Slashdot Mirror
Comcast Sued Over Internet Data Gathering
saikou writes: "Slashdot already had an article about Comcast using transparent cache systems to track their cable modem users' browsing habits (purely for improvment of their networks, of course) and now here's the follow-up. Newsbyte posted yesterday a story about the lawsuit, demanding $100 per day of tracking for each customer. I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s) :)" Update: 05/25 12:37 GMT by T : burgburgburg points to a New York Times article about the case, and reminds you of two previous mentions of the controversial user-tracking effort (one, two).
The CART master Juan Pablo Montoya on the Monaco pole position!
...but why
Slurrrp! Smack! Slurrrp!
Yes, it's true. You have been CLIT Slapped.
a/s/l here. Sorry, adding domain tags to your s
It's good to see that Comcast haven't, in this case, been able to use general technical ignorance to bamboozle their way out of this one.
It looks as if they actually expected to get away with claiming they needed that info for caching purposes. I hope that they're nicely stunned at being asked to prove why they felt it necessary to tie that info back to individual user identities.
BTW, I presume that most /.ers have always assumed that their ISP was tracking their online activities.
I'm all for this if it can stop a single terrorist or sex-offender. If you nothing to hide, than you have nothing to worry about.
"More on Privacy"?
or
Moron! Privacy?
Krama: Bigdickinyoura
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The word "monkey" is of uncertain origin; its first known usage was in 1498 when it was used in the literary work Reynard the Fox as the name of the son of Martin the Ape. "Monkey" has numerous nautical meanings, such as a small coastal trading vessel, single masted with a square sail of the 16th and 17th centuries; a small wooden cask in which grog was carried after issue from a grog-tub to the seamen's messes in the Royal Navy; a type of marine steam reciprocating engine where two engines were used together in tandem on the same propeller shaft; and a sailor whose job involved climbing and moving swiftly (usage dating to 1858). A "monkey boat" was a narrow vessel used on canals (usage dating to 1858); a "monkey gaff" is a small gaff on large merchant vessels; a "monkey jacket" is a close fitting jacket worn by sailors; "monkey spars" are small masts and yards on vessels used for the "instruction and exercise of boys;" and a "monkey pump" is a straw used to suck the liquid from a small hole in a cask; a "monkey block" was used in the rigging of sailing ships; "monkey island" is a ship's upper bridge; "monkey drill" was calisthenics by naval personnel (usage dating to 1895); and "monkey march" is close order march by US Marine Corps personnel (usage dating to 1952). [Sources: Cassidy, Frederick G. and Joan Houston Hall eds. Dictionary of American Regional English. vol.3 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1996): 642; Wilfred Granville. A Dictionary of Sailors' Slang (London: Andre Deutch, 1962): 77; Peter Kemp ed. Oxford Companion to Ships Press, 1976): 556; The Oxford English Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1933; J.E. Lighter ed. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang. (New York: Random House, 1994): 580.; and Eric Partridge A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. 8th ed. (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company): 917.]Heres the cache
So... does your browsing habits come out in court as a matter of public record?
Get your Unix fortune now!
Right of way for protection of data privacy - are we the people?
. txt. Over 40 international civil rights organizations and user groups in the internet subscribed to this letter. Til now the signatures of more than 7500 people all over the world were registered.
Are you really sure you're innocent? Do you expect your representatives which have been elected by youself to believe into your integrity without needing evidence? A minority of the European Parliament seems to be in doubt and precautiously suspects its citizens at the time being. On May 29 2002 in Brussels will be vote if the fundamental rights of the citizens in Europe as there are protection of privacy, freedom of speech and the presumption of innocense should be abolished. Law enforcement authorities shall be authorized to store any data about electronic communications of EU-citizens. The most important rights are endangered to be sacrificed in the course of fight agains terrorism.
