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Which ISPs Are Spying On You?

Posted by kdawson on from the what-do-they-keep-and-how-long-do-they-keep-it dept.

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.

7 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Re:All of them by froggero1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    All of them (in the world) have the potential to spy on you. But in the US, thanks to government privacy lobbyists, we get the privilidge of full disclosure and an open forum to debate what privacy we'd like to see from a government.

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    ~/.sig: No such file or directory
  2. Noisy clickstream by mstrcat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's an idea: Develop a web browser extention that does a random web crawl. I don't mind letting my ISP sell marketeers, give to the government, keep on file, ect a clickstream that is 99% chaff and 1% my actuall surfing. Yes, I realize that if someone puts in enough effort and analysis, they could probably sift out the false signal, but it's that very effort that makes it cost prohibitive to do it across a broad scale. And of course there is always the defense: I didn't visit that web site, my computer constantly does a random walk of the internet. And to help keep the ISPs in line, it ups the volume of records they have to keep by 500 fold.
            As for the other things such as IM's, emails, torrents, ect I can encrypt those should I feel the need. Yes, I could start using TOR, but it's slow and watching a web crawler do a random walk can be entertainment all by itself.

    1. Re:Noisy clickstream by mh1997 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Here's an idea: Develop a web browser extention that does a random web crawl
      It would be my luck that my browser would hit every child porn site on the web.
    2. Re:Noisy clickstream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Already done (see here)

      Also see Bruce Schneier's opinion on the matter.

      In short, it isn't a good idea.

    3. Re:Noisy clickstream by Lehk228 · · Score: 5, Funny

      then don't have the bot start from your bookmarks folder.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  3. Re:All of them by crazy+al's · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    Crazy Al's House of Intertubes - where we make up in volume what we lose per bit...
  4. Re:All of them, DUH - NO. Some do the right thing by enselsharon · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Although not an ISP per se, my offsite backup provider publishes a warrant canary:

    http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt

    In addition to a stated policy of "No data or meta-data concerning the behavior of our customers or filesystem contents will ever be divulged to any law enforcement agency without order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. All such orders will be reported to our entire customer base."

    You should read their philosophy page.