URLs, IPs and interception

[Ian Batten]

On 29 Feb 2008, at 21:27, James Cox wrote:

> The ISP typically performs the name lookup... but that information  
> is contained in the traffic it sends--

It's contained in DNS (port 53, client to recursive server in ISP)  
traffic, but the ISP has no business seeing a single byte of the HTTP  
traffic.  I recall that back in the day some of the low-cost ISPs put  
a transparent cache in front of their outbound links, but I think that  
(a) isn't effective any more (I know our cache byte hit rate is  
trivial to the point of pointlessness) and (b) that pre-dated RIPA.    
Clive or Richard might know more --- Demon didn't do it, but I suspect  
they've met people who did.  Indeed, if I bought two ADSL connections  
from two ISPs and slung all my DNS traffic down one and all my HTTP  
down the other --- hardly rocket science to set up --- the HTTP ISP  
has no business knowing anything about my traffic at all.

ian


> so there is a parallel to saying that BT shouldn't listen to  
> conversations, the post office shouldn't read mail and your isp  
> shouldn't reconstruct your browsing / email history.