Neither the individual case nor interim measures will be considered when it will come to storing data. Thus data would not be saved temporary or in an appropriate manner. Regarding the intention of a part of the European Parliament retention of all individuals' electronic communication shall be done without control to enable further investigations about illegal actions in the future. Therewith all citizens will be assumed to be potential criminals. On April 18 this violation of the basic rights was defeated by a close vote.
For this narrow majority to become an absolute one a letter to the European Parliament was phrased which can be signed here:
http://stop1984.com/index2.php?text=letter
If you don't agree with your government suspecting you to be a potential terrorist and storing all your electronic communication without a cause you should sign this letter.
"In February, Comcast admitted that for a period of six weeks it had been recording information such as the IP (Internet protocol) address of customers' computers as well as Web pages they visited."
It sorta ties to user identities, if you consider your IP address to be an indicator of who is actually using your computer at any given time.
-elmar-
Need I remind you that if you use Comcast as your ISP you are using *their* networks. Its not like they don't have a right to maintain it anyways they want. Unless the TOS specifically says "We will not log your activity" this lawsuit should be thrown out.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
If They had
100 * 1000000 = 100,000,000 a day!
This means that microsoft could survive for about a year.
Good morning, sunshine!
...that comcast is simply using this proxy system to reduce its external traffic and attempt to make web-browsing faster for its users rather than as some part of some great conspiracy?
Dear Sirs,
You have 30 days to completely remove the law oriented articles from your site.
Since you are not officially registered as a law-firm, it is illegal to own a site consisting of 87% of law-articles.
After this grace period we will be forced to take any legal measures needed to prevent you from harming lawyers rights.
This post contains material that matches all 7 of the slashdot modearation reasons, you will have to choose which one to moderate it as
Insightful
Linux is crap because it was made by geeks and people hate geeks because they are geeks
Flamebait
FUCK YOU
Intresting
Rob malda has a small penis
Funny
Cowboy neal is a fat bastard
Informative
LINUX SUCKS
Troll
Click here
Off topic
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Redundant
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It says 100$ per customer or 1000$ for all customers per day. The first one is extremely unlikely. And 1000$ bucks is not so much - any major company can afford this. They probably made more money by the data.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
I'd heard about Comcast doing this from a local news report; seems like I missed the postings here. Thanks for all the info.
Heh, and as I'm typing this, a "we're hiring" ad for Comcast is on cable... "Enjoy an exciting career with Comcast! Technician! Sales! Spy!"
----
Apple hardware still too expensive? How about a raffle ticket?
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
It isn't so much the commercial use of this information that bothers me but, rather, that it's being accumulated in the first place leaves the door open for shady government agencies to have access to it in a harder to fight way than something slightly more attributable and, therefore, possible to fight such as Carnivore.
If you think about it, there was no real reason for the FBI to stick their neck out like that with an actual hardware wire-tap of their own when most ISPs would probably bend over backwards to share the info they've already collected for commercial reasons.
Want to know who's been visiting dangerous, subversive websites? Simply send Agent Crewcut to play a few rounds of golf with CEO Weasel and suggest that there might be some juicy government contracts coming up for grabs.
A multimillion-dollar privacy lawsuit on behalf of customers of Comcast's broadband Internet service has been filed in a federal court, according to the plaintiff's attorney.
o licy.asp .
The litigation seeks compensation for the approximately one million Comcast Internet customers nationwide whose Web surfing habits were tracked by the Internet service provider earlier this year, according to Steven E. Goren, a partner with Goren & Goren, the Michigan law firm handling the case.
In February, Comcast admitted that for a period of six weeks it had been recording information such as the IP (Internet protocol) address of customers' computers as well as Web pages they visited. The company said it discontinued the practice following news reports and customer complaints.
The lawsuit alleges that Comcast violated the Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984, and asks the court to award $100 per day for each day of violation or up to $1,000 for all affected Comcast customers, as provided under the statute, according to Goren.
