A New Brunswick court has ordered a plaintiff in a disability insurance claim to obtain “a history of her computer account use” from her ISP and “request” her ISP to generate a record accounting for her FaceBook use.
NB Court Orders Production of ISP and Facebook Records
December 23, 2009
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Episode 278: Ben Waldman on Gander Social and the Challenges of Building a Sovereign Social Network
byMichael Geist

August 10, 2026
Michael Geist
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Tor, proxies, HTTPS?
I’ll be interested to see if ISPs actually can produce that kind of data on request. If so, it’s time to start making use of secure tunnels, Tor nodes, and proxies.
Let’s hope it’s not possible
For sure, if the ISP can “generate a record accounting for her FaceBook use” then we’re all in deeper doodoo then we know!
Although, my hunch is that it’s just an overzealous ruling with no real understanding of the technical limitations that prevent it being possible.
My captcha reads: “Grist court”- this court ruling sure is grist for the mill…
They might be able to produce the IP addresses of the websites she’s visited, but even those records I doubt would go back more than a year. There’s just no real incentive for keeping them.