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01.08.09 Can Your ISP Be Trusted With Personal Privacy?  By Dan Morrill As the new Comcast Bandwidth throttling scheme goes on line today, Techdirt asks why no ISP's are coming forward to say that they are working with RIAA? When it comes to what we pay for bandwidth, and the things we do with it, many of us are blissfully ignorant of how and why an ISP will filter, monitor, or otherwise poke their heads in to see what a person is doing online. If anything, many people would consider a major breach of privacy to know that their ISP was somehow looking at what they were doing. This is why software systems like phorum are so immediately unpopular, not because it is potentially insecure, but because it monitors what you do on line. There are all sorts of things you can use to obfuscate some systems like Phorum, as I wrote about here, but in the longer run, there is a non-contracted state of trust between the ISP and the User. That contract states, I'll pay you money, you don't tell anyone what I do on line. The RIAA ISP deal breaks that unstated and non-contracted state of trust. With Media Sentry out of the door now and not being used by RIAA, enforcement falls to the ISP. That violation of trust, I can no longer trust the ISP to keep what I do private also opens the door to a huge issue with people wanting to do business with them. There are always options, including jumping on the nearest local wi-fi point that is not encrypted and doing what you are going to do on someone else's bandwidth.
Instead Wired found that the majority of ISP's declined comment on the issue, or report that they were doing anything to work with the ISP's. This is something that is in the end going to go badly for the ISP's as the new letters start rolling out to users who are being monitored by their ISP. Those letters are going to spook every single user on the networks. At least with Media Sentry we had an outside entity, not someone we were getting a critical service from. With an ISP, the damage control needs to come now, and not later, they need to own up and let people know if they are or are not cooperating with any one who has an interest in what they are doing on line. Advertising we expect, but deep advertising based on what we are doing on line, or even deep packet inspection on a public network, this will not go over well in terms of Public Relations. Comments About the Author: Dan Morrill has been in the information security field for 18 years, both civilian and military, and is currently working on his Doctor of Management. Dan shares his insights on the important security issues of today through his blog, Managing Intellectual Property & IT Security, and is an active participant in the ITtoolbox blogging community. |
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