Porn Sunday

They know where you've been (the IP address, and hence the domain) but they don't know what you saw. At the moment, AFAIK, that's pretty much all they're logging at the moment anyway, i.e. which numbers you phone, which addresses you send email to, which websites you visit, but not the content.

Yeah, that's right, that is what is being logged as from Monday, where you visit, who you speak to (via email phone) - but not the content.

But, like I say above, I don't doubt the future will facilitate function creep. The Home Office is already (since - and in addition to - the initial draft of the new powers) considering plans to monitor Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and all other similar social networking sites. The Home Office have been unclear about the exact extent of their monitoring.

Logic says to me that as it is perfectly legal to use these sites there would be little purpose in monitoring their use without monitoring their content. What use is it when prosecuting - for instance - an environmental activist - to say "Is it not right sir, that on the 14th of June you logged onto MySpace ?" - because the answer would be "Yeah, so what ?"

The server will record the actual http requests, so if they (the Feds) seize the web server logs, they can tie your IP address to a particular file on a particualr date and time, but they still have to do some work to prove what the content of a particular file consisted of at that time, because they don't store a copy of the content as they snoop on the request.

But could they (the government, the ISP, whoever) not store a record of how websites appear over time ? A simple correlation of the records shows who and what was viewed ?

Regardless, and without knowledge of which page you viewed, I suspect the goal is to build a profile of each citizen.