IP addresses and personal information (was Re: [LINK] Fwd: On Line Opinion - 16 February 2007)

[Adam Todd]

At 06:53 PM 23/02/2007, Irene Graham wrote:
>On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:37:48 +1100, Adam Todd wrote:
> > IP addresses are not private.  They are public.  Data you send in
> > packet headers aren't private, they are public.  Data you get back in
> > packets is not private, it's public.
>
>Nonsense Adam. Read the Telecommunications (Interception and Access Act)
>1979 and the Telecommunications Act 1997.

This isn't about interception.

There is NO interception taking place.

No access is being given to the consumers computer, only the log data that 
the ISP collects naturally by way if it's ordinary course of business.

The question would be is the ISP providing anything actually confidential 
that identifies a consumer, and even if they did, the consumer has no legs 
to stand on regardless!

Don't forget too, any GOOD ISP is going to run a procy server and encourage 
you to use that.  Any GOOD ISP is then going to have their Hitwise data 
collection between the PROXY and the Big Bad Internet.  Hence ALL 
connections come form the PROXY.

A win for Hitwise.

A win for the ISP.

A win for consumer privacy.

Sadly most consumers whinge about Proxy servers or refuse to use them.  And 
to think, Proxies can even help prevent popups and nasties!


Don't get me wrong, I'm not supporting the conduct behind this thread.  I'm 
just telling it like it is in relation to the question of privacy.

I went out to bat for Privacy and Consumer rights and found myself very 
alone in a Supreme Court room for several hours, over several months.  I 
have no interest in waging a war on the issues of privacy, especially in 
the area of telecommunications, when the public and people in this country 
have no interest in it, or by their silence express the view that there is 
nothing of concern.

Back to Hitwise for a moment.  They send ISPs a perl script, which can be 
modified.  I was approached many years ago by many ISPs to review the code 
for security and privacy reasons.  I found nothing nasty in the code, or 
it's output.  I was going to join Hitwise whilst I operated a number of 
ISPs but never really had the interest, at the time it wasn't paying 
anything of value.  I was getting more return from auditing the software 
and installing it on ISPs servers.

There was nothing nasty in the code and there isn't much that can be anyway.