Tim Berners-Lee at UK DPI roundtable
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “Back in November, NebuAD and several of the ISPs who were doing business with them (Embarq, WOW, Centurytel and Cable One) were sued over their plan to sell subscriber browsing histories without giving customers a functional opt-out mechanism,” posts Karl Bode in dslreports, going on »»»
As we’ve stated in the past, NebuAD’s system opted users out of receiving the system’s targeted ads, but it didn’t opt them out of data collection and sales. In some instances, the only notification users got was slight variations in their terms of service fine print.
Now a less well known company with a similar business model named Adzilla is facing a similar lawsuit in California, along with sixteen unnamed “John Doe” ISPs. Like NebuAD, Adzilla paid ISPs to install deep packet inspection hardware on their network to track which websites users visited (and for how long). Adzilla quietly stopped doing business in the U.S. last fall after the public debate over NebuAD bubbled over.
In the NebuAD suit, the ISPs involved are playing dumb, insisting they’re legally innocent because it was NebuAD that was intercepting user traffic.
Hell-bent on using it
Ad agencies, ISPs, and so on, call DPI Deep Packet Inspection.
p2pnet calls it Deep Privacy Invasion, and its use as a means of mining private and personal online data now comprises a major threat around the world.
Karl’s report shows companies are hell-bent on using it, but activists such as Alex Hanff are going all out to try to prevent its widespread adoption and in the UK, he’s been waging a non-stop war with privacy pirate Phorm.
It’s acceptable for BT, Britain’s largest ISP, to use Phorm DPI privacy invasion technology to secretly spy on users, says the UK government,” said p2pnet last September, going on »»»
The European Commission expressed serious concerns over Webwise, a DPI (deep packet inspection) application used by Phorm to scoop data on users without their consent to make it easier for advertisers to target them.
Phorm critic Alex Hanff launched an official criminal complaint to the City of London Police but, “In a shocking correspondence from DS Barry Murray at City of London Police CID the police have stated they will not be commencing with a criminal investigation of BT and Phorm Inc.’s illegal, covert trials,” says Hanff on NO DPI.
But that’s not the end of it and Alex tells us March 11 is the date of a roundtable – Online Privacy and the Interception of Internet Communications.
Chaired by baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer, it’ll be an opportunity for MPs and Peers to discuss the issue with leading experts including the father of the Web, Sir Tim Berners Lee, Nicholas Bohm, general counsel, Foundation for Information Policy Research, Caspar Bowden, senior security and privacy officer, Microsoft EMEA Region, Jim Killock, Open Rights Group, and Robb Topolski, US Federal Communications Commission panel member.
BT was invited but won;t be there, although Phorm may be, says Alex.
Topics to be discussed include »»»
- The future of the internet and the role of Parliamentarians in defending online privacy.
- Should Internet Service Providers be allowed to read their customers online activity so as to select advertisements for them? Or should they be expected to operate like the Royal Mail and the telephone companies, who simply convey messages between communicating parties?
- Can websites expect that their communications with their visitors and customers won’t be intercepted or read, or should network providers have the final say over how communications are treated?
A year ago BT and two other ISPs signed exclusive agreements with Phorm, a company which, “provides both the equipment to read users online activity and the advertising exchange to present ads to them based on the websites they visit,” Alex says, adding:
“BT’s secret trials of the technology in 2006 and 2007 causedcontroversy; they trialled the scheme again in 2008 and as recently as last month confirmed that they still intend to proceed to full rollout.”
On and offline reporters are invited to be at the roundtable, slated to run between 10 am and 12 am in Committee Room 20, House of Commons .
Email no2dpi at googlemail dot com for details.
dslreports – Another DPI Ad Firm Sued, March 4, 2009
non-stop war – Phorm and DPI: Alex Hanff, May 20, 2008
p2pnet -UK government OKs Phorm privacy invasion, September 22, 2008
DPI privacy invasion technology – Phorm and DPI: Alex Hanff, May 20, 2008
expressed serious concerns – EC targets Phorm, May 27, 2008
criminal complaint – Very bad Phorm — ‘criminal actions’, August 15, 2008
NO DPI – City of London Police – Too complex to spend public money, September 22, 2008
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