The DPI Privacy vs. Profit Battle Escalates

The original we-need-to-look-inside-packets-to-perform-better-network-management line should have raised the hair on the back of every conspiracy theorist’s neck, when Comcast Corp. first used it months ago.

Senate hearings or not, DPI is already being used by certain ISPs to do way more than perform ongoing network management, and way more to figure out how to nail power users for their disproportionate consumption of residential bandwidth.

Stated simply, by more folks than myself, is that the real target is targeted advertising for ISPs to boost visitor traffic to Web sites. Using Web behavioral data, whether anonymous or not, has Web privacy advocates fuming.

But as service providers themselves admit, carriers are pulling out all the stops to monetize assets beyond their network facilities.

The profit versus privacy war has already begun. It’s high stakes because it’s an action of principal and an issue of money.

Privacy advocates call it wire-tapping of sorts. ISPs call it capacity/network management/fair use, etc.

Experts are calling it a big time conspiracy theory.

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