ACTA stop it now!

Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) (also called complete packet inspection and Information eXtraction - IX -) is a form of computer network packet filtering that examines the data part (and possibly also the header) of a packet as it passes an inspection point, searching for protocol non-compliance, viruses, spam, intrusions or predefined criteria to decide if the packet can pass or if it needs to be routed to a different destination, or for the purpose of collecting statistical information. There are multiple headers for IP packets; network equipment only needs to use the first of these (the IP header) for normal operation, but use of the second header (TCP, UDP etc.) is normally considered to be shallow packet inspection (usually called Stateful Packet Inspection) despite this definition.[1]

Deep Packet Inspection (and filtering) enables advanced network management, user service, and security functions as well as internet data mining, eavesdropping, and censorship. Although DPI technology has been used for Internet management for many years, some advocates of net neutrality fear that the technology can be used anticompetitively or to reduce the openness of the Internet.[2]

DPI is currently being used by the enterprise, service providers and governments in a wide range of applications.[3]

Click to expand...

DPI at network/Internet service providers

In addition to using DPI to secure their internal networks, Internet service providers also apply this technology on the public networks provided to customers. Common uses of DPI by ISPs are lawful intercept, policy definition and enforcement, targeted advertising, quality of service, offering tiered services, and copyright enforcement.

Click to expand...

Deep Packet Inspection by governments
See also: network surveillance and censorship

In addition to using DPI for the security of their own networks, governments in North America, Europe and Asia use DPI for various purposes such as surveillance and censorship; many of these programs are classified.[18]


United States

FCC adopts Internet CALEA requirements. The FCC, pursuant to its mandate from the US Congress, and in line with the policies of most countries worldwide, has required that all telecommunication providers, including Internet services, be capable of supporting the execution of a court order to provide real-time communication forensics of specified users. In 2006, the FCC adopted new Title 47, Subpart Z, rules requiring Internet Access Providers meet these requirements. DPI was one of the platforms essential to meeting this requirement and has been deployed for this purpose throughout the U.S.
Main article: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy

The National Security Agency (NSA), with cooperation from AT&T has used Deep Packet Inspection technology to make internet traffic surveillance, sorting and forwarding more intelligent. The DPI is used to find which packets are carrying e-mail or a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone call.[19] Traffic associated with AT&T’s Common Backbone was "split" between two fibers, dividing the signal so that 50 percent of the signal strength went to each output fiber. One of the output fibers was diverted to a secure room; the other carried communications on to AT&T’s switching equipment. The secure room contained Narus traffic analyzers and logic servers; Narus states that such devices are capable of real-time data collection (recording data for consideration) and capture at 10 gigabits per second. Certain traffic was selected and sent over a dedicated line to a "central location" for analysis. According to Marcus’s affidavit, the diverted traffic "represented all, or substantially all, of AT&T’s peering traffic in the San Francisco Bay area," and thus, "the designers of the ... configuration made no attempt, in terms of location or position of the fiber split, to exclude data sources comprised primarily of domestic data."[20] Narus's Semantic Traffic Analyzer software which runs on IBM or Dell Linux servers, using DPI technology, sorts through IP traffic at 10Gbit/s to pick out specific messages based on a targeted e-mail address, IP address or, in the case of VoIP, phone number.[21] President George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales have asserted that they believe the president has the authority to order secret intercepts of telephone and e-mail exchanges between people inside the United States and their contacts abroad without obtaining a FISA warrant.[22]

The Defense Information Systems Agency has developed a sensor platform that uses Deep Packet Inspection.[23]

China
Main article: Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China

The Chinese government uses Deep Packet Inspection to monitor and censor network traffic and content that it claims harmful to Chinese citizens or state interests. This material includes pornography, information on religion, and political dissent.[24] Chinese network ISPs use DPI to see if there's any sensitive keyword going through their network. If so, the connection will be cut. People within China often find themselves blocked while accessing Web sites containing content related to Taiwanese and Tibetan independence, Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama, the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre of 1989, political parties that oppose that of the ruling Communist party, or a variety of anti-Communist movements[25] as those materials were signed as DPI sensitive keywords already. China also blocks VoIP traffic in and out of their country[citation needed]. Voice traffic in Skype is unaffected, although text messages are subject to DPI, and messages containing sensitive material, such as curse-words, are simply not delivered, with no notification provided to either participant in the conversation. China also blocks visual media sites like YouTube.com, and various photography and blogging sites.[26]
[edit] Iran
Main article: Internet censorship in Iran

