Comcast keeps too close an eye on its users

by Corina Ciubotaru

Privacy has become a major concern for everyone nowadays and people have started to feel watched everywhere they go. We have video cameras in shops and on the streets, our mobile phones can be traced through satellites and the RIAA is watching our every move when it comes to file-sharing. Not to mention phones being legally tapped; now it looks like Internet traffic is being supervised directly by the ISP. Comcast has admitted it delays and even blocks some traffic when the network gets too crowded, as an AP test proved. When faced with the evidence, Comcast officials admitted using certain programs that disguise as users downloading a file to prevent it from actually downloading. This technique targets mainly programs like BitTorrent and Gnutella, some of the most widely used peer-to-peer software programs and Comcast believes it to be perfectly legal and in the interest of the consumers. There is evidence out there that even larger attachments on perfectly legal e-mail sent with programs such as Lotus Notes have been delayed or blocked by Comcast. The company is known for its strange policy of rejecting users that take up too much bandwidth, so limitations wouldn't be a surprise to anybody. They are also likely to blame the delays on software bugs, anything to confuse users into not going to court.Since it's one thing to let users know how much bandwidth they can actually use and quite another to choke their connections, Comcast may not be facing a series of lawsuits regarding its reasons for influencing users' traffic.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071023/ap_on_hi_te/comcast_data_discrimination;_ylt=Aq27d4hk_eZQV7GAShhL.uGs0NUE

by Corina Ciubotaru for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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