SOCIETAL AND IDEOLOGICAL IMPACTS OF DEEP PACKET INSPECTION INTERNET SURVEILLANCE

Abstract

This paper analyses societal and ideological impacts of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies. DPI surveillance technologies are communications surveillance tools that are able to monitor the traffic of Internet data, including content data. The analysis presented in this paper is based on product sheets, self-descriptions, and product presentations by 20 European security technology companies that produce and sell DPI technologies, as well as on whitepapers, research papers, news articles, and opinions of privacy advocates, civil society groups, and consumer protection groups. The results show the complexity of societal dimensions of DPI and the importance of the analysis of power and political economy in assessing these implications. They are interpreted in the light of the emergence of a new mode of governmentality, in which the economic interests of the security industry and state interests interact. The analysis also shows that there is a variety of ideological explanations employed by the security industry for justifying its sales of communications surveillance technologies.

Keywords:

• political economy
• Internet surveillance
• Deep Packet Inspection
• security industry
• surveillance-industrial complex
• security-industrial complex

Acknowledgements

The research presented in this paper was conducted in the project ‘PACT – Public Perception of Security and Privacy: Assessing Knowledge, Collecting Evidence, Translating Research into Action’, funded by EU FP7 SECURITY, grant agreement no. 285635

Notes

Translation from German. ‘Ich stellte YouTube Videos von Demonstrationen bereit. Als ich danach verhaftet wurde, wurde mir meine genaue Vorgehensweise aus den Akten vorgelesen. Jeder einzelne Schritt, den ich im Internet unternommen habe, wurde mir vorgehalten, während ich geschlagen wurde’.