The Iranian government purchased a system, reportedly for deep packet inspection, in 2008 from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) (a joint venture Siemens AG, the German conglomerate, and Nokia Corp., the Finnish cellphone company), according to a report in the Wall Street Journal in June, 2009, quoting NSN spokesperson Ben Roome. According to unnamed experts cited in the article, the system "enables authorities to not only block communication but to monitor it to gather information about individuals, as well as alter it for disinformation purposes."

The system was purchased by the Telecommunication Infrastructure Co., part of the Iranian government's telecom monopoly. According to the Journal, NSN "provided equipment to Iran last year under the internationally recognized concept of 'lawful intercept,' said Mr. Roome. That relates to intercepting data for the purposes of combating terrorism, child pornography, drug trafficking and other criminal activities carried out online, a capability that most if not all telecom companies have, he said.... The monitoring center that Nokia Siemens Networks sold to Iran was described in a company brochure as allowing 'the monitoring and interception of all types of voice and data communication on all networks.' The joint venture exited the business that included the monitoring equipment, what it called 'intelligence solutions,' at the end of March, by selling it to Perusa Partners Fund 1 LP, a Munich-based investment firm, Mr. Roome said. He said the company determined it was no longer part of its core business."

The NSN system followed on purchases by Iran from Secure Computing Corp. earlier in the decade.[27]

Questions have been raised about the reporting reliability of the Journal report by David Isenberg, an independent Washington, D.C.-based analyst and Cato Institute Adjunct Scholar, specifically saying that Mr. Roome is denying the quotes attributed to him and that he, Isenberg, had similar complaints with one of the same Journal reporters himself in an earlier story.[28] NSN has issued the following denial: NSN "has not provided any deep packet inspection, web censorship or Internet filtering capability to Iran."[29] A concurrent article in The New York Times said the NSN sale had been covered in a "spate of news reports in April [2009], including The Washington Times," and reviewed censorship of the Internet and other media in the country, but did not mention DPI

Click to expand...

Copyright enforcement

ISPs are sometimes requested by copyright owners or required by courts or official policy to help enforce copyrights. In 2006, one of Denmark's largest ISPs, Tele2, was given a court injunction and told it must block its customers from accessing The Pirate Bay, a launching point for BitTorrent.[14] Instead of prosecuting file sharers one at a time,[15] the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the big four record labels EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music and Warner Music have begun suing ISPs like Eircom for not doing enough about protecting their copyrights.[16] The IFPI wants ISPs to filter traffic to remove illicitly uploaded and downloaded copyrighted material from their network, despite European directive 2000/31/EC clearly stating that ISPs may not be put under a general obligation to monitor the information they transmit and directive 2002/58/EC granting European citizens a right to privacy of communications. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) which enforces movie copyrights, on the other hand has taken the position with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that network neutrality could hurt anti-piracy technology such as Deep Packet Inspection and other forms of filtering.[17]

Click to expand...

How states and businesses monitor our Internet use
Watching over you
New technology is allowing businesses as well as government to read the contents of our internet exchanges. Internet service providers stand to gain from this access until there is legal control over the export of surveillance equipment
by Antoine Champagne

When The Wall Street Journal reporter Margaret Coker visited the Libyan government’s surveillance centre in Tripoli after the city’s fall, she saw that the authorities had been monitoring everything: the internet, mobile phones, satellite phone and internet connections. Some files included emails and online conversations between Gaddafi’s opponents. Notices on the walls revealed that the company which had installed the equipment was Amesys, a subsidiary of French firm Bull (1). The French satirical weekly Le Canard Enchainé later reported that France’s military intelligence directorate had been solicited to help train Libya’s internal spies (2).

In Syria, US equipment helps Bashar al-Assad’s regime censor the internet, and retrieve logins and passwords to access people’s emails or Facebook and Twitter pages. This tool is particularly useful for tracking the communications of opponents with internal or foreign connections.

