technology is alleged to have been used to spy on Turkish citizens. The P2P throttling focuses on Gnutella, and uses a path cost algorithm to reduce speeds while still delivering the same content. Sandvine uses stateful deep packet inspection and packet spoofing to allow the networking device to determine the details of the P2P conversation, including the hash requested. The device can then determine the optimal peer to use, and substitute it for the one selected by the P2P algorithm by "[sitting] in the middle, imitating both ends of the connection, and sending reset packets to both client and server." In March 2018, Citizen Lab published a report showing evidence that PacketLogic devices from Sandvine could have been used to deploy government spyware in Turkey and redirect Egyptian users to affiliate ads. Internet throttling and censorship Sandvine products were used by Comcast in the United States to limit number of sessions of Internet traffic generated by peer-to-peer file sharing software. Sandvine's current traffic discrimination product, Fairshare, is described in detail in an RFC. According to independent testing, Comcast injected reset packets into peer-to-peer connections, which effectively caused a certain limited number of outbound connections to immediately terminate. According to research by Citizen Lab, products sold by Sandvine are being used to facilitate censorship of the Internet in Egypt, an allegation the company denies. Support for Internet shutdowns during Belarus protests During the 2020–21 Belarusian protests, Belarusian officials shut down internet access with technology made by Sandvine. Peter Micek, general counsel at the human rights group Access Now, called on federal authorities to investigate Sandvine and the private equity firm Francisco Partners and questioned the effectiveness of Sandvine's business ethics committee. “Their services appear to have been used in Belarus to silence people and to cover up egregious human rights violations”, Micek said. According to media reports, there was unease among Sandvine employees about the role of their company in the repression of political protests in Belarus since August 2020. In a conference call with employees on September 10, 2020, Sandvine's management, however, seems to have been unapologetic about their role in Belarus: "Alexander Haväng, Sandvine’s chief technology officer, ... said that Sandvine had concluded that the internet, and access to specific material on websites, wasn’t 'a part of human rights'. 'We don’t want to play world police', he said. 'We believe that each sovereign country should be allowed to set