@Toto
I think I know the answer to the question I asked you in my last post...
I have just read the "comments" on the El Reg article
"Government orders data retention by ISPs"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05...ion_directive/
I can see now how easy it would be to draw the conclusion that this law will require that ISP's record and store their customer's browsing history. I think it's a case of people jumping to conclusions. Almost certainly due to the antics of BT and Phorm et al now everyone expects the whole industry including government to try and pull underhand strokes in an effort to remove even the slightest hint of privacy from their lives and have become conditioned into reading that into every piece of remotely related news.
I've been following this for several years and such has been the inflexibility of the ISP's that implimenting data retention has been an uphill struggle for all the European governments!
It's not what it seems believe me and the register bless them do little to quell the hysteria
In the article it states:
Quote:
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Law enforcement agencies can gain access to such data with a court-ordered warrant. Though providers almost uniformly keep the information for such periods to resolve any future billing disputes, the laws will ensure that they do so.
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The information referred to here is what the ISP's have always collected: IP allocation, date, time, duration which they can (but seldom do) use for billing customers or billing disputes.
The only thing this legislation changes is that now it's compulsory for an ISP to retain this (and only this) information for 12 months.
Quote:
A telecoms business lobby group told OUT-LAW.COM at the passing of the Regulations last year that the orders would have little impact on the industry.
"The reality is that nothing much has changed. The new legislation will make little practical difference as most telecoms providers keep certain information for billing purposes and customer records," said Michael Eagle of the Federation of Communications Services. "That information would be enough to meet the requirements of law enforcement agencies. There is no need to keep more data that you are ever likely to be asked for."
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Requiring ISP's to monitor and retain their customers browsing history would make a
Massive difference and would probably force many of the smaller providers out of business.