The technology is innocuously named “deep packet inspection” (DPI). When someone sends an email, a series of servers relays it to its destination. Each server sends the message on to the next, looking only at the recipient’s address, and not at the contents. An expert on internet law, Jonathan Zittrain, explained: “It’s a bit like being at a party with polite friends. If you’re too far from the bar, or there are too many people in the way, you ask the person next to you to get you a beer. They ask the person next to them, who is a bit closer to the bar, and so on. Eventually your order reaches the bar and your beer arrives via the same route back. Since everyone is polite, no one will have drunk your beer along the way.”

But DPI is less polite. How would you feel if the person next to you analysed your order, and started lecturing you about it? Or if they tampered with your drink, adding water or something stronger? This is exactly what DPI technology can do: it allows people to read the content of internet traffic, modify it, and even send it to someone else.

Amesys is not alone in this market. US press agency Bloomberg recently reported that another French company, Qosmos, had provided DPI technology to a consortium equipping Syria to the same standard as Gaddafi’s Libya (3). DPI is also at the heart of China’s firewall, which allows the government to censor internet traffic and spy on its citizens.
’Secret new industry’

The recent Wikileaks publication of numerous internal documents from these companies shows that monitoring communication networks is “a secret new industry spanning 25 countries ... In traditional spy stories, intelligence agencies like MI5 bug the phone of one or two people of interest. In the last 10 years systems of indiscriminate, mass surveillance have become the norm” (4). A little earlier The Wall Street Journal had published more than 200 marketing documents from 36 companies offering the US anti-terrorist agency various surveillance and computer hacking tools (5).

DPI entered the spotlight in May 2006 when Mark Klein, a former technician with US internet provider AT&T, leaked the fact that the company had installed DPI technology at the heart of the county’s internet network, in cooperation with the US National Security Agency (which invented the Echelon system in the 1980s and 1990s). The technology was provided by internet surveillance company Narus (slogan “See Clearly, Act Swiftly”). Narus was set up in 1997, has 150 employees, earned $30m in 2006, and was bought up by Boeing in 2010. The Mubarak regime was reported to have installed Narus equipment in Egypt (6).

The flow of information over the internet includes the web, emails, synchronous exchanges (instant messaging) and asynchronous exchanges (blogs, discussion forums), phone conversations, video, raw data, etc. Most of this communication is not encrypted, so it is easy for both the casual hacker and state security services to monitor it.
Constraints or profits?

But some private companies are also seeing a financial advantage in this technology. Telecoms operators such as Free, SFR and Orange have started to complain that large amounts of information are being conveyed on their networks without the producer paying. Internet service providers (ISPs) are not happy about paying to transmit YouTube videos, which they are obliged to provide to their subscribers. So they came up with the idea of charging a supplement to the information’s producer or its final user, or slowing down some traffic in favour of others. But to do that they have to be able to measure precisely what is passing through their networks.

In the same way, mobile phone operators have tried to limit their infrastructure costs by restricting their customers’ access to the internet. So they prohibit smart phone users from peer-to-peer file sharing, or using vocal or video communication like Skype.

Here too, DPI allows them to monitor and manage the traffic, and allocate higher bandwidths to certain services, such as those they provide. This contradicts the notion of “network neutrality”, whereby service providers are meant to convey all requested information without discrimination.

When DPI is applied to web browsing, it can record every move a person makes online. Marketing professionals are desperate to exploit such information. Orange recently launched Orange Shots, which uses DPI technology to analyse the websites a subscriber uses (with their consent), in order to offer them ultra-targeted products. That could make ISPs as profitable as Facebook and Google, as long as these programmes attracted subscribers; it would be enough to claim that the data was anonymous to make it a perfectly marketable product.

The curious reader could check the Data Privacy page on the website of GFK, an international market research group and Qosmos shareholder: while it casually mentions web “cookies”, it fails to explain that it also tracks visitors to websites using a DPI technology which is supposedly anonymous because GFK alone knows the formula. GFK is present in more than 150 countries.

