Big Brother on a budget: How Internet surveillance got so cheap

Deep packet inspection, petabyte-scale analytics create a "CCTV for networks."

by Sean Gallagher - Aug 28 2012,  

[Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, I wrote an article called the “Death of Privacy” which was about electronic surveillance and privacy issues. Not long after penning that article, I came across another article that explains how it’s done. Apparently this technology is cheap and widely available. If you are not technically inclined, you can skip over the “techy” parts but the message is clear – technology exists right now to track absolutely everything you do – for good or ill. The following are excerpts from the article.] 

The combination of the sophisticated analytics and massive data storage in big data systems with DPI[deep packet inspection] network security technology has created what Dr. Elan Amir, CEO of Bivio Networks, calls “a security camera for your network.” 

… companies and governments with smaller budgets could not only track what's going on in social media, but reconstruct the communications between people over a period of months or even years, all with a single query. 

“The danger here,” Electronic Frontier Foundation Technology Projects Director Peter Eckersley told Ars, “is that these technologies, which were initially developed for the purpose of finding malware, will end up being repurposed as commercial surveillance technology. You start out checking for malware, but you end up tracking people.”

Unchecked, Eckersley said, companies or rogue employees of those companies will do just that. And they could retain data indefinitely, creating a whole new level of privacy risk. 

Source: the full article can be found here: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/08/big-brother-meets-big-data-the-next-wave-in-net-surveillance-tech/ 

Related articles:”The death of privacy”  http://www.wealthadviser.ca/index.php/newsletters/142-death-of-privacy 

AT&T Sued Over NSA Eavesdropping: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/70126 

Reference: Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF): https://www.eff.org/press