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Originally Posted by homealone
it's a bit of a grey area, afaik, Ian - the ISP can not be prosecuted due to being considered the 'common carrier'.
the chances of anyone being monitored online are pretty slim (although ISP's are supposed to keep logs of groups visited, I don't think they monitor individual message downloads???).
where the illegality comes in is storing, copying or distributing any 'dodgy' content.
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It is a grey area and I am puzzled why ISPs are allowed to get away with it. ISPs are not liable for content that is requested by a customer and which passes through them to that customer. Proxies which cache the content could be said to have stored data that hasn't been requested because the original customer has got the file direct from the original site. Newsgroups are rather different because strictly speaking the content has not been requested by anyone.
The police do monitor newsgroups and certain sites, in particular those that are showing sexually explicit photos of underage subjects.