DPI is also attracting intellectual property rights and copyright holders who are trying to fight “illegal” file sharing on peer-to-peer networks (BitTorrent), or sites for uploading and downloading files directly, like Megaupload. Knowing exactly who is trying to download what film or music file, and blocking that person’s access, can only be done with “deep” surveillance infrastructure shared across all the data exchange points that the ISPs represent.
Legal surveillance

Another natural market for DPI technology is legal surveillance. In France police sometimes monitor a suspect’s communications as part of a judicial investigation, authorised by a judge and the National Committee for the Control of Security Interceptions. But this is a niche market, concerning a very small proportion of the population. Unless they were counting on another huge rise in the anti-terrorist budget, it would make sense for businesses in this sector to look for other commercial outlets.

That is where the governments of police states, which want to listen to their entire populations, come in. Surveillance software can be tested in these countries under real conditions. That is why Ben Ali’s Tunisia received a discount on systems that still had bugs. Libya provided Amesys with a real life experiment of what Eagle software could or could not do. Alcatel is doing the same in Burma. The information gathered by DPI inevitably leads to arrests. (Torture, using tried and tested methods, can do the rest.)

Puzzled, no doubt, by the high number of European companies in this sector, the European parliament has passed a resolution to ban the sale abroad of systems monitoring phone calls and text messages, or providing targeted internet surveillance, if this information is used to violate democratic principles, human rights or freedom of expression. On 1 December 2011 the EU Council tightened restrictions on Syria and banned “exports of equipment and software intended for use in the monitoring of internet and telephone communications by the Syrian regime”.

Despite this, there is little legal control over the global export of surveillance equipment. Manufacturers find it easy to slip through the net (especially since there is such a diversity of legislation), governments do not publish their permits, and this type of software is not strictly considered a weapon.

Click to expand...

Opposing opinions on the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) clashed anew ahead of next week’s meetings of the European Parliament where the EU body may make critical decisions on the fate of the deal.

The Committee on International Trade of the Parliament is expected to hold meetings on 26 and 27 March. In a press release today, the Paris-based advocacy group La Quadrature du Net said the decision on whether the Parliament will immediately make the final vote on the agreement or delay the voting will be discussed during the committee meetings next week.

The Parliament’s nod on the deal is needed for it to enter into force in the EU. In a separate but connected move, the European Commission already made a referral to the European Court of Justice regarding the legality of ACTA. The European High Court is set to hand down a decision soon.

“Mr. Martin wants the Parliament to make its own but similar referral, which would delay the EU Parliament’s final vote for one or two years,” La Quadrature said, referring to the British rapporteur for ACTA, David Martin. The group calls instead for an outright rejection of ACTA.

A strong opponent of the deal, the group has called other members of the Parliament to “reject these cheap political tricks and instead work toward a strong, politically binding report, and toward the rejection of ACTA.”

La Quadrature describes ACTA as a major threat to freedom of expression online as it “would impose new criminal sanctions pushing Internet actors to “cooperate” with the entertainment industries to monitor and censor online communications, bypassing the judicial authority.”

Coinciding with the La Quadrature release is the publication of an open letter in support of ACTA from the Brussels-based International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFFRO).

Collecting Societies Support ACTA

The 136-strong international organisation of collecting societies involved in texts and images has called on the governments behind the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) to not be swayed by mounting criticism against the deal and instead reconsider its positive provisions.

“We appeal to governments to assess the question of ratification based on the specific provisions of the Agreement itself, and how they might impact the building of knowledge-based activities, without being overly affected by comment,” the group wrote on its letter.

A copy of the letter is here [pdf].

IFFRO has described the criticisms against ACTA as “disproportionate” to the agreement’s objectives and provisions, and that the measures proposed in ACTA do not appear to go beyond the existing enforcement rules of the signatories.

ACTA is a multinational treaty that seeks to establish international standards for intellectual property rights enforcement. Signatories to the treaty are Australia, Canada, the European Union and 22 of its 27 member states, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the United States.

Last February, the European Parliament received a petition against the ratification of ACTA signed by nearly 2.5 million people from around the world. Signatures on the petition were gathered by an organisation called Avaaz.

