IP addresses should be protected
Justin Dragos
Issue date: 9/23/09 Section: Opinion
Ahhh, justice. How I long for the days when you could rely on the court system to render fair decisions that protected our rights even in the face of powerful opposition. OK, so maybe it was never always the case that courts acted morally or even according to common sense, but now more than ever they should be holding themselves to a higher standard. The relatively recent trends in digitization brought about by the Internet has tossed us into a maelstrom of legal gray areas encompassing everything from freedom of speech to copyright laws and even what information you have the right to consider personal, and unfortunately in a number of cases, our legal system is succumbing to pressure from businesses rather than protecting the rights of the people it was created to uphold. In one such travesty of justice, a federal judge in Seattle held that IP addresses are not personal information, and therefore subject to being shared without the needless hassle of a warrant.
So what is an IP address? Each time you connect to the Internet (whether it's at your home, a computer lab or even from your phone) your service provider assigns you a unique address that allows the Internet to identify your computer, to ensure the correct information gets sent and received. Just as importantly, however, since this address identifies which computer is logged on, it can be used to trace activity over the Internet back to the computer that's causing it.
You might ask, "What's the problem? This address only points to a computer (or device). Why would it be personal information?" It's a good question, the premise of which is the basis of the judge's ruling, but ask yourself this: your address points to a house (or apartment) and not to you personally, but addresses are considered personal information. Why should the address of your computer be any less protected?
Does it matter if your IP address is personal information or not? It depends on how much you feel any random person or business has the right to know about what you do online. Without your information being protected, it means that companies which have no affiliation with law enforcement (one example being the RIAA, the recording conglomerate that sues people for sharing music online) can simply threaten your service provider with a big law suit and force them to turn over your information, so they can then threaten you with a big law suit - but that shouldn't be the case.
Businesses have no right to be able to retrieve your personal information by force, and it should be the role of law enforcement to obtain a warrant and investigate if they feel illegal activity is occurring. Luckily, in several places in the U.S. (and a few countries in Europe) the court systems have upheld that our IP addresses are private, but we need an even stronger stance in defense of our rights. Whether it's the RIAA (or in this case Microsoft) pushing to declare our personal information their business, we should all be shouting "NO," and the courts should be right behind us.
So what is an IP address? Each time you connect to the Internet (whether it's at your home, a computer lab or even from your phone) your service provider assigns you a unique address that allows the Internet to identify your computer, to ensure the correct information gets sent and received. Just as importantly, however, since this address identifies which computer is logged on, it can be used to trace activity over the Internet back to the computer that's causing it.
You might ask, "What's the problem? This address only points to a computer (or device). Why would it be personal information?" It's a good question, the premise of which is the basis of the judge's ruling, but ask yourself this: your address points to a house (or apartment) and not to you personally, but addresses are considered personal information. Why should the address of your computer be any less protected?
Does it matter if your IP address is personal information or not? It depends on how much you feel any random person or business has the right to know about what you do online. Without your information being protected, it means that companies which have no affiliation with law enforcement (one example being the RIAA, the recording conglomerate that sues people for sharing music online) can simply threaten your service provider with a big law suit and force them to turn over your information, so they can then threaten you with a big law suit - but that shouldn't be the case.
Businesses have no right to be able to retrieve your personal information by force, and it should be the role of law enforcement to obtain a warrant and investigate if they feel illegal activity is occurring. Luckily, in several places in the U.S. (and a few countries in Europe) the court systems have upheld that our IP addresses are private, but we need an even stronger stance in defense of our rights. Whether it's the RIAA (or in this case Microsoft) pushing to declare our personal information their business, we should all be shouting "NO," and the courts should be right behind us.
Be the first to comment on this story