ZDNet UK 26/10/2001: "Home Office admits data retention plans "

[Owen Blacker]

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> > I reckon, thus, that Caspar's estimate for pages is ~roughly~ 
> > right, but would produce traffic logs of the order of those 
> > Ben Laurie was suggesting.
> 
> Yes, and we already tackled this earlier in the thread (which 
> evidently Nigel did not read) - see below and replies following

Aaah, apologies.  Head full of cold  :)

Erm, actually, the bit to which you're referring is (quoting Ben, quoting
Caspar, quoting Ben, quoting Caspar, quoting Richard Clayton):

   > > > > You should look a little closer at the content of the
   > > > > average web page (hint: count the number of items ...
   > > > > for example the front page of BBC News Online currently
   > > > > has 121 separate IMG items on it).
   > > > 
   > > > Yes, I do realise that, but I suspect even the Home Office
   > > > will be capable of posing the question whether it isn't
   > > > fairly trivial to log the URL of the "main" page accessed
   > > > (I can three of two ways immediately)
   > > 
   > > You can? How? Anything that involves parsing the content is
   > > not going to work, btw...
   > 
   > [So, for the record, I have satisfied Ben of this (off-list)]
   
   Kinda - as I mentioned, your plan is trivially defeated...

I'd guess, though, that ISPs wouldn't be allowed to piss about with the
logged data, or to make the call themselves as to what they considered to
be important (it's not unreasonable to assume that the Home Office might
have different ideas on that subject).

Not wanting to drivel too much on-list when (a) we're revisiting old
content and (b) I'm even less coherent than usual, could you satisfy me of
same offlist too?  :)


O x
- -- 
Owen Blacker
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