Yup, it's a thing. It's called the Investigatory Powers Act, often referred to as the "Snooper's Charter". It has support from Tories and Labour, despite how Orwellian it sounds.
this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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I know a few years ago there was that thing about storing a rolling years history of all the websites each user had visited. Not the specific page but just the domain name.
IIRC there was a discussion on how each ISP would even manage to store such a huge amount of data.
Was this system implemented in the end of was it just one of those ideas that couldn't work in reality?
it was implemented as part of all ISP/Telco’s legal intercept capabilities.
Use Tor, a VPN or a zero trust client like Cloudflare or Perimeter 81 to browse if you don’t want your internet connection records stored by your ISP.
The arrangement was referenced again in October 2020 when it was revealed that traffic data from UK ISP Sky supported a successful UEFA High Court ISP blocking injunction. A year later it emerged that Sky had compiled data on high-traffic IP addresses accessed via its network to help an anti-piracy company working for the Premier League.
It's quite a specific case. As this kind of monitoring will cost the ISP money (and could damage their reputation) there has to be some incentive for them to do it - Sky Sports had be a decent percentage of their revenue, with the Premier League matches driving a lot of that.
Even then, it doesn't seem to have been used to target individuals streaming the footie but the people providing the streams.
I would be very surprised if their entire intention behind it wasn't protecting their own bottom line from piracy
Oh indeed. They did the sums and it wouldn't take much of a crack in the dam to see those £20/channel subscriptions disappear. I'd be surprised if they weren't also keeping an eye on the priracy of their movies and TV shows but it won't be quite the impact on their bottom line.
I know I'm probably in the minority here but I wouldn't be against getting Sky to watch American football and maybe the odd other channel live, but I won't because I don't want to have to pay a bribe to the BBC just to watch it live.
Yes. This is old news, it's been this way since around 2015 or 2007 during one of the internet surveillance or anti terrorism laws.