Deep Packet Inspection.ca

ESSAYS » Deep Packet Inspection and Control over Communication

Written by Fenwick McKelvey

Building the overpasses of Long Island lower than the height of public buses of the time enforced a subtle policy of segregation. Robert Moses, the architect of the overpasses and many major public works of 20th Century America, believed the poor would ruin Long Island’s beaches. The low clearance of the overpasses barred public transit buses from the beach area while allowing affluent motorists to freely drive there. The story about segregating the poor from the beach illustrates how technologies have acted as tools of social control (Winner, 1986, pp. 22-23).

Deep packet inspection (DPI) marks a new period in the history of social control and, again, we must question the politics of control embedded in the technology. The control embedded in DPI differs from the architecture of overpasses; DPI runs through software and thus its mode of control is more fluid than concrete. Control does not block, but works by “increasing the probability of a desired outcome rather than its absolute determination” (Samarajiva, 1996, p. 129). The Internet appears open but the opaque software of deep packet inspection now subtly controls Internet traffic by gently guiding our communications into fast and slow lanes.[1] In this short essay I will identify what is significant about DPI’s capacity to control communications. I do so by first naming the nature of this control, secondly sketching its operation, and finally by speculating on the challenges it poses to democratic society.

Deep packet inspection, along with a bevy of other technologies for governing Internet traffic, amplifies the management of Internet communication. Networks can now predict the content of a message and assign it a speed. Such assignments create tiers of Internet traffic. Previously, speed depended on the size of the pipe and how fast its wires conducted messages, whereas now speed can depend on content and/or the pipe’s size.

To Internet Service Providers (ISPs), the ability to re-evaluate how to transmit information relieves their struggling infrastructure. ISPs face a bandwidth crunch from on-demand movies, streaming video, multiplayer games, music stores, not to mention the explosion in illegal file sharing. The crunch, in short, requires better management of the scarce resource. DPI allows network owners to identify certain communications and assign more or less bandwidth depending on the communication type.

Canadian Internet Service Providers, thus far, dominantly use DPI to solve congestion issues – mostly shaping peer-to-peer file sharing. Peer-to-peer traffic mostly moves large files around, ISPs argue, and thereby this communication traffic is less time-sensitive than web traffic or Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). Lowering the strain keeps Internet service costs down while still delivering an open Internet service (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, 2009b); DPI merely shifts the priorities of packets around in order to keep time-sensitive ones moving.

Concerns over DPI arise from its international abuses. International cases demonstrate the less mundane applications of DPI. Many believe DPI technologies enabled the domestic wire-tapping of American citizens (Bamford, 2008), and that China and Iran employ DPI to filter unwanted messages from their domestic Internet (Zittrain & Palfrey, 2008). However, these concerns overlook an important aspect of DPI: the technology has the capacity to control open communication. It is not only a system for surveillance and censorship.

Surveillance and censorship online differ from Internet control. Surveillance finds out if you browse the web or play video games. Censorship, a related concern, refers to the prevention of certain forms of speech: stopping us from saying certain things. Surveillance allows the discovery of illicit communication and censorship stops its circulation. While invasions of privacy might trouble us, they are not the only concerns with DPI. Control refers to inspection and interaction; it collapses the distinction between censorship and surveillance.

Internet control operates using DPI that, in my sense, refers to a certain type of software running on the many computers – known as network processors – routing our communication across the Internet. Processors inspect the bits of information coming across its pipes. The bits form a pattern that the software recognizes as types of traffic. Peer-to-peer communication (P2P) has a different pattern than web traffic. The software matches the peer-to-peer pattern to a list of known patterns. A match triggers certain policies. Bell, for example, allocates less bandwidth to peer-to-peer traffic during peak hours – a technique commonly called Internet throttling. These processes allow network owners to predict your mode of communication, and then to intervene in their transmission. These steps occur as the packet moves, nearly instantly. The home user, for the most part, never registers the uses of DPI equipment to monitor data flows.

Control is central for concerns about DPI while simultaneously being elusive because we never acknowledge when it works. Control disappears and blends into the everyday operation of the Internet. Its presence is active, constant, pervasive, and necessary to movement, but also hidden. The American ISP Comcast’s traffic shaping of peer-to-peer traffic only came to light through the efforts of many concerned media activists.[2] Users would have just thrown their hands up in frustration because their communications suddenly slow down without cause.

Control, in the case of Comcast, frustrates its users participating with peer-to-peer networks and lifts the throttling – and the frustration – only when its users travel along sanctioned digital channels. Its effect, then, is the “purposive influence toward a predetermined goal” (Beniger, 1986, p. 7). Influence gently guides our communication into more acceptable streams, never blocking, only guiding. Control does not stop us from communicating; it simply marginalizes non-prioritized communications. Control permits free speech, though a free speech with instrumental marginalization.

Introducing free speech might appear a leap in a technical discussion of Internet technologies, but it leads to questioning the technologies’ political repercussions. DPI poses, for me, all of the questions we must investigate if we aim to understand the democratic implications of control in communication. Control, enabled through deep packet inspection or its successors, will not disappear. While we might not always be aware of its influence, its invisibility possesses a political problem of how control should be governed online.

