EU Official: IP Is Personal

Matt Palmer mpalmer at hezmatt.org
Fri Jan 25 07:30:57 UTC 2008


On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 10:33:20PM -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
> On Jan 24, 2008, at 8:55 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu wrote:
> >On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:39:53 PST, fred at cisco.com said:
> >>What we can do with IP addresses is conclude that the user of the
> >>machine with an address is likely to be one of its usual users. We
> >>can't say that with 100% certainty, because there are any number of
> >>ways people can get "unusual" access. But even so, if one can show a
> >>pattern of usage, the usual suspects can probably figure out which of
> >>them, or what other "unusual" user, might have done this or that.
> >
> >And oddly enough, license plates on cars act *exactly the same way*  
> >- but
> >nobody seems at all surprised when police can work backwards from a  
> >plate
> >and come up with a suspect (who, admittedly, may not have been  
> >involved if
> >the car was borrowed/stolen/etc).
>
> In order to be using the license plate, you had to be physically  
> present in the car.
> 
> >You can work backwards from a phone number to a person, without a  
> >*guarantee*
> >that you have the right person - but I don't see anybody claiming that
> >phone numbers don't qualify as "personal information" under the EU  
> >definition.
>
> In order to be on the telephone number, you (almost always) need to be  
> present
> at the site where that phone number is terminated.
> 
> I don't know about your IP addresses, but, people can use my IP  
> addresses
> from a number of locations which are nowhere near the jurisdiction in  
> which
> my network operates, so, I don't really see the correlation here with  
> license
> plates or phone numbers.

In order to be using the IP address, your packets (almost always) have to
pass through the device allocated that address.

- Matt



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