[BITList] Fwd: [From: Mike Feltham] Your ISP is watching you

[Michael Feltham]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "guardian.co.uk" <noreply at guardian.co.uk>
Date: 9 February 2009 23:30:25 GMT
To: mj.feltham at madasafish.com
Subject: [From: Mike Feltham] Your ISP is watching you

Mike Feltham spotted this on the guardian.co.uk site and thought you  
should see it.

To see this story with its related links on the guardian.co.uk site,  
go to http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/02/privacy-civil-liberties

Your ISP is watching you
Did you know ... BT wants to monitor your online activities to serve  
you targeted ads? Don't let it spy on you
Becky Hogge
Monday February 2 2009
guardian.co.uk


A man walks through a shopping precinct. Tiny cameras capture his  
every move. If he so much as turns his head to glimpse into a shop  
window, that action is recorded, next to a reference number that  
identifies him uniquely among the many shoppers around him. As he  
walks through the crowded mall, the advertising billboards subtly  
change to suit his profile, flashing aeroplanes and knitted sweaters  
to replace the beach towels and lipstick intended for the woman in  
front of him. He ducks out of the precinct, looks around him, then  
walks down a side street to the door of a VD clinic. But the cameras  
are still watching him. Silently, passively. But watching him all the  
same ...

This is not a novel by Philip K Dick: it is happening right now. The  
only difference is that it's not happening in the physical world, it's  
happening online. Since last autumn, BT ? under the "Webwise" banner ?  
has been trialling a technology called Phorm, which dials direct into  
your internet service provider's network and intercepts communications  
between you and the websites you visit, using information about the  
sorts of things you are viewing to serve you targeted ads.

 From shopping and watching TV to keeping in touch with friends,  
seeking advice about our health and finances and even meeting  
prospective partners, what we do over our internet connections now  
reveals more about us than any other single activity we engage in. But  
despite this, the world wide web is most commonly seen as media. And  
with media comes advertising. We tolerate the advertorials, double- 
page spreads and ever longer ad breaks because we understand that this  
activity funds the production of our newspapers and favourite TV  
shows. But should we tolerate Phorm?

Thanks to hard work from campaigners at the Foundation for Information  
Policy Research and the Open Rights Group, and activists at  
dephormation.org.uk and nodpi.org, we now have that choice. The  
Information Commissioner's Office has ruled that BT must ask the  
explicit permission of its customers to "opt in" before enrolling them  
into its Webwise trial (rather than the pernicious "opt out" clauses  
so beloved of marketers and junk mail operatives). Here's why I think  
every last one of those customers should actively count themselves out.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are not media companies. They do not  
get to decide, or even influence, what we watch, who we talk to or  
what we buy online. If they did, the world wide web would never have  
got off the ground. We would not have eBay, Amazon or Google, because  
back when these publicly listed companies were just glimmers in the  
eyes of their pioneering founders, ISPs would have put up barriers  
against entry to "their" market, charged punitive rent for access to  
"their" cables and "their" (our) eyeballs at the end of them. For the  
world wide web to work, ISPs must be neutral about the content that  
flows across their wires. That principle of neutrality extends to  
Phorm ? if ISPs start intercepting the communications between us and  
the websites we visit online, spying on our activity to give  
themselves an unbeatable advantage in the ad sales market, the media  
companies that rely on selling ads to survive will suffer irreparable  
damage.

Instead, ISPs must continue to be viewed as providing infrastructure,  
and infrastructure of a very special kind. Like the MP, the  
journalist, the doctor and the priest, ISPs have the power to know the  
intimate details of our lives. They should be prevented from abusing  
that power, and shielded from the power of those (like the Home  
Office, with its widely reported plans to "modernise" the state's  
interception capability) who would seek to force them to break their  
confidence with us. If this does not happen, it is not only the  
digital economy that will suffer, it is modern liberty itself.

The Convention on Modern Liberty will begin in London on Saturday 28  
February at 9.45am at the Institute of Education, 20 Bedford Way  
London WC1. Other sessions, with live screenings from London, will  
take place at Trinity Centre, Trinity Rd, Bristol; Student Council  
Chamber, Oxford Road, Manchester University; Cambridge Union, Bridge  
Street, Cambridge; Institute of Advanced Studies, University of  
Strathclyde, Montrose Street, Glasgow; Peter Froggatt Centre, Queen's  
University, Belfast.The venue in Cardiff is yet to be confirmed.

For information and to buy tickets at ?35 (concession ?20), please  
visit: modernliberty.net

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2009

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