ISP Spying on Customers: Shades of the HP Scandal?

Nestor Arellano’s interesting article this week in itbusiness.ca outlines the legal issues surrounding the Legal Privacy Commissioner’s investigation of complaints about “Bell Canada's alleged 'Big Brother' conduct. Bell, Rogers and other large ISPs could be using "deep packet inspection" techniques to dip into private Internet data and e-mail contents of their clients, says the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC).”

Much like the Hewlett-Packard scandal that revolved around spying on Board members and journalists a few years back, it appears that the use of technology legally deployed for one use might well be used for other purposes that are not quite so legal. Simply put, the question arises whether it is reasonable or not to expect spying to take place if it is well within individual/organizational capacity to do so. Again the facts of the ISP spying issue involve a discussion as to whether or not spying is legal if due warning is given to those spied upon!

Deep packet inspection it would appear is akin to “opening a letter and reading its contents” while shallow packet inspection technology allows ISPs to read the headers of data packets being transmitted on the Internet. The technology is apparently used for “network efficiency purposes” and "Internet traffic management"   

No matter the legal outcome of this investigation, all organizations would do well to sustain constant awareness of evolving technology and the inherent/corresponding threat to privacy. We should perhaps work from the underlying assumption that there is no such thing as internet privacy! Just because we morally believe we are entitled to privacy does not mean that is what we will recieve. The greatest danger facing any organization in this regard is to allow the thinking process to fly out the door once technology is deployed. The daunting task of raising this awareness requires buy-in from every member of staff. This is not something that can be legislated, delegated, outsourced or even prescribed.

Read the full story: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=48366