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Re: Monitoring, Flow Stats (Re: spam whore, norcal-systems)

  • From: Jim Dixon
  • Date: Thu Feb 04 03:18:27 1999

On Wed, 3 Feb 1999, Bob Allisat wrote:

> Jim Dixon writes:
> > ... not only do European ISPs maintain Radius logs that tie 
> > dynamic IP addresses to user accounts but they are also strongly 
> > encouraged to do this by their national governments in most or
> > all member states of the European Union.

> > EuroISPA, the European ISP trade association, checked with
> > officials at DG XV, the relevant directorate of the European
> > Commission, for their opinion regarding the statements quoted 
                                            ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > above. So far their opinion appears to be that maintenance of such 
> > logs is OK so long as customers are aware that logs are being kept 
> > and the logs are not kept for too long.

Bob omits "the statements quoted above", confusing the meaning of
what I wrote. 

What he clipped out were assertions to the effect that it is illegal
in the European Union to keep records of user IP addresses, including 
dynamic IP addresses.  These statements were supposedly made by 
EU "law enforcement officials".  
 
>  Logging of an individual's activities on the Internet
>  is one of those Big Brother kind of infringements ISPs
>  love to advocate "on our behalf". The actual interests

As I tried to make clear, Europe's ISPs are not advocating logging;
they are being urged or even required to do so by national 
governments.  If the European Commission were to make maintenance
of such logs illegal, this would put ISPs in an impossible situation.

--
Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015