WWW Inventor Attacks Deep Packet Inspection

Via ZDNet -

The inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has attacked deep packet inspection, a technique used to monitor traffic on the internet and other communications networks.

Speaking at a House of Lords event on the 20th anniversary of the invention of the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee said that deep packet inspection was the electronic equivalent of opening people's mail.

"This is very important to me, as what is at stake is the integrity of the internet as a communications medium," Berners-Lee said on Wednesday. "Clearly we must not interfere with the internet, and we must not snoop on the internet. If we snoop on clicks and data, we can find out a lot more information about people than if we listen to their conversations."

Deep packet inspection involves examining both the data and the header of an information packet as it passes a 'black box' on a network, in order to reveal the content of the communication. Targeted advertising services, such as Phorm in the UK, use deep packet inspection to monitor anonymised user behaviour and to target adverts at those users. In addition, UK government initiatives such as the Intercept Modernisation Programme have proposed using deep packet inspection to perform mass surveillance of the web comunications of the entire UK population.

Speaking to ZDNet UK at the event, Berners-Lee declined to comment about any particular company or government initiative, but said that internet service providers (ISPs) should not perform deep packet inspection.

"If [third parties] are using the data for political ends or commercial interest, there we have to draw the line," Berners-Lee said. "There's a gap between running a successful internet service and looking inside data packets."

Berners-Lee expressed concern that the UK government had taken no action over deep packet inspection, in contrast to the US government's response to the use of deep packet inspection by targeted advertising company NebuAd. Last autumn, the US Congress decided to review privacy concerns around the start-up, after which the company's chief executive, Bob Dykes, stepped down.

"I'm embarrassed, as a UK citizen and as a US resident, that the US has drawn a line firmly against deep packet inspection and this country hasn't," Berners-Lee said.