>
> I used to work for multiple ISPs, and I can tell you a few things for what little they are worth. The source and destination IPs are tagged on each packet sent over Internet. If you are tracking someone from a browser, which is a higher level protocol than DNS, you have no need to correlate DNS calls. Worrying about providers logging DNS traffic is a fairly pointless time waster.
>

Are you sure this line of reasoning is consistent:

- Martin was justifiably upset that if he sets *no* nameserver,
the code defaults to google, and that this behaviour won't be
changed

- First of all: no name server should mean *no* nameserver (cause
maybe he only wants to serve names out of /etc/hosts only or
something). Remember: No means no - the software should obey
its users not the other way around

- You said google wasn't a problem cause the ISP might log
DNS as well, so one might as well go with google

- Now you appear to say that the ISP could log/see anything at a
different level anyway. This implies that if we were to
use google DNS, *both* google *and* the ISP have the data, while if
one were to go with the ISP DNS, then *only* the ISP would have it, which
we can agree is a better situation (the latter being a proper
subset of the former). Particularly as there are many ISPs - so
the data isn't as concentrated, and some ISPs actually operate
in jurisdictions with some privacy protections

- On top of that you don't think google is that bad cause you say:

"Even so, if Google is monetizing DNS data, Adam, in what way does
that violate anyone's privacy? DNS calls are nonspecific
data, associated only with your carrier's dynamic IP address,
not a specific user."

So DNS queries can be lined with HTTP requests, and if you
pay attention to the number of sites with googleanalytics or
googleapis in them, it is trivial for google work out the full
set of DNS requests on a per person basis too. You said you worked
for multiple ISPs - surely this would be obvious then ?

Now recall that google was bust in France for collecting not only
street-view pictures but also sniffing wireless access points. And now
with all the andriod phones in the wild, we have google trying to
know the password, mac addresses and building photo for most access
points on the planet - are you really sure we should trust them
with even more data ?

Could it be we have some sort of Stockholm Syndrome where people
whose data is captured at google start emphasising with the captor ?
Or maybe we dimly remember that somewhere they use Linux and claimed
that they weren't doing evil, so that is all ok, lalala ? Maybe we
aren't immune to marketing after all, and careful lines of reasoning
get clobbered by those with adwords ?

regards

marc