North American Network Operators Group

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Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal

  • From: Owen DeLong
  • Date: Fri Jan 25 02:09:20 2008



On Jan 24, 2008, at 8:55 PM, [email protected] wrote:

On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:39:53 PST, [email protected] 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.


Owen