I've known this was a false belief for a long time because in the late 70's I had a 1st class radio telephone operators license and did radio engineering work. The way stations were licensed, they had to renew their license every two years, and part of that renewal process was to prepare an ascertainment of community needs where you would describe what you believed where the community needs and how the station would meet them, and if the FCC didn't agree, you didn't get the license. The regional FCC chief engineer, R.C. Deitch at the time, would hold meetings that were informal and only the stations that they wanted to be approved would have their chief engineer invited to these meetings. When you went, they would explain what they expected to see on the Ascertainment of Community Needs, if you didn't get invited, then you wouldn't be privy to that information and your station wouldn't be relicensed. Then in 1978, I went to work for Pacific Northwest Bell, working as an engineer there, I would occasionally get loaned out to other departments when our work load was low, things such as frame work which is just running cross connect jumpers. And I would occasionally get orders to run jumpers from someone's phone line to a second pair via a bridge. I got curious what these were and asked supervisors, and was just told not to worry about it. But then I gained access to a computer system that had all the info about where the pairs terminated and I started looking them up, and they all went to the federal office building in downtown. So I knew we were being spied upon even back then. So all of what is happening now are the same forces operating as back then but with 50 years of technological advance.