cable company to become a whole new privacy cop

As companies like Google become more interested in building their own cable box to compete with the one you rent from your TV provider, one big question is how they'll protect your privacy. Just like Netflix knows exactly when you tune in and tune out from a show, a set-top box made by a company outside of the cable industry would gain access to much of the same information. Basically, could this data be used for targeted advertising? Federal regulators say no.

Their recent proposal to "unlock the box" and let non-cable firms design alternatives to the traditional set-top box would require those companies to obey the same privacy rules that cable companies do. But what's interesting about this idea is how they propose to implement it: Give the cable companies responsibility for ensuring that cable boxes made by third parties don't abuse your personal data. The proposal effectively contemplates a world where Comcast could be overseeing Google, for example.