Internet Providers' New Tool Raises Deep Privacy Concerns

If deep packet inspection lives up to its promises, it might yield a cash benefit. Internet providers using this technology could afford to offer customers a deal: Accept this scrutiny, and we'll knock $10 a month off your bill. But systems such as deep packet inspection unnerve a lot of Internet users for sound reasons. One is, of course, the immensely greater surveillance they allow. Another concern is the difficulty of circumventing this constant tracking. A third concern is the lack of competition for broadband service in much of the United States -- if your provider sets up deep packet inspection, you may not be able to protest by taking your business elsewhere. But the worst aspect of this kind of "augmented" or "enhanced tracking" (pick a euphemism) is how badly and in how many ways it could fail. What if a wrongly configured system records more data than intended?