Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
Helen,
Telephone companies are required to keep records of all the calls that their customers make, for the purpose of assisting law-enforcement agencies when required to do so by the appropriate legal measures. As I understand it (and please correct me if I'm wrong), this law will require ISPs to do something pretty similar. It certainly won't be a case of the ISP "assigning people to monitor each user", any more than telephone companies do; what reason do you have to suppose that it will?
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Telephone companies don't have to track hundreds of calls per number per day. Most people don't make dozens of calls per day, much less hundreds. Those that do, tend to be businesses, on a different pay-system. If ISPs have to track every URL visited & every data-exchange by every account, that's a whole lot more data collection than telephone companies have to do.
It also brings up privacy questions. Phone companies don't hand over their records to, for example, stores that claim phones are being used to spread slander about them. They need specific evidence before getting permission to access a particular person's records. Monitoring individuals' internet traffic, with no reason to assume they're doing anything illegal other than "well,
somebody is, and maybe this person is too," seems like a massive invasion of privacy and presumption of guilt.