So the UK is about to pass a series of legislative changes that include the law that ISPs must maintain a list of sites (not full URLs) accessed by their customers for at least a year.

The Investigatory Powers Bill is likely to pass, albeit with some hoo haa along the way.

Do you think that it is time for a mass market VPN service, operated offshore and doesn't keep logs, that operates at the home router level to become mainstream ?

We have had a similar law in Denmark with 6 months retention. It turned out to be a big burden for ISP and public wifi providers and the police haven't used the colected data much. Now they paused the loging until law enforcement figures out what and how much data to collect for it to be usable. In any case they need permission to use the data from a judge.

The public doesn't know or care and we generally trust our government not to misuse the data.

99.9% of Danes only use VPN services for accessing US Netflix content.

"The public doesn't know or care and we generally trust our government not to misuse the data."

Must be nice to live that way.

I don't trust the GOV @ all. 

It seems to be an American value to never trust government, or any authority for that matter. 

Jason, I am sure there are lots of people who will be bothered by the surveillance, but what I'm wondering about is if there are enough people out there that know enough to seek offshore VPNs?

There may be enough momentum, if its easy to setup and use.

However whoever sets it up will be castiigated by some of the press - I suspect some would get into personal attacks and as soon as some incident occurs that will get worse. I'd use it but I wouldn't run it!

Right, and the argument for the surveillance is that the public needs to be protected from terrorists and child predators, so you would be automatically vilified.