Confronting control requires establishing boundaries. Lawrence Lessig refers to this problem as one of regulability (Lessig, 2006, pp. 23-24). A term he uses to signify the limits of regulation. What can we now regulate, manage, or, in my language, control? What areas can we now control? Just because we can regulate does not imply that we should regulate. For instance, “the ordinary ways in which individuals create and share fall within the reach and refutation of the law, which has expanded to draw within its control a vast amount of culture and creativity that it never reached before” (Lessig, 2004, p. 8). Should control begin to enforce the law? As control becomes more ubiquitous in our communication systems, we must question its reach and decide what areas belong outside of such control.

We should note that the introduction of control in Canada has intensified. Telecommunications firms have lobbied and petitioned the Canadian Radio-Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to permit the installation of deep packet inspection equipment in ISPs’ networks. As part of this lobbying effort, Mr. O’Carroll of Rogers Communications stated, “the rate of change in the Internet environment is increasing, therefore, Internet traffic management practices must be highly dynamic and responsive to these changes.” DPI is a vital part of Rogers’ Internet business model; the model demands keeping the cost of an open communication system in check. However, Rogers’ desire to continue to shape peer-to-peer file sharing seems dull compared to the threats of Mike McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency in the United States. He stresses the insecurities of the Internet in his public relations campaign on behalf of traffic management software firms.[3] He states, “we need to reengineer the Internet” because “if an enemy disrupted our financial and accounting transactions …  or created confusion about the legitimacy of those transactions – chaos would result.” Control, for McConnell, becomes an issue of national security. His posturing exemplifies the tremendous push to expand the limits of control.

Twin pistons churn the engines of control forward – the need to monetize network communication and the drive to increase the security of networks. Both ignore the problems of control to society. If we use the Internet more and more in our daily lives, as Statistics Canada reports 80% of Canadians now do,[4] then the setting of our society falls within the limits of control. Reducing the conditions of the expansion of control to a simple game of security and profit ignores the politics of control and the long-standing public service component of communications networks (See Moll & Shade, 2001). Mr. Lee of Rogers Communications reveals this troubling logic of the market forces where he states, “market forces, not government fiat, are responsible for Canada’s remarkable success [in broadband growth]. Many of the participants of the CRTC hearing on Intelligent Traffic Management Practices (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, 2009a), perhaps with good intentions, want to change that. They want lawyers, not engineers, to design the networks. This would be a big mistake.” Making control political, he infers, would threaten the success of the Internet in Canada. I believe the opposite. DPI, control and its limits must be debated publicly.

The nature of software enacting control challenges our public response. Invisible software systems do not lend themselves well to public representation. Such invisibility is why sites like this one are so important.  Deep packet inspection Canada’s home page explains to visitors whether their Internet service features deep packet inspection – a significant step in making control more visible. The CRTC, in the ruling on Intelligent Traffic Management Practices, required ISPs to be more transparent with their practices. Unfortunately, as Michael Geist points out, they are still complying with the regulation.[5] These examples mark the beginnings of a democratic response to control by bringing it to the public light. As control expands, perhaps through a new lawful access law,[6] we must find new means to represent and contest its operation. Framing DPI as a technology of control, I hope, renders another side of the technology. By understanding the politics of this technology, we might begin to find ways to govern it.

Notes:

[1] For another perspective on DPI and control, see DPI as an Integrated Technology of Control – Potential and Reality/. Bendrath studies the major actors pushing to install DPI and compares how drivers utilize DPI to alter their techniques of social control, technical efficiency, and economization.

[2] See, Packet Forgery By ISPs: A Report on the Comcast Affair

[3] The campaign also included a CNN broadcast of a two-hour simulation of a cyberwar against the United States. See, Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet.

[4] See, the Statistics Canada’s Canadian Internet Use Study.

[5] See, Geist: ISPs fall short on Net neutrality rules

[6] See, Feds to give cops Internet-snooping powers

Other Works Cited:

Bamford, J. (2008). The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (1st ed.). New York: Doubleday.

Beniger, J. R. (1986). The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (2009a). Hearings for Review of the Internet traffic management practices of Internet service providers. Retrieved 15 March 2010. from http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/transcripts/2009/tt0706.htm.

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (2009b). Telecom Regulatory Policy CRTC 2009-657: Review of the Internet traffic management practices of Internet service providers. Retrieved 12 March 2010. from http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2009/2009-657.htm.

Lessig, L. (2004). Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin Press.

Lessig, L. (2006). Code: Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books.

Moll, M., & Shade, L. R. (Eds.). (2001). E-commerce vs E-commons: Communications in the Public Interest. Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Samarajiva, R. (1996). Surveillance by Design: Public Networks and the Control of Consumption. In R. Mansell & R. Silverstone (Eds.), Communication by Design: The Politics of Communication Technologies (pp. 129-156). New York: Oxford University Press.

Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Zittrain, J., & Palfrey, J. (2008). Internet Filtering: The Politics and Mechanisms of Control. In R. Deibert, J. Palfrey, R. Rohozinski & J. Zittrain (Eds.), Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering (pp. 29-56). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Biography:

Fenwick McKelvey is a second-year PhD Candidate (Fall‘08) in the Communication & Culture program at Ryerson and York Universities. He researches digital political communication, and digital research methods. His dissertation charts the politics of traffic management software – how it controls information and how it meets resistance. He is a research associate with the Infoscape Research Lab: Centre for the Study of Social Media.

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