Mastering the Internet

[Richard Clayton]

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In article <2A44EF7D-9455-4164-80C1-38179D83762B@batten.eu.org>, Ian
Batten <igb@batten.eu.org> writes

>
>On 4 May 2009, at 13:54, Richard Clayton wrote:
>>
>> viz: the capability envisaged is of reconstructing the streams of data
>> which is flowing back and forth between users and "third parties" (ie:
>> hotmail/gmail/facebook/bebo &c) and then extracting "traffic data"  
>> from
>> within those streams of data (and discarding the rest)
>
>I thought we were all clear that that was the desire?

Clear is not the first word that springs to mind when reading the
consultation

>  Perhaps I've  
>been looking at this stuff for too long, but I actually read that  
>requirement into what's in the consultation.

You could certainly argue that some parts of the consultation, and the
continued emphasis on not wanting content would map better to Netflow or
Sflow architectures....

...which is why I went to the meeting I mentioned specifically to ask
whether the plan was DPI or Netflow, to be told it was the former

>> They consider your login name for hotmail/gmail/facebook/bebo &c to be
>> traffic data, along with details of who when and how much you are
>> communicating with through these systems. They do not consider  
>> whatever
>> you say within these systems to be comms data but content.
>
>Indeed.  As you say, they're essentially arguing that GoogleMail's use  
>of HTTP and HTML and Javascript is equivalent to SMTP and IMAP.

Of course none of this parsing of content works when people encrypt
their traffic (a topic entirely absent from the consultation) -- but
they seem to be assuming that since traffic is not yet (n-years later)
mainly encrypted, then it won't be in the future.

However the countermeasures to P2P traffic shaping (BitTorrent clients
now encrypt out-of-the-box), the continued growth of CPU power (making
the cycles to do the encryption less and less an issue) and the concerns
expressed around Phormlike systems; may mean that we're rather closer to
a tipping point...

- -- 
richard                                              Richard Clayton

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.         Benjamin Franklin

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