NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] [IP] That privacy legislation
----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Tue, 28 Apr 2009 04:41:48 -0400 From: David Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] That privacy legislation Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@v2.listbox.com> Begin forwarded message: From: Dave Burstein <daveb@dslprime.com> Date: April 27, 2009 11:30:07 PM EDT To: dave@farber.net Subject: That privacy legislation Dave and folk Boucher is going to introduce privacy legislation and from the way the Congressman described it two weeks ago the fix is already in for rapid passage. Unfortunately, it looks to only handle the most egregious practices. As I understand what's floating around D.C., any carrier can in the middle of 8 pages of fine print insert something vague and thereafter totally track everything you do. Its corporate support seems to be coming from those who want a weak bill to preempt a strong one, but this isn't my expertise. "The state of DPI in the US right now is that nobody uses it for anything like consumer tracking, the carriers were very clear about that," is true as regards large commercial deployments. Carriers are already going much further in trials, and I believe the only delay is that the technology is just getting there. Deutsche Telekom's CTO two years ago said his new network is being designed to track "every session of every user, all the time." The Microsoft/AT&T IPTV system made similar claims four years ago, but I understand still isn't working right. What I hear from carrier CEO's is full speed ahead. At the Cable Show in D.C., speaker after speaker spoke about the money they will make from getting information from every home and targeting advertising. The cable guys, like AT&T, are buying systems designed to deliver ads to single homes. One even said their system was better, because it could monitor the separate choices of different users in the home. For now, almost none of that is production-ready in volume despite many promises. I think it's pretty safe to assume they will soon be using everything they have unless limited by law. Everything usually includes your bill payment history, income, age, what countries you phone (for travel ads), ethnic origin, combined with any useful detail about where you go on the web and what you watch (80-99% accuracy.) There are many opinions on what's right or wrong here. I suspect a strong majority of net users/TV watchers would happily surrender their privacy to get slightly less irrelevant ads and the debate will fade and the old fogies like me will fade into insignificance. Beyond the information going to advertisers is the apparent demand by most governments for all that information and more for security. I noticed that some next generation standards read like they were designed to harden the great firewall of China and facilitate unlimited tracking. As I came close to the discussion, it appeared that these were government requirements simply not open to question. In particular, the U.S. government has been active as it looks to use less expensive "civilian" technologies. Again, I'm pretty sure of the technology trends here but am working on inference about the coming legislation. Please filter through your own value judgments. db ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message -----