Something has happened to the meaning of anonymous on the internet, it has completely disappeared. Having worked in the back orifice of a large ISP for a few years early in the 21st century we would only acknowledge written requests for info on a subscriber and it was granted only in the cases of child porn, suicide threats, death threats and this sort of thing. Never for copyright violations since we would just disable hosting whatever material was in question.Before I left we were all signing non-disclosure agreements and I knew assorted monitoring and traffic management equipment was being installed into the hub sites with strange and sometimes unexplainable service issues arising soon after. During this period of upgrading they were sticking cameras into our ceiling and all sorts of monitoring programs on the workstations...I left and found a more enjoyable place to work. I told my manager straight out the place was creeping me out but it was about my 5th in 3 years so I didn't even know her, she didn't care.
I guess they just a built a direct portal into the internet and charge the .gov on a per click basis according to this article which doesn't really suprise me in the least. It might you though?
Following the Money Trail
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16497$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '.')..Unsurprisingly, the threshold for obtaining personal records is exceedingly low and "very few of these methods require an intercept order."
All the government need do to obtain a pen register or trap and trace order, which examine to/from/subject lines of email messages, URLs of viewed web pages, search terms, telephone numbers dialed and the like, is to unilaterally declare that information obtained via this backdoor route is "relevant" to an ongoing criminal or counterterrorist investigation.
In other words, give us everything we want and move along!
...No small matter, considering that should a court ever find avaricious telecoms and ISPs liable for violating the rights of their customers, fines could mount into the billions.
...Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009.
...According to Cryptome, "The information in the document which counters Yahoo's customer privacy policy suggests a clearing of the air is in order to assure customer reliance on Yahoo's published promises of trust.
Well, just how much does Yahoo charge for their dubious shenanigans with the secret state? Wired reports: "According to this list, Yahoo charges the government about $30 to $40 for the contents, including e-mail, of a subscriber's account. It charges $40 to $80 for the contents of a Yahoo group."