Bell Sympatico has announced a new service agreement with customers, allowing the company to "monitor or investigate" how their customers use their service and to "disclose any information necessary to satisfy any laws, regulations or other governmental request." The new customer service agreement took effect June 15.
Are you worried about this potentially toxic combination of commerce and security?
Jack Kapica, technology columnist for globeandmail.com, was on-line Wednesday to take your questions. The transcript of that discussion is at the bottom of this page.
The issue of monitoring Internet surfing runs deep.
Because the Bell moves were announced in advance of the expected reintroduction of a beefed-up Internet traffic monitoring bill, the so-called Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act, many customers worry that beyond merely complying with federal authorities, Bell's moves are also a blow against Net neutrality.
Mr. Kapica recently reported on bandwidth shaping, a technology employed by Internet service providers to monitor and regulate on-line traffic, particularly in an effort to reduce the amount of bandwidth file-sharers use and to charge heavy users a premium fee.
The technology, already in use by Rogers and Shaw, may eventually be used to charge users for using Voice over IP or file sharing.
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Donald Berkowitz from Maple, Ontario writes: What implications does bandwidth shaping have for ISP's arguments that they are merely a common carrier
Jack Kapica: As far as I'm concerned, the issue of losing their status as a common carrier is at the heart of ISPs adopting bandwidth-shaping tools. I think they would put themselves into a legal grey area, and the only way out of it would be left to the courts, I'm afraid.
None None from Guelph Canada writes: I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around this. All this does is hurt the average user. If a terroist wanted to send an email, what do you think he'll do? send it from home or drive up to an unsecured wireless connection to send it. Then guess what. The cops won't be busting down his door, they'll be busting down the door of the owner of the router. I recall a story from the filesharing lawsuits where they charge a woman who didn't even own a computer. Come on this is just plain wrong. What's next random strip searches?
Jack Kapica: You're making good points here. The problem is that in a post-9/11 world, a lot of stuff is being done for political reasons -- it's politically expedient to make grand patriotic gestures about fighting terrorism, which will go down well with the people who don't understand technology very well, and might even be still frightened of the Internet.
All your examples of how hide your identity are quite valid. But they're technical, not political.
Just look at what the US is doing about packet-sniffing.
Mike S from toronto Canada writes Hi Jack, any idea why Bell has initiated this now, rather than wait for legislation to go through?
Jack Kapica: Ah, the million-dollar question: I'm glad you asked.
There's a suspicion going round -- repeated to me by Philippa Lawson of The Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) -- that this story is a red herring put out by Bell.
Or it could be a simply red herring because of its timing in changing its end-user licence agreement on June 15.
In any case, the suspicion goes, this whole thing is a political cover for introducing bandwidth-shaping tools. These tools could be used to gather information about subscribers' activities, as Ottawa would demand, and Bell could therefore use the argument of compliance to justify buying the technology. In any case, bandwidth-shaping tools would introduce a longer, more damaging debate about ethics than one that said simply, hey, we're complying with the law.