A spokesperson for Comcast said the lawsuit was without merit and that the big cable company would defend itself vigorously.
"We have not in any way compromised their privacy or linked Internet usage data to personally identifying information," said the spokesperson, who added that Comcast has never shared personal information about where its subscribers go on the Internet.
In a February statement, Comcast's president said the company collected the surfing data as the result of network changes. After the bankruptcy of its partner AtHome Corp., Comcast moved its Internet customers to its own network, which uses special "proxy" servers from Inktomi to speed up performance.
The lawsuit, filed May 17 in U.S. District Court for the Michigan's Eastern District, lists a Michigan resident named Jeffrey Klimas as plaintiff, and requests a jury trial.
According to the statute, 47 USC 551(b), cable operators are prohibited from collecting "personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned."
Goren & Goren is online at http://www.consumerprotection.com .
Comcast's February statement is at http://comcast.comcastonline.com/internetprivacyp
Hey guys,
/. crowd?
I've got a machine I need to install *something* on. The problem is, it's got a GeForce3, so BSD is out of the question. So, it looks like Linux is it.
Now, which distro do all the cool kids on the block use? I mean, it looks like I can't use RedHat, because I'll lose all my street cred. Which distro will make me cool in the eyes of the
Tough as this may be for you to beleive, this is not a troll but an honest question. That, and I will really be appreciative of your suggestions. Thanks.
"If you have nothing to hide, then you don't need to cover your body."
(Score:-1, Offtopic)
You are outside doing yard work on a hot summer day. It's too hot for that shit, but you want to get it done today so you can be free all day tomorrow. I stop by the house unexpectedly and you invite me to join you for a beer and ask if I'd mind sitting out back with you - you're too dirty to sit inside. So I join you out back and we throw a blanket down over the fresh cut grass and grab a couple beers.
By the end of the second beer, I'm losing track of the conversation and just watching the sweat roll from your neck down to the waistband of your cut offs. You are totally into telling me about the rest of your landscaping plans until you roll up to grab me another beer out of the cooler, and notice that my eyes are on your cutoffs.
You laugh it off, but I can see the thought of me watching you is making your cock swell. You hand me my beer with a comment about how hot it is. Now, me being me, I can't resist cooling you off and I take a long drag on the beer before leaning over and dragging the beer bottle down the inside of your thigh. You jump so quickly in surprise that you end up dumping half your beer down my chest and now we have both gotten cooled off. This sends us into gales of laughter. But our eyes aren't laughing; your boner is practically crawling out the bottom of your cutoffs and my nipples are so hard they ache.
Your eyes stay intently on mine as you lean in and pull my hair loose of the pony tail holder making my hair tumble down all over my shoulders and back. You draw a couple strands thru your fingers...and then pull on one of the strands drawing me in for a kiss. My hands come up against your chest for balance, and feeling you all sweaty, I just let 'em slide down to your waistband and around your back. Your lips press gently to mine, and your tongue finds mine and strokes.
Like a magnet my hair is drawn to your sweaty shoulders and chest, and we're making a whole new kind of heat. You push me down onto the blanket and follow me down. Your kiss is turning harder, more passionate and your hips are rocking with the rhythm of your tongue. You pull on the strings of my bikini top and kiss my neck until my back arches with my moan. You quickly reach under and pull the lower string loose too. Kissing my quickly down my neck, across my shoulders you lick the beer off my chest. Apologizing in a whisper for getting my top wet, you lick the beer off my nipples at the very tips.
My back arches and I whisper that more than my top is wet. You reward me by sweetly swirling your tongue against the nipples till they are both standing at attention and begging for more. My hips arch and I moan your name. By now I have forgotten where we are but as you lift up to pull my shorts off you notice your neighbor out in his yard with his eyes locked on us (and his hand jacking his lawn hose). You sink back down and kiss me firmly, letting me know exactly how much you want me. Then you whisper that your neighbor is watching, and ask me if we are going to cum inside or out. I laugh gently and whisper that I will cum inside and you can cum wherever you want. Kissing me firmly again you roll slightly to the side and say, "Take a look".
