DPI

DPI Deployed for Mobile Advertising

/ Christopher Parsons

200902181453.jpgDeep Packet Inspection is being deploying by an increasing number of operators for a host of purposes, including content analysis, flow analysis, network management (broadly stated), network management as integrated with policy management, and behavioural advertising (to name a few). While BT, in the UK, has openly admitted to working with Phorm to bring behavioral advertising to its consumers, it now appears as though network owners are going to be analyzing Internet traffic from mobiles, as well as desktop and notebook computers.

The Guardian is reporting that in a recent GSMA trial to collect information of where mobile users’ are browsing, that “the UK’s five networks – 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone – used deep packet inspection technology to collect data covering about half the UK’s entire mobile web traffic” (Source). There is no indication that this is presently being associated with customers’ geolocation, but this does suggest that DPI is gaining increasing acceptance in the UK as a means of tracking what people are doing. Apparently the weak regulatory responses in the UK are spurring companies to deploy DPI before they are left behind the rest of the pack.

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Update: Bell Users’ Average Bandwidth Use

/ Christopher Parsons

200902032359.jpgJust a quick note about an interesting tidbit that was passed out by the Bell rep who gave a presentation on DPI today: A few years ago (no precise dates given) users were consuming, on average, 1GB of traffic; this has risen tenfold since that date. As Bell has repeatedly stated in CRTC submissions, they are not caching personally identifiable information as packets course through their DPI equipment, but still maintain that they are looking into the application layer of packets, but not the ‘content’ of the packet. It’s my hope that, over the next few months, more information about ISP uses of DPI emerges so that a more nuanced and productive discussion can take place.

In the next day or so, I’ll be putting up more thoughts and facts that emerged through the 10th annual security and privacy conference, “Life in a Digital Fishbowl“.

Deep Packet Inspection Analogies

/ Christopher Parsons / 5 Comments

In reading through the recent CRTC filings, something that has been striking me is that the ‘regular’ metaphor for how Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies work seems a bit awkward. When you send packets of data along the ‘net, they are broadly composed of a header and a payload. The metaphor goes as follows: the header is like the addressing information on an envelop, and the payload is the actual letter in the envelop. DPI opens the envelop, sees the content of the letter, examines it, reseals it, and then passes the letter along to its destination (assuming that the contents aren’t of a type that shouldn’t be sent onwards).

I like the metaphor because of its power, but at the same time I have to wonder about its accuracy, at least in the Canadian situation. When reading the ISP’s CRTC filings, I keep reading that they use DPI devices for flow analysis – they’re not looking for the content of your email, they just want to identify whether you’re sending email or an instant message. Rather than assume that the ISPs are being duplicitous, why not reconsider the metaphor to see if it can’t be developed to distinguish between different usages of DPI equipment.

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DPI, Employees, and Proper Inspection

/ Christopher Parsons

In my last post I alluded to the fact that Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies could be used by businesses to try and reduce the possibility of ‘inappropriate’ employee use of bandwidth and wrongful or accidental transmissions of confidential IP. In that last post I was talking about IT security, and this post will continue to reflect on DPI technologies’ applications and benefits to and for corporate environments.

A Quick Refresher on DPI

From ArsTechnica:

The “deep” in deep packet inspection refers to the fact that these boxes don’t simply look at the header information as packets pass through them. Rather, they move beyond the IP and TCP header information to look at the payload of the packet. The goal is to identify the applications being used on the network, but some of these devices can go much further; those from a company like Narus, for instance, can look inside all traffic from a specific IP address, pick out the HTTP traffic, then drill even further down to capture only traffic headed to and from Gmail, and can even reassemble e-mails as they are typed out by the user. (Source)

For a slightly longer discussion/description of DPI I suggest that you look at the wiki page that I’m gradually putting together on the topic of Deep Packet Inspection.

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Shaping your Identity

/ Christopher Parsons

It’s been a while since I’ve been updating this blog regularly – since I last wrote, I’ve completed my Master’s thesis, traveled to Brasil, sent out applications to Doctoral programs, found (temporary) full-time employment, and rested my brain a bit. Now, I feel rejuvenated, and ready to get back into the swing of things.

Setting the Stage

We are increasingly living in a hybrid world, one where our lives are being digitized. We eat food (analogue) but order it online (digital); we use our voices to talk with one another (analogue) using cell phones (digital); we read cooking recipes (analogue) from recipe websites (digital). In addition to what we actually do, what happens around us, and shapes how we are capable of interacting, often occurs within digital spaces – banking institutions are networked, government documents are send across departments by email, and major corporate executives that make (oftentimes) global decisions seem to have Blackberries surgically attached to themselves.

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Public and Private Digital Space

/ Christopher Parsons

Ask yourself a question: Why does having private space matter to you? When it comes right down to it, why is it important to maintain the public-private distinction?

Some might immediately assert that the distinction establishes a space where government interests cannot easily intrude, and that the private domain is where individuals develop themselves while hidden from the nation-state’s coercive gaze. When we can speak privately and associate off-the-record we can more easily develop friendships that we might have otherwise shied away from. Moreover, without this private space individuals might not be comfortable talking to one another about radical political, ethical, or cultural issues – if the state could be recording our discussions, then we would have to evaluate whether or not we really wanted to discuss topics such as the value of overthrowing the present government, the importance of weakening the authorities’ scopes of legitimate action, or the value of weakening national rhetoric in favour of plurality.

While there have been clashes about where the division between public and private should be, those clashes often relate to where a line should be drawn rather than about abolishing the line entirely. Some, of course, insist that the public and private are mere phantasms, and that they only exist because we perpetuate a myths of their existence, but for this position to gain traction it must grapple with the necessary co-originality of public and private that is revealed in an examination of the nation-state’s founding. Feminists (accurately) focus on the harms that the strict division between public and private have caused, such as the suppression of women’s issues and the criminal discrimination against women and their labours, but this demonstrates that there is a porous boundary between public and private that must be examined rather than asserting that it absolutely does not exist.

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