Privacy Digest

Canadian ISP Allegedly Splices Itself Only Google Homepage - Via Threat Level:

A screen shot posted to the web over the weekend seems to show that Canada's largest provider of high-speed internet access is exploring a controversial data substitution technique that lets it add its own content to the webpages customers visit.

If it's true, expect this development to become Exhibit A in the case for net neutrality legislation.

[...]Editor: Interesting graphic removed. Go to original site for that [...]

Lauren Weinstein, a technology consultant in Los Angeles and a long-time Internet activist, posted a screen-shot of a Rogers-modified Google search page this past Saturday on his blog.

The screen shot, forwarded from "a concerned  reader," shows a Rogers-Yahoo branded customer service message apparently on Google's home page.

The message informs the Rogers customer that they are approaching their data cap limit for the month, and provides them with a link to information on how they would be able to upgrade their account, among other things. (Click the image to enlarge)

"Just brought to my attention today by a concerned reader who chose
Google for his example, what you're looking at is reportedly an ongoing
test by Rogers in Canada, scheduled for deployment to Rogers Internet
customers next quarter," Weinstein wrote in his blog.

"This is what Net Neutrality is about -- it's not
just making sure that data is handled in a competitive and non-discriminatory
manner, but it's also that the data that's sent is the data that you get -- that the content is unmodified, not with messages
that are woven into your data stream [from third parties]" he says in an interview.

Weinstein is a co-founder of a non-profit discussion and policy group called People for Internet Responsibility, the latest project of which is a new e-mail discussion group called the Net Neutrality Squad. The project's goal is to report on and discuss alleged incidents of discriminatory activity.

Contacted by THREAT LEVEL, a spokeswoman for Rogers said she'd look into the claim.

(Read Original Article - Via Threat Level.)