A firestorm of controversy is brewing over the use of Deep Packet Inspection by Rogers Cable and Bell Canada. If you missed our previous post on this issue, give it a read. At issue is the inspection of your data as it comes in and out of your computer by your ISP, Rogers or Bell. Both companies use 'deep packet inspection' to examine your data, and both companies are claiming they are not peeking too closely into its contents, even though the technology they are using could be used to read your emails as you type them. Do you trust them? The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic does not. They recently filed a federal complaint and now the Privacy Commissioner has agreed to launch an investigation.
"Yes, we are opening a complaint file on Bell and we will be investigating," said Anne-Marie Hayden, public relations officer at the Canada's Privacy Commissioner's office.Both Rogers and Bell have denied that they have breached users privacy claiming the DPI technology is used specifically to separate different kinds of data traffic. While that practice may not result in your email contents being breached, it opens up an entirely separate can of worms. Are Rogers and Bell currently using DPI, or will they use it in the future to curtail traffic flow from specific sources?
"Critics have suggested, however, that there may be other motives behind traffic shaping by ISPs, including slowing down of competitor traffic (whether the competitor is a wholesale ISP or a user sharing competing content via P2P), and development of methods by which to extract more revenue from Internet traffic."So what exactly are Rogers and Bell doing with Deep Packet Inspection? Nobody really knows for sure, but hopefully some real answers and some new privacy policies are on the horizon. Stay tuned.
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