UK sued at European Court of Justice over Deep Packet Inspection

The United Kingdom has just been sued by the European Commission because of the lack of data protection enforcement over companies that do Deep Packet Inspection. The trigger that had started the infringement procedure was the Phorm case around DPI-based targeted advertising, but the Commission seems to be annoyed in general by the lack of rules and enforcement on telecommunications privacy. Phorm has already closed its operations in the UK as far as I know.

So this is the first case at the European Court of Justice that involves DPI, and the first time a whole county has been sued over being too lax about DPI - as far as I am aware.

European Commission press release from today

Update: More links to legal aspects at JURIST Paperchase.