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Deep packet inspection under assault over privacy concerns

arstechnica.com — A Canadian law clinic has asked the country's Privacy Commissioner to take a closer look at the deep packet inspection being used by Bell Canada and others. While the technology also raises net neutrality concerns, in this case the issue is privacy.

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  • Scipio, on 05/13/2008, -2/+22I've just about had it with Bell
    • Yage2006, on 05/13/2008, -6/+2Then drop them switch to teksavy or get a dsl2 line even from another provider.
      • bigred, on 05/13/2008, -0/+11Teksavvy won't be any better, as they are just reselling Bell DSL, so they are affected by the same throttling that Sympatico customers get. There's a big case that will probably go to court over this, as Bell has basically made competitors that use their services crap, so they are now losing business to the Cable co's. I say good on em... Bell needs to stop their monopolistic practices!
  • lucidguru, on 05/13/2008, -2/+25Total encryption off all data is the next step in this battle... Do businesses really think we are going to keep letting them spy on us?
    • NuclearFalcon, on 05/13/2008, -0/+6Yes. Yes they do.
    • Yage2006, on 05/13/2008, -6/+3sadly encryption wont save you there.
      • PURPLEDRINK, on 05/13/2008, -1/+5explain why...? as opposed to just assuming that we think you know what you're talking about and ofc, assuming that you're not a noob?
      • ShempRider, on 05/13/2008, -0/+4I second that: please explain. Trying to break passwords/logins even with rainbow tables takes time. Then there are CAPTCHA's. Multiply that by millions of messages, most of which contain retarded lolcatz emails....
  • Continuum, on 05/13/2008, -2/+22Canada has fairly strict privacy laws so I believe that CIPPIC has some ground to stand on here. Also, as a Canadian, Bell Canada's word about not looking into my packets does not reassure me very much.
    • atarijedi, on 05/13/2008, -5/+1Actually, Canada's privacy laws aren't that strict. There is the reasonable expectation of privacy which is a right as a canadian citizen, but there are no real privacy laws when it comes down to people to people.

      There is the Privacy Act, but it pertains to Federal departments and how they handle personal information of citizens. Then there is the PIPEDA, which sets out how private organizations (companies etc...) may handle personal information, which would apply in this situation. Hopefully PIPEDA has something to say about DPI, and I might take a look at it to find out if it does.
  • JRjJ106, on 05/13/2008, -9/+2a private redneck
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQMSASTIgBs
  • crazyechidna83, on 05/13/2008, -8/+27mrbabyman, lay off the digg for a bit eh?
    • evilesttoast, on 05/13/2008, -2/+11then there will be nothing to digg
      *shudders*
    • CharlesDance, on 05/13/2008, -2/+7Why the hate for mrbabyman? I see a lot of people telling him to get off Digg but don't know about the controversy. Honest question, I'm just ignorant of it is all.
      • crazyechidna83, on 05/13/2008, -2/+6its not hate, he just has like 50% of the front page stories, and many of them happen to be recycled from other sites.
    • mal1964, on 05/13/2008, -0/+9Its a social web site so just like mrbabyman can post as many stories as he wants, You can tell mrbabyman to lay off as much as you want.
    • krnldmp, on 05/13/2008, -2/+2Whatsamatter, Knits? You gettin too much serious information?
    • mal1964, on 05/13/2008, -3/+2Then you might as well call it
      "BarackObama.com"
  • seldon452, on 05/13/2008, -4/+8The sky is blue and all telecom companies suck. These are things we have to live with.
    • HonoredMule, on 05/13/2008, -1/+8HAVE to? Let's not give up just yet.
    • krnldmp, on 05/13/2008, -0/+9This is the great thing about laws. People too silly and weak to stand up for their own safety and privacy are protected by the work of other properly engaged citizens.
  • MuskokasFinest, on 05/13/2008, -1/+17Considering Bell owns a HUGE amount of fiber all across Canada, and even now shapes 3rd party traffic on it's lines, this is becoming a huge problem.
    • rhartman, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1Bell was subsidized for a lot of the "last mile" infrastructure by the Government - which is why they had to open it up to 3rd party competition. Bell's DPI / traffic shaping is affecting anyone that makes use of that, whether they use Bell's internet backbone or not.
  • p0tent1al, on 05/13/2008, -10/+6Buried as baby spam
    • JudgeMonkey, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1mmmm, baby spam. It's what's for dinner.
  • Emachine, on 05/13/2008, -1/+11***** BELL!!!!!!!!
    30kb/s sucks balls!
    • Aensland, on 05/13/2008, -0/+3Sadly, there are still plenty of people who will rejoice to get this kind of speed.
      • Emachine, on 05/13/2008, -0/+6This is true, I know of a guy still on the 56k. But for me, 30kb/s is a noticeable drop from 620kb/s I signed up for...
  • roguewave, on 05/13/2008, -1/+7Anybody ever heard of VPN service.......just dont let em see the packets to begin,they can analyze all the noise they want :)
    • 3Den, on 05/13/2008, -0/+4It's a deeper issue than that. On a purely technical sense, yes, encryption is the answer.

