An IP address is basically public information when you do anything online. Why would police need a warrant to obtain it? Do they need a warrant to look at a phone book and find your street address? Why is this any different? Besides, hiding your identity online is one of the first things a hacker learns. This whole thing makes no sense and proves how out of touch some of these people are.
So will this prevent Bell from giving away subscriber info to copyright trolls?
‘It’s going to put a lot of children at risk’: RCMP
doubt
- in Canada *
Just want to make it clear that this is not a ruling in the United States, for those of us not looking closely at the community this post is in
I’m glad the decision swung in favour of Charter protection. I worry about the implications in terms of IPv6. Typically, addresses in that case are built out of the MAC address of the device. That means you can nail down not just the person but the exact device they were using. Since IPv6 is big in the cellular world, that means your phone.
Well that’s not really what I’m referring to. I’m talking about EUI-64, which was supposed to make life easier by giving everyone an IP addressed based on their MAC address. You wouldn’t need to worry about address collisions with such an address, as it would be globally unique.
But following up on it a little just now, it seems the idea is falling out of favour precisely due to the privacy issues I was fretting about. I assume that means DHCP or some similar scheme will come to dominate just as with IPv4? I’m not an IT guy so I don’t know what the current thinking is on this.
