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[log in to unmask]>, at 10:54:39 on Fri, 9 Jun
2006, Tim Trent <[log in to unmask]> writes
>I picked this up from
>http://www.complianceandprivacy.com/blogs/Bruce-Schneier-index.html which
>carries an interesting small selection of blogs. It sent me to the LA
>Times.http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-internet2jun02,0,622125.story?
>coll=la-home-headlines I suppose in the UK a "National Defence Exemption"
>might allow this.
>
>The questions in my mind are;
>
>Since an IP address is stored with (eg) google every time we search or even
>access the sit, is the IP address itself sufficient to be "Personal Data"
>Before you say "no, it's just a number" consider the many millions of gmail
>users who register their personal data with google, the yahoo users with
>yahoo, etc. Combining session information from an email session with the
>data and time of a search session could identify an individual with some
>precision.
>
>Am I just having Friday Paranoia, or could this be a legitimate threat to
>the privacy of individuals globally? And would it transgress the EC's
>directives? Does it have similarities to Air Passenger Data transfers in
>that they now should not happen after September 2006?
IP Addresses are a form of Communications Data. There are laws (in the
EU) about retention (long standing for business purposes, quite recent
for anti-terrorism purposes).
Does your IP address identify you? Well it identifies something about
the network you are using to access the Internet. If you are a 1-person
network then it's slam-dunk (as I'm told they say in the USA), but local
networks can get quite complex quite quickly.
It also matters a bit whether or not your IP address is a permanent
[static] one, or just assigned for a session. It's much easier to
correlate things happening from permanent IP addresses, but you might
still need the co-operation of the ISP to find out exactly who it is.
Session [dynamic] IP addresses are much more difficult to track.
If you also volunteer a logon to a specific site, they can track you
very easily, of course.
--
Roland Perry
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