DPI and Net Neutrality's Overseas Weak Spot

Ian Lamont writes "An unnamed source at an American ISP says staff there briefly considered using Deep Packet Inspection to comply with an order from Argentina's Department of Justice to block access to a local gambling site. The ISP ended up not going that route, owing to the cost, but some engineers at the company worry that DPI will eventually be implemented on the ISP's overseas network, thereby positioning it for an easier US rollout should Net Neutrality lose out in Washington. Besides being used for traffic-shaping, DPI can also monitor the traffic of ISP subscribers to supply targeted advertising."

Comments

Packet Encryption

[camperdave]

So, we'll all have to implement some form of packet encryption so that our packets can't be inspected. It is sad that there's so much interest in our communications, whether it be for marketing, or government control, that we can no longer trust our old internet which transmits everything in the clear.

Re:Packet Encryption

[BountyX]

Ive been routing my internet through trusted nodes accross the net in encrypted form for a while now and have given up the "old internet". NSA has dpi level inspection at major fiber lines via light bending, especially with underwater fiber. They also use spoilia (spillage of communication signals caught by satalites due to the earths sphere shape) to intercept our activities on wireless communications. If your data is ever transmitted in the air, assume it is being watched. Fiber optics is harder to snoop in on since it requires a physical tap. I wouldn't worry about the US spying on its citizen. It dosn't need to. Under the UK-USA agreement, the NSA shares its intelligence info with the UK, Nz, and Aus and in return those countires share their info with us. The US does not engage in spying on citizens, instead, it usually asks one of its allies to spy on a specific person. By doing this, the US bypasses many laws on privacy. The NSA's largest establishment in the UK USA agreement is at menwith hills and fort mede, maryland. The two agencies (both controlled by the NSA) coordinate sigint. Bottom line, all of our traffic is monitored and run through thousands of different communication algorithms for data mining. Do not share any identifiable information online, to any one for anyreason. Even anonymous browsing is vulnerable to time analysis.

Out of interest

[sakdoctor]

How much extra resources are used in delivering a page by HTTPS instead of HTTP?

A different form of government is needed

[Anonymous Coward]

It no longer makes sense to have:

1. National governments in an global society
2. Governments which have privileged access to the internet, at the expense of the citizenry's freedom

Before it is too late, before all governments make dpi as routine as China could ever hope for, the people need to get control of the governments.

Fortunately, the source of these issues also presents the solution: open source governance (and its cousin, radical transparency).

For fuck's sakes..

[Rod Beauvex]

....thereby positioning it for an easier US rollout should Net Neutrality lose out in Washington...

Net Neutrality already lost in Washington. Wake up and smell the shit.

Re:All the more reason to move to IPv6...

[Broken Toys]

Net neutrality isn't about Internet protocols.

It's about social and political neutrality on the Internet.

Re:All the more reason to move to IPv6...

[cbiltcliffe]

That actually makes me wonder if the whole reason IPv6 adoption is so miserably low is that the government and communication companies know that when they adopt it wholesale, they lose the ability to do easy DPI and other such shenanigans.

Even the strongest chain has a weak link...

[pathological liar]

How and why do you trust those nodes? Unless it's a completely dark net there's an egress point, and that point can be coopted/coerced. At the very least all traffic going through that endpoint can be trivially sniffed by at least one person. If you're worried about the NSA or its cronies tapping your communications, why aren't you worried about someone exerting pressure on the weakest link in the chain?

If you're on a completely dark net, well, that's great... but won't the lack of content get boring after a while? (And again, the other humans will always be the weakest link)

Re:Even the strongest chain has a weak link...

[BountyX]

Long answer short, the exit node is the weakest link. But what if an individual owned a network of exit nodes colocated in facilities throughout the world? These nodes were hosted in secure locations without physical access. ;) time analysis still works :(