[Chapter-delegates] Stalking or reasonable traffic analysis?

[Narelle Clark]

I'm curious as to what others think on this situation.

Recently the largest operator of mobile (actually all telcom/Internet
networks) in Australia was found to be relaying every visited URL, with
minimal stripping, made by its network users to a third party inside the
USA.

A few customers discovered this when checking their servers and noticed an
odd request for an identical page that they had only just visited
themselves.

The network operator has claimed not to have broken any laws, especially
since it strips any items from the URL after a '?' so you won't get full
password, username etc, but you will get very precise, obscure, account
based URLs.

Suffice to say its customers were not impressed. Many complaints were
generated in the press. The USA has much weaker privacy legislation than
Australia, and dare I mention the US Patriot Act applying to data and
transactions inside the USA.

Here is a sample of an article describing the issue:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/telstra-accused-of-next-g-web-stalking-20120705-21ivs.html

short form: http://bit.ly/OrDvPs

and our hero Geoff Huston's angry commentary:
http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/2012-07/allyourpackets.html