      From a legal point of view, though, there is some sense to saying "Hey, you want to sell data services to people? You have to respect their privacy."

      If every person were fully informed and knowledgeable about every system they worked with, and had time to make fully informed intelligent decisions about everything, most laws wouldn't need to be written.
      As it is - we expect our phones to work and our calls to be reasonably private - same goes for our internet traffic.

    • gadgetuk, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1Ditto 3Den, plus, your VPN needs somewhere to terminate. At that point you need to know what your VPN provider is going to do with your data. Are they keeping logs? Are they using an ISP who performs DPI?
      • roguewave, on 05/14/2008, -0/+0The whole point I was trying to make was to keep Bell from using DPI the end point was not the topic as there are ways around that too.
  • birkoph, on 05/13/2008, -8/+1home page - CHA CHING mybabyman is $200 richer.
  • Gemfinder, on 05/13/2008, -1/+5Privacy Commissioner! What a concept!
    We need something like that. Make it so, Number One.
  • Yage2006, on 05/13/2008, -1/+4Hopefully this will be stopped. Canada takes privacy seriously unlike some countries.
  • tufftugg, on 05/13/2008, -3/+1 4.5mb/s Shaw :)
  • Cannon49, on 05/13/2008, -2/+3Nobody has commented on the ugly mug of that women in the article yet?
  • SilverBlade2k, on 05/13/2008, -0/+3*****, I'm in Canada too..
  • Pecheckler, on 05/13/2008, -1/+2I think Check Point's stock is about rise.
  • jimmyjohnston, on 05/13/2008, -0/+7They need to get back to the basics and remember what their role is and what the routers role is:
    1. Choose best path
    2. Switch packets

    Anything beyond this is too much.
  • scamper22, on 05/13/2008, -1/+0The solution is quite simple:

    force the operators to have 2 options.

    1. unmanaged connection (DPI and others would be banned)
    You'd be charged per MB or whatever.

    2. managed connection (might use DPI or other methods to distinguish traffic).

    So as a customer, you could choose between the two methods. If you want to let the telcos manage your QOS, then you'd choose the managed connection. Seems fairly easy to do.
  • funzo, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1I'm getting sick of bell! Every night from 5pm-2am my internet speeds dramatically drop and often disconnects. Tomorrow after work, I'm calling Bell to fix my internet or I'm switching to Tekksavvy, which is sounding better everyday.
  • shawnanigans, on 05/13/2008, -0/+2I got an e-mail from Rogers a while ago saying that they caught me downloading Photoshop and that I should stop. I sent them an e-mail saying that if they look at what I am downloading again I'm going to sure for invasion of privacy and nothing since.
    • shawnanigans, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1I guess I can ask this here. Wouldn't DPI slow down the servers, making service slower?
  • DestroyFascism, on 05/13/2008, -0/+1It only takes one dumb ass corrupt little turd to steal the identities on millions..
    If offered a price, the right price many would do so.
  • Ladadadada, on 05/14/2008, -0/+1They have got this so backwards.
    These machines are automated. There isn't a human reading all of your emails even though the technology is there to do it. The technology has been there for a long time and unethical people have been reading your emails for a long time. These machines don't change whether packets can be read or not, they just change whether the information in the packets can be used in routing and shaping rules in real-time.
    Avoiding the use of these machines is not going to help privacy in any way.
    As for the nonsense about IP addresses being considered "personal data", how the hell is an ISP supposed to deliver anything back to you if they don't know your IP address ? Sure, ISPs should be careful about combining IP addresses with other information such as websites visited and storing that information long term but not allowing an ISP to use an IP address as part of traffic shaping is just plain silly.
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