On Thu, Jan 24, 2008 at 10:33:20PM -0800, Owen DeLong wrote:
On Jan 24, 2008, at 8:55 PM, Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote:
On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:39:53 PST, fred@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