Click to expand...

gaiusmarius said:

yeah sorry guys, i just feel facebook links are too hot for this site. people that are members there will be shown to be coming from this site. it's just best to not go to facebook from here, otherwise it's one more thing that place will know about you. if people would copy paste the link into a new window it wouldn't be so bad, but active facebook links are just against site policy.

but like you said a quick search about the acta demo for the 11 of feb 2012 will get you to the info.

Click to expand...

International trade committee says another legal opinion on ACTA is not needed.

The European Parliament's international trade committee today rejected a request to refer a controversial anti-piracy agreement to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to check whether it complies with EU law.

The committee rejected a proposal by David Martin, a UK centre-left MEP, who is drafting the Parliament's position on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), to ask the ECJ to give its opinion.

The European Commission last month asked the ECJ for its opinion on the legality of ACTA. Martin wanted the Parliament to file a separate request for a legal opinion. He said his proposal was meant to “shed some light that would help members of the Parliament make their decision”.

But the committee decided that there was no need for another ECJ opinion. It decided to carry on with its own review of the accord and vote on whether to approve ACTA in June. There will be a vote by the full Parliament in July.

Political group officials said the Parliament's ratification of ACTA would not be delayed because of the Commission's decision to refer the agreement to the ECJ.

Amelia Andersdotter, a Swedish Green MEP, said her group welcomed today's move, which she said would speed up a final decision by MEPs.

“There are widespread concerns about the potentially far-reaching implications of ACTA,” she said, adding that her group wanted ACTA to “be scrapped”. The centre-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and the Greens are leading the campaign against ACTA. The Parliament's consent is needed before the agreement can be ratified.

ACTA was agreed in November 2010 after four years of negotiations among the EU's 27 members and ten other countries, including the US and Japan. It aims to improve the fight against counterfeiting at international level through greater co-ordination of anti-counterfeiting measures and tougher enforcement.
.

Click to expand...

US missile defense staff told to stop watching porn

Summary: U.S. missile defense workers have been warned that porn on the job is not allowed. It's not just a question of public security due to distraction, but there's also the risk of computer security due to malware found on many such sites.

By Emil Protalinski for Zero Day | August 3, 2012 -- 16:04 GMT (09:04 PDT)
US missile defense staff told to stop watching porn

John James Jr., director of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), recently sent out a one-page memo warning employees and contractors to stop using agency computers to visit pornographic Web sites. That's right; apparently they were watching the wrong type of bombshells.

Missile defense workers were reportedly accessing sites and sending messages with pornographic content despite the inherent risk of malware. Here's an excerpt of the July 27 memo, obtained by Bloomberg:

Specifically, there have been instances of employees and contractors accessing websites, or transmitting messages, containing pornographic or sexually explicit images. These actions are not only unprofessional, they reflect time taken away from designated duties, are in clear violation of federal and DoD and regulations, consume network resources and can compromise the security of the network though the introduction of malware or malicious code.

The message was just a warning; the MDA says that the porn sites did not cause any harm to its computer network. The agency emphasized, however, that there will be repercussions for anyone caught violating the policy.

"MDA has more than 8,000 employees, and less than a half-dozen were found to have accessed restricted sites or downloaded inappropriate materials," an MDA spokesperson said in a statement. "MDA has a highly-advanced monitoring system to detect intrusions, access to inappropriate viruses and malware downloads, and it worked as designed, and there was never any compromise of the MDA computer network. Employees should not access inappropriate Internet sites for pornography, gambling, video games and unauthorized music and video sites, to name a few. If they do, there are consequences, including possible loss of security clearances and termination."

The MDA is the section of the Department of Defense (DoD) responsible for developing a layered defense against ballistic missiles. Boners don't count.

Click to expand...

MadBuddhaAbuser said:

Also, if the gov is worried about foreign countries breaking into their secure computers, they should probably ontrol their OWN internet, and stay the hell out of ours.

http://www.zdnet.com/us-missile-defense-staff-told-to-stop-watching-porn-7000002063/

Click to expand...

Hash Zeppelin said:

Is it me or is this new world order conspiracy making more and more sense? I used to laugh at it, but over that last year I'm not laughing so much about it.

Click to expand...