He just said he is trying to download something using torrents, which by itself is extremely LEGAL, not illegal. It is not our place to try to determine what he is trying to download. You can do alot of illegal things through legal means.
He may have not said what he wants to download because
a. It is an illegal file, and wanted to get help downloading it
b. Might be a completely legal file, but didnt want to let everyone know he was downloading it (porn for example)
c. He knows his rights and was just using them the way that the constitution wants us to.
And to be more specific, I believe that ISPs are doing, is not monitoring the actual traffic, they are simply looking for protocols and ports that are commonly used to download torrents. For example, it is illegal for the FBI to eavesdrop on a telephone call without a warrant, but not to stake-out your house and look into a window to see that you are using the telephone. All the ISP is doing is finding that you are using torrents, not exactly what it is that you are downloading. They then throttle this connection to lower its speeds.
This is not to say that they do not look at your traffic and report back what you are downloading to the RIAA and other similar organizations, but that is a different issue all together. They do not need to do anything illegal in the process of throttling torrent downloads. If they are looking at your traffic, specifically what you are downloading, and not just how you are downloading it then this would be illegal without consent/warrant (unless they are protected under some bill that I am not aware of, similar to the way that businesses monitor traffic on their networks).
This post isn't made of facts, more of what I BELIEVE is occuring. If the details are infact different, please let me know.
