Technology-Aware Policy Analysis: Case Studies of Deep Packet Inspection and Network Management

Abstract

1. Explaining the Governance of Deep Packet Inspection Technological advances in network monitoring equipment now allow ISPs to monitor the content of TCP/IP packets in real-time and make decisions accordingly about how to handle them. If rolled out widely, this deep packet inspection (DPI) technology has the potential to break the end-to-end principle and the separation of protocol layers. It also has social, political and economic implications, because it brings the ISPs into a position where they can control content. DPI therefore is a potentially disruptive technology. But DPI usage and governance vary a lot, across different use-cases as well as across different countries. The research project is analyzing the political interactions around several use-cases in several countries. It also aims at explaining the variation with the different strategic actor constellations the different use-cases imply as well as with the institutional context in which the policy interactions take place. 2. Network Management as a Central Issue of Internet Governance The project described above is also an attempt to fill an empirical blind spot. Studies about internet governance have mostly focused on the topologically extreme parts of the network: On the one hand, they addressed centralized functions, like the DNS and ICANN. On the other hand, they addressed the regulation of internet use by end-users and content providers. An important part of the internet, though, consists of the wide electronic landscape between the core and the end-points (cables and routers), as well as the actors who run it (ISPs and network operators). There has been surprisingly little research about the governance processes here. Recently, this area has drawn more attention under the label network neutrality, but publications here tend to be normative. There is still not much scholarly, empiricalanalytical literature here. I am trying to contribute to this area of internet governance research. 3. Technology-Aware Policy Analysis Internet governance research has so far mainly oscillated between techno-determinism and a fascinating neglect of technology. Many of the early publications on Internet governance have circled around the question: Can the internet be governed at all? This implicitly techno-deterministic view reflected a dominant discourse in the 1990s, as reflected in Barlows Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. The next generation of internet governance research showed empirically that (at least parts) of the Internet can in fact be governed. Now, the focus shifted towards institutional forms. But with this came a surprising neglect of the technological properties and effects of the internet. What is needed, therefore, is a perspective that integrates the techno-deterministic perspective and the governance-oftechnology perspective, taking seriously the effects of technological changes on one hand as well as the governance structures and impacts on technology on the other hand. Building on traditional policy analysis as well as on sociology of technology, I am trying to lay the foundations for what I call technology-aware policy analysis.