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
More information about the NANOG
mailing list