[AusNOG] News - US Federal Judge - IP Addresses are Not Personal or Private Information

[Rick Jones]

Not all US Federal judges make sensible, rational decisions.  Your analogy is correct - an address (IP or physical) is enough to identify at least a small group of people.  I suspect that the ruling will be challenged in due course.

Cheers,
Rick


-----Original Message-----
From: ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net [mailto:ausnog-bounces at lists.ausnog.net] On Behalf Of John Ferlito
Sent: Friday, 10 July 2009 10:59 AM
To: ausnog at ausnog.net
Cc: apnic-talk at lists.apnic.net; nznog
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] News - US Federal Judge - IP Addresses are Not Personal or Private Information

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 10:26:52AM +1000, Skeeve Stevens wrote:
> A US federal judge has ruled IP addresses do not constitute personal information, establishing a legal precedent that could radically alter Internet privacy norms.
>
> Presiding over a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, US District Court judge Richard Jones defended the company's collection of customers' IP addresses during software updates as fair and reasonable despite a user agreement promising not to hoover up identifying data.
>
> "In order for 'personally identifiable information' to be personally identifiable, it must identify a person. But an IP address identifies a computer," Jones wrote in a dismissal.
>

Which seems a bit strange since using the same thinking you could
argue that your address isn't personally identifiable information
since it identifies a house not a person.

Cheers,
John

--
John
Blog                        http://www.inodes.org/blog
OLPC Friends                     http://olpcfriends.org

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