The U.S. Congress has been investigating the use of behavioral targeting since protests raised awareness of large ISPs like Embarq, Verizon, AT&T and Time Warner Cable using the targeted ad service from web tracking company NebuAd.

The question at hand is whether the analyzing of deep packet Internet traffic violates federal wiretap laws by not gaining consent from the consumer to the gathering and use of their web communications.

The latest news is AT&T and Verizon have both pledged to refrain from collecting and tracking the browsing behavior of their customers unless they receive explicit permission from the affected consumers.  It’s also rather interesting to note that they are in support of self-regulating themselves, if and when they do begin using this technology, because hey they can be trusted to tell us about it, right?