It was always like that in the UK since 1980s when the British Telecom, GCHQ, DTI (Communications Ministry like Bakom) could always see this info anyway and in early 1990s they also did it (which is why I got caught at University simply using the Intternet to get to info.cern.ch via Deutsche Telekom).
Then since mid-late 1990s Ericsson (as well as Plessey/Marconi etc) built all the datagathering into their telephone exchanges and Internet routers, Nokia Siemens, Cisco and Huawei have the capability as well. These companies make nearly all the equipment used worldwide to connect to the Internet.
It is also possible and always has been for any business grade router to “spy” on all the end users and show what sites they are going to and where the data is going (although not usually to decrypt anything with HTTPS).
Network engineers also do this to make sure things are working correctly; I had to do it just last week as my employers wanted the accounts software installed on a PC where there is an intermittent satellite link and 2 ADSL connections so I have to make sure the data only goes through one connection (or the database server thinks it is being accessed by 3 different IPs at once and reports a security error)
So it has always been possible; but often the network engineers do not want to work directly with cops or govt agencies, so many of them say “the data logging is not always working” (it often needs to be turned on manually, and will slow down the networking equipment and needs storage) and/or “what you will see is very complicated and you can’t prove everything with it”. And that is the honest truth, even if the info is there.
When you call up one website a 100 others can appear in the list because of links to social media sharing buttons, adverts etc.
What the law is trying to do is make the ISPs / telecoms companies pay with their own money for both the spying infrastructure and the admin staff to present it in a form useful to govt staff who are not computer experts; the tech companies are protesting against it because it costs them money (more than they would make from government contracts for big broadband connections) so implementation won’t be that straightforward.
Even so all network connections to and from UK are to some extent monitored and they have been for decades if not centuries when London was the hub of international telegraph circuits and we still had the PTT (Post Office Telecommunications) that was a direct part of the Goverment.
TBH it happens in all other countries as well; just in various different forms. In reality the UK was doing all this stuff for years beforehand without openly admitting it but then got taken to Court on European human rights laws so has had to admit to it. Because half of UK people voted for Brexit and are paranoid about “terrorists” the UK govt now feels bold enough to openly state it will continue with the surveillance.
Auch wenn du am Abgrund stehst, und gar nichts mehr verstehst,
wachen Engel über dich, halten dich im Licht und lassen dich nie fallen.