Peeking over your shoulder I see Mr. Middle America standing dumbly in the middle of his lawn. I quickly pull back and kiss you passionately till you have forgotten that he is there, and are reaching for my shorts again. Unable to resist my playful mood, I scream "Oooooh God, baby, ohh yes make me cum!" and then jump off the blanket and grab my top and run in the house. You curse and start to run after me, catching me just inside the house panting "You're not getting off that easy". "Definitely not, I'm planning on getting off on your very hard, very long cock baby" and I grab you and kiss you with my tongue simulating exactly the stroke and rhythm I want you to make me cum with.
You let me take the lead and I reach down and firmly cup your cock before letting my fingers find your zipper. Taking my time, I release you and listen to you moan your appreciation as you lean back against the kitchen counter and drop your head back. Your cut offs sound loud as they hit the floor, but not as loud as your breathing. I slowly engulf your warm sweaty cock in my mouth and listen for the catch in your breathing. Sure enough, your breath halts and then with a whoosh starts back up again, louder and harsher than a moment ago. You widen your stance, giving me plenty of room to lick and suck your cock. My tongue bathes you and I moan my appreciation of your taste. I suck you deep and stroke firmly with my hand at the base, letting my fingers ease under your balls and stroke behind them. I feel your legs tense and you moan loud and reach out and stroke my head and hair and start whispering to me. Over and over you tell me how good it feels, how hot and slick my tongue is, how badly you want me, how beautiful I am, how hard you are.
With every word I am more aroused, moaning and panting around your cock. My moaning and panting is driving you crazy and you pull me up for another torrid kiss, our lips and tongues mating wildly. You don't bother with my zipper, just running your hand down the inside of my shorts and find my bikini bottoms. Cursing you pull your hand out and reach with both hands for my button and zipper and then push the shorts and bikini bottoms off at once and slide your hand right into my furry mound. You waste no time and sink a finger deeply inside me, never letting go of my mouth and tongue. I moan and melt against you, my mouth going slack, unable to feel anything except your hand. Quickly you insert another finger and at the same time brush my clit with your palm and I shudder and squeeze your fingers with my love muscles.
I drag my lips up your neck to your ear and pant and whisper in your ear "now, now!" gasping and melting on your fingers. "Oh, no baby" you whisper back and stroke your fingers in and out of me, then spreading my juices over my clit. "My turn to tease you baby" you grin as you take your hand away and pick me up and slide me onto the kitchen counter. "Spread your legs and I'll make you cum" you tell me. Suddenly I feel open and exposed, until I notice that somewhere along the way you unzipped your pants and are slowly jacking your cock. Its rock hard, and all my attention is centered on it. When you lean close and spread my legs, my thighs part like melted butter. I lean back on my hands and let my head drop back until my hair is brushing the counter top. "Ohhhh yes, what a sweet juicy pussy you have baby" you moan. You swirl your tongue along my clit and down into my now sopping slit. The sound of your voice so rough and uncontrolled is like lightning in my soul. You take notice that I tense and shiver when you talk, and immediately start a rolling dialogue pausing only to flick your tongue on my clit. You slide your fingers in circles around my slit, not sliding them in, just around and around.
