Deep packet inspection technology monitors everything that goes through the internet. It is readily available in the United States and there’s no legislation that prevents the US government from employing it. Deep packet inspection is currently used in Iran. The Iranian Government has the ability to look through everything, land line telephones, mobile telephones, email, websites, looking for keywords and actually monitoring the entire traffic going through one chokepoint in Iran. Deep packet inspection is the use of sophisticated equipment that literally watches the entire internet for every piece of data, voice, and video looking for key words, such as “rebel” or “grenade.” It is widely known that since 9/11, AT&T and Verizon were being asked by the Bush administration to deploy this sort of off-the-shelf technology. And they did. Again, Obama came out against the law and said we must punish these carriers for doing this, because it’s illegal, and then he flipped under enormous pressure from the lobbies.
Title: Deep Packet Inspection: Telecoms Aided Iran Government to Censor Internet, Technology Widely Used in US”
Source: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales, Democracy Now!, 6/23/09
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/23/deep _packet_inspection_telecoms_aided_iran
Title: Deep-Packet Inspection in U.S. Scrutinized Following Iran Surveillance
Author: Kim Zetter,
Source: Wired, June 29, 2009
URL-http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/deep-packet-inspection/
Student Researcher: Mira Patel
Faculty: Ben Frymer
Sonoma State University