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claus - 5:57 pm on Apr 21, 2005 (gmt 0)
Some ISP's actually fight pretty hard against this, as surveillance is really not their business and all that storage is a lot of costs, so they prefer to just count the minutes of bandwith in order to bill you. Anyway, given the geographic distribution of the members here, basically you're probably being monitored long before you ever type google into your browser. But then, unlike cookies, web bugs, tracking scripts, and logins, you don't actually see any of this. Oh, and if this should make you feel important or priviledged, then be aware that all your gigabytes of .avi, .mov, .mp*, .iso files (ie. your precious data) is just a small drop in a very large sea, and there are far bigger fish to fry than you looking at some random pr0n, or calling the government of this season (whatever season) names, even dirty ones. Believe me (or not), most people do exactly that. --- [edited by: claus at 6:25 pm (utc) on April 21, 2005]
Regarding ISP's, well, if they wanted to and were allowed to, they would know everything. Some countries don't allow some kinds of registration for private enterprises. Then again, some other countries either require ISP's, or have legislation pending (or suggested), to keep detailled records for a long time, as well as provide "backdoors" for all kinds of purposes. And that would be personally identifiable records with social security number, home address, bank account, and all. Privacy policy? Your local government this season would be the ones who write that one, so if your country allow citizens to read its laws it's probably at your local library or published somewhere on the internet.
I should perhaps add that i have worked with pretty big amounts of web usage data at a pretty big ISP around here. You tend to get perspective; most things people like to keep private are pretty common. I wouldn't hesitate to say that looking at islamic sites is pretty common too - in fact most religions are pretty popular. And extremists (be they sexual or otherwise) are quite popular too, but then you only need to turn on your TV on a random evening or read a random newspaper to confirm that.