This is serious.  If you offend someone, such as a spouse, partner,
landlord, or political adversary, they now have the tools to file a
lawsuit against you and go on a fishing expedition with your Internet
account looking for dirt.  Even if you cover your tracks, like the
accounting firm Arthur Anderson did in the Enron investigation, by
reformatting your hard drive and then installing software that rewrites
over all unused portions with random data and then deleting the data,
Comcast still has a full data trail.

Kelly

February 13, 2002

New Comcast Web Software Tracks Subscribers' Internet Usage Habits

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Comcast Corp., the nation's third-largest cable company,
has begun tracking the Web browsing activities of its one million
high-speed Internet-service subscribers without notifying them.

Comcast said Tuesday that the tracking of each Web page a subscriber
visits was part of a technology overhaul designed to save money and
improve the speed of cable Internet service to its customers and was not
intended to infringe on privacy.

But technology experts cautioned that the data could be subpoenaed by law
enforcement agencies or lawyers in civil cases, and they questioned
whether Comcast's move reflects a more cavalier attitude toward online
privacy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Once you're sitting on it, you're really inviting all kinds of
requests," said David Sobel of the Washington-based Electronic Privacy
Information Center. "If they can't identify a need to be collecting it,
they should take the necessary steps to eliminate it."

The company that sold Comcast the technology acknowledged the cable
company is collecting too much information.

"It's not needed," said Steve Russell, a vice president for Inktomi Corp.
Mr. Russell said Inktomi's software also records other information from
Comcast subscribers, such as passwords for Web sites and credit-card
numbers under limited circumstances.

Mr. Russell discounted privacy concerns, saying engineers are using the
information to improve Comcast performance.

Two of the nation's largest Internet-service providers, AOL Time Warner
Inc.'s America Online and EarthLink Inc., said they do not track the Web
browsing of their combined 35 million subscribers.

"We definitely would have no interest in doing that at all," said
EarthLink's chief privacy officer, Les Seagraves. "We don't want to have
customer records about where they've visited."

AOL uses performance-enhancing technology, similar to that introduced by
Comcast, on its network. But AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said, "We do
not track the personal Web activity of our members for privacy reasons."

Comcast spokesman Tim Fitzpatrick said Web browsing was already being
recorded for its subscribers in Detroit and in parts of Delaware and
Virginia and would be extended across the nation by the end of this week.

He acknowledged customers weren't notified.

Mr. Fitzpatrick said Comcast, using the Inktomi software, is recording
the numeric Internet protocol address uniquely assigned to each
subscriber, along with the Internet address of each requested Web page.
Comcast stores the information for days before it is deleted but won't
say for exactly how long.

Comcast's tracking is part of an overhaul using behind-the-scenes "proxy"
computers, which funnel Web surfing through powerful, centralized
computers. Customers previously could volunteer to use these proxy
computers, but they are automatically activated now. The proxy computers
track the most popular Web sites to determine which ones should be copied
to its central computers.

Industry experts said there was no need to match Web surfing back to
specific subscribers.

"I'm furious," said George Imburgia, an Internet security expert in
Dover, Del., and a Comcast customer. "They're monitoring and logging
everybody's activities." Imburgia compared it to the surveillance
software the FBI uses: "It's an evil, Carnivore-type thing."

Outfitted with high-tech eavesdropping tools and a court order, the FBI
can secretly record what a person does online -- but only after agents
identify the target and install monitoring equipment.

Police and the FBI are increasingly turning to computer evidence in
criminal and terrorist investigations. Just last month, the FBI warned
that al-Qaida members had sought information about dangerous insecticides
from Internet sites. Since Sept. 11 some Internet providers have been
served with warrants for subscriber information under a powerful 1978
antiterrorism law.


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