"Yes, I'm going to make your sweet pussy cum baby, you know I am. I want to feel this pretty pussy tighten all over my cock baby". I gasp and close my eyes, sinking deeper into the electricity your creating. You suck on my clit and continue to tease my slit until I moan that I can't hold back any longer, "I wanna come on your cock, pleeeeease baby". You immediately slide me off the counter and I wrap my legs around your waist and begin kissing you like tomorrow doesn't exist. You push me against the cold refridgerator door and split me open with your cock. I shudder and immediately begin cumming from the cold on my back and the heat in my slit. My pussy milks your cock hard until you start to cum too. It feels like one very long, very wet cum. I can't tell where mine stops and yours begins. Suddenly there is loud silence as the refridgerator momentarily pauses running. "Lets go to bed" you whisper. "What about the lawn?" I enquire and you laugh and tell me there's nothing left to do but take care of a bush while your hand strokes my furry mound again
IANAL, but heres the links to what I believe to be the relevant laws comcast may have violated (mainly for being a cable company) Cable TV Privacy Act of 1994Which in short provides provisions that limit:
(A) the nature of personally identifiable information collected or to be collected with respect to the subscriber and the nature of the use of such information;
(B) the nature, frequency, and purpose of any disclosure which may be made of such information, including an identification of the types of persons to whom the disclosure may be made;
(C) the period during which such information will be maintained by the cable operator;
(D) the times and place at which the subscriber may have access to such information in accordance with subsection (d) of this section; and
(E) the limitations provided by this section with respect to the collection and disclosure of information by a cable operator and the right of the subscriber under subsections (f) and (h) of this section to enforce such limitations.
As well if I'm not incorrect here,the ECPA
More fun privacy law here, Privacy Act of 1974
And of course if they customer has a kid under 13 who they gathered data on there was another law I just couldn't quite manage to find in regards to making this pretty illegal. And you can't make your customers opt out of federal law last I checked.
Anyway, it hasn't been my experience that lawyers take cases they have no chance of winning where the payout is based on them winning.
They are collecting information to keep updated their database about best p0rn sites.
(1) Read the "End User License Agreement" that Comcast requires of its customers--it is in explicit contradition to their public statements w/r to the collection and use of end user communications. [they claim explicit ownership of the data that you place on their networks as a subscriber] (2) If Comcast were to exercise its self-promoted rights under said agreement--and I have some technical evidence that they have--then not only are they at issue with the 1984 Federal satute--but, Pennsylvania's 1996 ammendment to its Cable TV Act. [I would strongly suspect that other states' Cable Acts are cast from the same template] As to no collection of "personally indentifiable information"--that's patent nonsense. The architecture of the the DOCCIS v.1.1 infrastructure that Comcast has implemented requires the explicit registration of every communications device on their network with a specific subscriber account--each datagram produced by every device on the Comcast network is directly identifiable to a specific subscriber account. The nature of the proxy is such that a query on the order of "Show me all data transactions that the household of Smith, John S. has enganged in with http://www.cnn.com over the past 12 hours" is a trivial undertaking--requiring perhaps 15 minutes worth of effort. [the MAC# of the DOCCIS modem is recorded in the billing/user account database--the rest is a trivial filtering/datbase query exercise]
The $100 is exclusive of lawyer's fees. The NYT article states:
Goren, who predicted ``months or years'' of litigation, is seeking attorney's fees plus damages of at least $100 per day for every Comcast subscriber.
For about the past month, any http connection I've made would be really slow and lossy, even though ping times to the sites were good. Anyone know if Covad is trying to set up some kind of transparent proxy on their network too?
If you don't agree with your government suspecting you to be a potential terrorist and storing all your electronic communication without a cause you should sign this letter.
Of course, if you don't agree with your government suspecting you as a potential terrorist, then you are a potential terrorist. Please include with your signature as much personal information as you can, including your bookmark file....
Ad luna, Alicia! Ad luna!
I wonder how it can be reconciliated with the right of "looking at every private data saved on individual, as well as a right of rectification" that some citizen in some European country do indeed have : CNIL for example in France, has normally to watch and applicate fine if this right is not observed.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
All it takes is all ISP to add "you give all right to privacy when you connect with us , and all your data can be sold to anybody wanting them." and then what ? You would be satisfied ? Sorry but you are excetly like the proponent of "opt out". privacy should always an "opt in" to be given up. I hate to think i have to watch every single of my step, watch every single word I type. A bit like a dictature.
