http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/306441,telstra-tracks-users-to-build-web-filter.aspx
I’d suggest going and reading: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin/ to learn a bit about anonymization failures.
What we know:
- Telstra has the ability to monitor every URL you visit on a NextG connection
- Telstra is, in fact, monitoring every URL you visit through your NextG connection and piping that to some computer system that then takes action on it.
- None of this was disclosed to customers.
- Telstra is building a system for censorship.
What we don’t know:
- If this is a violation of any Australian privacy law (I’m not a lawyer)
- Who else has access to this “anonymised” data (hellooo US legal system)
- What universal surveillance infrastructure they have running
Update: this is a followup from yesterday’s post: http://www.flamingspork.com/blog/2012/06/25/on-telstra-tracking-nextg-http-requests/
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After reading the first article you linked, I can’t help but wonder if this “activity was conducted ahead of a launch of a voluntary web filtering offering for mobile users”, why wasn’t the collection of URLs visited also voluntary?
It’s a good question.
[...] problem: I want to use Tor on my phone. If you’re wondering why, perhaps my previous posts on Telstra and what they do to your traffic may be a good [...]
“Why wasn’t the collection of URLs visited also voluntary?”
1. Barely anyone would volunteer for this.
2. How many of the helpful volunteers will merrily continue surfing porn and warez, (or planning graffiti raids on the UK Olympic mascot) while they’re under the eye?
My web logs show this Netsweeper shite with users from UAE, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, Great Britain… oh, and Australia. Also, one from Mountain View, are they under the eye in Silicon Valley? I would not be surprised if NSA <3 Netsweeper.
All your base are belong to us.