Is Bell Canada Violating Privacy With Its Traffic Shaping Efforts?
from the another-way-to-look-at-it dept
We've seen all sorts of arguments against ISPs who engage in traffic shaping, but now some are trying to make a privacy argument against traffic shaping as well. A few months ago, the news came out that Bell Canada was engaging in traffic shaping, even for its wholesale ISP partners who promised customers open internet access. As a couple folks have submitted today, the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa is claiming that in addition to other questions raised about this, traffic shaping may be a privacy violation, in that it uses deep packet inspection to determine what type of packets are being sent to figure out what to traffic shape. Bell Canada responds that it is only determining what type of packet it is, rather than what's in it -- but even that information could potentially be a privacy violation. While it seems unlikely that this argument will stick, if traffic shaping starts being seen as a privacy issue, it could put even more pressure on ISPs to stop doing it (and may encourage more users to encrypt their traffic).![Hide This Hide this](https://ii.techdirt.com/s/t/i/topclose.png)
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Filed Under: canada, privacy, traffic shaping
Companies: bell canada
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It is a privacy violation
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Re: It is a privacy violation
If packets expose their QoS requirements, that provides enough info for traffic shaping.
DPI is a privacy violation, not traffic shaping.
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It doesn't work
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Idiots
Using a normal connection, which goes through dozens of switches, routers, providers and sniffers, and then whining about privacy is just idiotic.
ALL actions done online are public.
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Re: Idiots
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Re: Re: Idiots
All telephone conversations (but unlike the net, including almost all encrypted communications) are also public.
For a person to assume otherwise, is simply closing eyes and going "na-na-na-na" just because the person assumes that what he wants to be real, is real.
In the real world, your traffic goes through many countries, many jurisdictions, for thousands of miles, by air and cable - anyone can monitor and analyze it as much as he wants, without you ever knowing it.
If you are doing anything that you consider private/illegal while being connected via a simple unencrypted connection, it's mighty idiotic.
All such communications are public.
8200 represent.
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Re: Re: Re: Idiots
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Huh?
Every packet you send out on the internet is "read" by a dozen routers along the way. It's fundamental to the way the internet works. The packet has to be read by each router so that it can be copied to the next router along the way. It's just that, until recently, most of those routers didn't make any decisions based on the data in the packet, only on the header that says where to send it and how. Now, these machines -- mindless, automatic machines that have no higher-level understanding of the data -- are making decisions based on the content of the packets. Is this a problem? Possibly. Is it a privacy violation? Of course not.
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Re: Huh?
So ya... that is a privacy violation.
It would be equivalent to sending your mail with FedEx and having Canada Post inspect the contents because its on the same plane.
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