Congress Begins Deep Packet Inspection of Internet Providers - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Bennett <richard () bennett com>
Date: April 27, 2009 6:43:23 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Congress Begins Deep Packet Inspection of Internet  
Providers - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

I was one of the witnesses at the privacy hearing, and I have to say  
that none of the blog accounts do it justice. The bloggers who've  
covered the hearing simply read the prepared statements and didn't go  
into the questions and and answers or the general discussion.

So here's the real story: Chairman Boucher is planning a series of  
hearings on privacy, the end result of which is likely to be a bi- 
partisan bill co-sponsored by Ranking Member Cliff Stearns. This  
hearing was an opening salvo that dealt with network monitoring of  
consumer behavior on the Internet. It was largely a fishing expedition  
prompted by a  white paper written by Ben Scott of Free Press on DPI  
equipment. Ben read some of the marketing lit from the start-up DPI  
firms and got freaked out by the claims the companies are making. The  
state of DPI in the US right now is that nobody uses it for anything  
like consumer tracking, the carriers were very clear about that. The  
NebuAd controversy last year discouraged any such intrusions. But they  
do use various kinds of traffic monitoring gear that you could define  
as DPI by the definition that looking at all the headers in a packet  
is DPI. They're not looking at the final, final payload and have no  
current interest in doing so.

But it was important to the Chairman to start at the bottom in order  
to have some perspective when the notion of web services tracking  
consumer behavior comes up at the next hearing. It will go into the  
implications of Google AdSense switching from an opt-in to an opt-out  
model of tracking with a persistent ID cookie. That's actually where  
the privacy concern is today, and where it should be.

Ben Scott described this as a "Kumbaya Hearing" later in the day at  
the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Mobile Net conference  
he and I appeared on the same panel for the second time in the day  
(Ben and I are the Siamese twins of fair and balanced policy  
discourse.)  This was because there was broad agreement on the general  
points that privacy is important, there needs to be a balanced and  
comprehensive approach, consumer empowerment is the key, and all these  
massive databases of personal information need to be secure and well- 
managed.

Google's Congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, tried to nail me for saying in my  
written testimony that the ad supported model of Internet services is  
inherently in conflict with personal privacy, but the other witnesses  
didn't support her. So she was more or less left on the sideline  
trying to create one set of rules for firms headquartered in her  
district and another set for the carriers, an extremely positive  
development. Boucher and Stearns are now looking for guidance on the  
privacy framework, and would appreciate informed suggestions from the  
expert audience. The envelope analogy has been beaten to death, so no  
need to belabor it any further, of course.

RB

David Farber wrote:
> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/congress-begins-deep-packet-inspection-of-internet-providers/
>
> Congress Begins Deep Packet Inspection of Internet Providers
> By SAUL HANSELL




-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com