Maybe you do not care being observed , but I do even if I do not do anything wrong. Just like I would care if somebody installed camera on my back to observe every on my move, what i look for as information, or what my friends write me as letter.
Yes , it wasn't written specifically "we will not log your activity", but it was enither specified "we won't sell all your email adress to spammer", neither " We won't post a lsit of the web page you visited on a special page", "we won't display the content of personnal letter" , "we won't mock you in any fashion", "we won#ät ask you for your first born" etc... Your argument is moot. If activity is to be logged it should be specified. Not the other way around.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I guess even if it will work out, customers might get oh, say, $10. With rest being a fee for the lawyer(s)
We could endlessly repeat well-worn ideas yet never think about them, but let's try:
People complain that class action contingency attorneys pull a scam on their targets (e.g. Comcast) and their clients (e.g. Comcasts customers) and take all the $. Think about it; contingency lawyers (lawyers that collect large sums if they win, rather than smaller sums win or lose) and class action (grouping large numbers of small complaints into one big one: e.g. $100 damages * 1 million people = $100 million lawsuit) are the only way the less-than-rich get access to our court system.
o Contingency lawyers let everyone, not just the rich, use our court system. Our court system was too expensive for anyone but the rich. You must have a lawyer (technically you can represent yourself, just like my grandmother is technically allowed to hack the Linux kernel), and lawyers are expensive. If you couldn't afford one, no justice for you -- very democratic. Now, contingency lawyers take your case based on the hope you'll win and be able to pay them. Think about it -- would you work hundreds (or more) hours, hire experts and make every other investment at your own expense, and risk that if you lose (the other side has attorneys too) that you get $0.00? All that time, effort and money completely sunk? No way to buy dinner? Pay the mortgage? Put the kids through college? Even if you do win, you work now and get paid next year. Now you understand why contingency lawyers demand a larger percentage when they win.
o What other check, besides Class Action, is there on corporations screwing the millions of individuals who buy their products, work for them, share communities with them and invest hard-earned money in them? There aren't enough gov't regulators -- they couldn't even stop the multi-billion dollar Savings and Loan or Enron or other huge scandals -- can they protect the $10,000 of pension money Jane Elderly invested in Creative Financial Reporting Inc.? The citizens of a polluted neighborhood whose health is at risk? Or simply Ed Jones who wasted on their lies about their useless product? What deters some executive from twisting the financial statements, or ignoring the pollution or lying to consumers, simply to protect his job? What motivates the Board of Directors to question instead of rubber stamping their buddy the CEO who gave them their cushy jobs? It's not fear of the a few regulators; it's fear of massive lawsuits on behalf of every one of those people they might screw.
Sure, there are some bad lawyers who fleece the system, but so do some companies, doctors, politicians, bankers, police, programmers, etc. etc. Like everyone else, there are good lawyers and bad ones, and they all have their good and bad days. Plus, lawyers can't fleece anyone unless a jury and/or judge helps.
Funny that it's the part of our court system that serves the politically weak, not the part that serves the RIAA, the Fortune 500 corporations, etc., that gets all the mainstream criticism.
The usual conclusion to a class-action lawsuit like this is that it is settled, with the lawyers receiving a multi-million dollar fee and the individual members of the class receiving something like a coupon worth 10% off list price on the next purchase, i.e., diddly squat.
This being slashdot, I guess it's only natural that you didn't read the article before rushing to post your opinion.
According to the statute, 47 USC 551(b), cable operators are prohibited from collecting "personally identifiable information concerning any subscriber without the prior written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned."
By the time the lawyers get their "cut", the comcast customers will end up getting a BILL for the settlement, and the lawyers will end up with the customary 100.01%
"Rob malda has a small penis" should be under "redundant." Actually, the phrases "Rob Malda" and "samall penis" are redundant in and of themselves.
