Summary
1. The chairman of the subcommittee states that deep packet inspection’s “privacy intrusion potential is nothing short of frightening." 2. Perhaps the congressman needs to get some help for his irrational fears. 3. The president of the public interest group is simply wrong in saying that DPI “poses serious challenges to both the privacy and the openness of the Internet."
Analysis
In “liken[ing] DPI to postal employees opening envelopes and looking inside,” a clear criminal act, is preposterous. In one case, it is strictly private correspondence, and in the other, it is information on a network that has worldwide access.
There has never been close to a full expectation of privacy when it comes to the Internet anyway. That is why people have been constantly warned about being extra careful when it comes to transmitting personal information.
And while there is always the potential for abuse, which can easily be handled through prosecution, the overriding goal of service providers, such as Comcast and Time Warner, would be to use the behavioral patterns of subscribers to help generate profits through advertising. The goal would not be to engage in nefarious acts. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute analyst expressed, "Imposing rigid mandates on user-level monitoring would stifle innovative new ways of connecting buyers and sellers....Internet advertising revenue is essential to online content creators.... Sensible data collection improves search, communication, innovation, and competitiveness - all the things we associate with a well-functioning economy and greater consumer convenience and power.”
As with all advertising, the idea would be to target categories of people. It would not make sense economically to get down to a specific person level.
