A Canadian public service organization has filed a complaint against the use of Deep Packet inspections used by Service Providers like Bell Canada. Many service providers say they’re not interested in recreating and storing the content of messages–but their ability to do so might put their customers’ privacy at risk —

Because DPI can drill down into packet headers and then further into the actual content being pumped through the tubes, it raises all sorts of questions from privacy advocates concerned about the easy collection of private personal information. Current gear is so sophisticated that it can reconstitute e-mails and IM conversations out of asymmetric traffic flows and it can essentially peek “under the hood” of any non-encrypted packet to take a look at what it contains.

Bell Canada’s use of DPI gear has now ensnared the company in a pair of government actions over net neutrality concerns and privacy. Bell, apparently sensitive to such concerns, has made clear in its own responses to the network neutrality proceeding that its DPI gear looks at packet headers and traffic flows as a means of identifying various applications and protocols. Bell does not use DPI to actually peer at packet contents, however. “The content itself is not actually reviewed, analyzed or stored,” Bell says.

Ars Technica has the story.