|
North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal
In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] writes So - if you can work backwards from license plate info, telephone numbers, and IP addresses, and get a good idea of who the person is, and there's general agreement that the first two are "personal information" that allows (at least speculative) identification of the person, why are people having trouble with the concept that the third is personally identifying information as well? Because they are IP engineers and they have lots of anecdotes about how an IP Address *might* be misleading when identifying an individual. If they worked in a car maintenance shop, they'd be able to tell you how licence plates *might* be misleading when identifying an individual. But in both cases they are missing the point: which is that EU Data Protection law looks at things from the opposite point of view. ie If an IP address might *sometimes* reliably identify an individual, then everyone has to err on the side of caution and treat *all* IP addresses as personal data. -- Roland Perry
|