Slashdot Mirror
Which ISPs Are Spying On You?
firesquirt sends us an article from Wired about a survey they conducted to determine major ISPs' data retention and other privacy practices. Over a period of two months, four national ISPs would not give Wired the time of day; and another four answered some of their questions in a fashion not altogether reassuring.
Actually, in the European Union, such spying practices are _mandatory_.
My Canadian ISP, Rogers, is not on the list but if I were to hazard a guess I'd reckon they'd sell my tracks six ways from Sunday as soon as sneeze.
These are, after all, the goons who think just about any kind of encrypted traffic coming out of your box is a terrorist threat to the movie industry -- even if it's just a VPN connection.
Does anyone know what Rogers retention policies actually are?
These stories are free but worth money.
Already done (see here)
Also see Bruce Schneier's opinion on the matter.
In short, it isn't a good idea.
All of the United States' ISPs are MANDATED to have the ability to spy on you, at a moment's notice, and send the full stream they request off to FBI or whoever's data warehouse. and they (the ISP) must comply and must not tell you if they are doing so, courtesy of CALEA. Penalties start at $10,000 per day. Obligatory bow of the head: I, for one, welcome our new overlords.
Crazy Al's House of Intertubes - where we make up in volume what we lose per bit...
Um, the point of a VPN is to set up a secure tunnel to get to your destination network with the traffic encrypted en route, so it doesn't matter whether your ISP is snooping on your traffic or not. Now, if you wanted to host your destination server or network somewhere like Canada or someplace with less intrusive government monitoring, that might well be a good thought.
e pt/
The problem is that the US via CALEA is requiring things like Cisco routers used to terminate many VPN connections be wiretap-friendly, so using a VPN tunnel might not be as safe as it was before that law came about. Cisco has a page about this, but it doesn't actually give you much specific info:
http://www.cisco.com/wwl/regaffairs/lawful_interc
"The human race's favorite method for being in control of the facts is to ignore them." -Celia Green
"... All such orders will be reported to our entire customer base."
:(
Ummm... dream on about this part (at least), as "Patriot Act"-backed demands (with or without a warrant) can forbid the disclosure of said demand.
And while an especially conscientious service provider might insist on dotting i's and crossing t's, it is doubtful any of their personnel (or bosses) will be willing to be jailed as a "terrorist".