Today in Parliament

[Ian Batten]

On 17 Jul 08, at 1707, Roland Perry wrote:

> In article <0F1F58F4-B6AF-4FD2-841B-861F1CC83527@batten.eu.org>, Ian  
> Batten <igb@batten.eu.org> writes
>>> A lot of  information is available to the internet service  
>>> providers through  headers, URLs and so on.
>>
>> If my ISP knows the URL that I am accessing, then that means they  
>> are intercepting my TCP stream on port 80.   I thought that was  
>> illegal, other than for the purposes of running a transparent proxy  
>> (which fewer and fewer people are doing these days).  If they're  
>> recording and acting on that information, then that's quite clearly  
>> personally identifiable data, probably sensitive ditto, and they  
>> should have a damned good reason for doing it.
>
> He said it was "available to", not that they actually captured it.
>
> Although I feel obliged to comment that "making available to" is one  
> of the famous phrases in RIPA, related to interception.

Then why did draw a distinction between URLS and headers on the one  
hand, and (by implication) the actual content of the pages on the  
other?  If the test is ``could they trivially capture it if they so  
desired?'' then that encompasses all non-encrypted data that passes  
their network.

ian