I'm just going to assume that the tracking comes from the possiblity of the merge with AT&T. The freep had a really good article yesterday about Comcast not being too happy with the bandwidth consupmtion from users.
"Comcast points out that it is not cheap to provide high-speed service to a million customers, as it does now. At its network operations center in Cherry Hill, N.J., workers electronically monitor more than 50,000 pieces of equipment throughout the company's broadband network."
It wouldn't be surprising if they were tracking "equipment" (users more like it) to see who the bandwidth "hogs" are.
Better take advantage of Usenet acess while it lasts!
But even ignoring the fact that this case is about a law that applies specifically to cable operators about collecting information without permission.. let's look at what you are saying.
It's the telephone company's network as well.. does that mean they can listen and record all your telephone calls?
What's the point of a legal system where the lawyers get all the money? THe system itself is making the money, and those doing who actually have the complaint get squat. Why should they bother suing then?
Court cases where lawyers get all hte money are rediculous.
The point, for Comcast customers, is not the money. It's only $100; how much compensation do they deserve? It's the privacy and Comcast's behavior. If Comcast loses, neither they nor other ISPs will take a similar risk again. Isn't privacy valuable?
The lawyers take a big financial risk. For risking tens of thousands of their own money (are you paying their secretaries, office rent, research, etc.) and spending so much of their life on the case, should they get only the good feeling of having improved privacy for Americans (if they win)?
The Comcast customers get $xx buck each and privacy. The attorneys who put in their time and money, not knowing if they'd get it back, they get the cash.
The social side of it is that no one wants to be watched by Big Brother or marketers or whatever. And it's against the law for Comcast to do it. It seems that most Slashdotters are well aware of and justifiably sensitive to these issues.
Then there's the technical side, and I'm kind of surprised that so few voices here speak up about it. When you have a network with a lot of users, it is very natural and intelligent to want to optimize it and use it at maximum efficiency. Caching proxies are a great tool at your disposal. It would almost be stupid if you didn't use them. (Yes, I'm a Squid lover. IMHO, almost every ISP, net-connected business, school, etc should have one.)
But running a web proxy comes with a responsibility. Someone might abuse it, and if the admin receives a complaint about something that came from his box, he needs to be able to look in a log and see who really deserves to receive that complaint, lest he be left holding the hot potato. You can't be a common carrier and not be held responsible for what goes through your network, unless your finger is always ready to point at who is responsible.
It looks like the social issues are the squeaky wheel, so they're going to be addressed. Just remember that this comes with a performance cost.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I used to be a BT Openworld subscriber here in the UK. They also had a "transparent proxy" running. I freely sent all my data in cleartext until one day their connection to the US went down, and every time I tried to access any sites in the US, it spat back a proxy error at me. So I setup my own squid server in Ireland and routed all my traffic securely through there.
I phoned up the support line and got some slimy "technician" who claimed nothing was wrong. I told him his proxy server was spitting back errors at me, to which he replied he didn't think they had any proxy servers and were my proxy settings ok.
So he put me onto his "manager" who told me I wasn't supposed to know about the proxy and he'd look into it. That was the last I heard of it, 10 minutes later they'd fixed it.
... when you are a subscriber of a Cable ISP. Get over it. Whether or not the TOS states explicitly that information is being gathered, there is no implied privacy when using a data network. A recent case has upheld this. (I'm sorry, but the exact case escapes me ... however, it appeared on these very pages.)
That being said, there are NO Federal laws governing data passing over a cable TV connection. The FCC (and most state) regulations govern only the television signals that pass over the cable. The cable company is granted, in most cases, a exclusive contract to provide this service to a community. The contracts were mostly written prior to the internet's popularity, and hence have no conditions or obligations in them pertaining to data.
Typical conservative knee-jerk, vomitous reply.
Zmag probably blew your brain apart when you tried to comprehend the sheer intelligence of it with your tiny conservative brain.