CIPPIC Files Privacy Complaint Over DPI 21
dj_yaz writes "A group of University Of Ottawa law students who deal with online privacy issues last week filed a complaint with Canada's Privacy Commissioner about Bell Canada's use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to monitor internet subscribers' online activities without their knowledge or consent."
Re:Packets please (Score:5, Informative)
For the places I worked, if we suspected one or two particular customers were into kiddie porn or trying to break our network, we could divert that user's packets through a path with a fairly high level of scrutiny. That was a really rare thing, and we were usually too busy keeping the servers and networking equipment running to bother even when we had suspicions.
We never, at any company I worked for, turned over information on which customer was on an IP address at a given time without a subpoena unless we had proof internally of either kiddie porn or attacking our networks. Any other crime, and the cops had to get their court order. One company I worked for even put up challenges to some subpoenas.
I'm pretty sure the upstream providers for those small to medium ISPs could carry on vastly more streams of packet inspection, but not enough to snoop on everyone. They might've done random sampling or investigated on a suspicion-led basis as we did. The tech to do DPI on everyone I think is just now becoming economically feasible. Although it probably could have been done with the tech of five years ago, I doubt anyone would have paid the cost.
How Relevant (Score:5, Informative)