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Sorry, I don't mean to play the devil's advocate, this has already gone way off-topic so take what I say with a pinch of salt. But technically, the IP is not s

Sorry, I don't mean to play the devil's advocate, this has already gone way off-topic so take what I say with a pinch of salt. But technically, the IP is not strictly necessary? I can imagine a feasable future where it could be replaced with an anonymised IP from a larger pool generated by your ISP, with TLS for the payload. This could be solved at the internet infrastructure layer, and not required by to be solved by website developers.

npteljes 5y ago
To handle resources, like a jQuery library, I'd love seeing URNs being used. A Universal Resource Name is supposed to uniquely identify a resource solely by its name, and say nothing about where to find it - which is the job of its sibling, the URL. A website could state that they need "urn:uuid:6e8bc430-9c3a-11d9-9669-0800200c9a66", and then the browser could decide where to look that up. In my local cache? The cache distributed with the browser? The ISP's repository of resources? The original first party? My VPN provider's fancy anonymized lookup service? Whatever the case, it feels like a robust way to handle shared resources, and of course to introduce a myriad new ways to break UX but hey it's progress!
ratww 5y ago
> I can imagine a feasable future where it could be replaced with an anonymised IP from a larger pool generated by your ISP, with TLS for the payload. This is already a thing with NAT and Carrier-Grade NAT. However if the IP + port + time trio, coupled with other information (such as browser, stack, timezone, behavior) can be used to de-anonymise the user, this also instantly becomes PII. > This could be solved at the internet infrastructure layer, and not required by to be solved by website developers. It could, but until we get there, website developers will have to deal with it.
- latk 5y ago
  Identifiability for IP addresses uses an even lower standard. The GDPR says that for something to be truly anonymous, there must not be any “reasonably likely” means for identification, even with the help of third parties, even when relying on additional information. There has of course been litigation about this, in the form of the Breyer v Bundesrepublik Deutschland case. It was based on the GDPR's predecessor law, but it used virtually identical phrasing so the conclusion still holds. The European Court of Justice constructed a hypothetical scenario to show that identification can reasonably be likely. Let's say the website was attacked by a hacker. In a logfile, you find the attacker's IP address and want to prosecute them. So you report the incident to whatever authority is responsible for such incidents, which then gets a court order so that the attacker's ISP discloses information about the IP address. As long as the ISP knows to whom that IP was allocated at the time, there is now a reasonably likely chain of events that leads to identification of the person behind the IP address. In this case about Google Fonts, the court says that it's sufficient if the website operator or Google have the “abstract means” for identification, not whether they actually did this for this plaintiff's specific IP address. A solution would be if the EU forbids ISPs from keeping such logs, but given repeated attempts at mass data retention laws for national security purposes and pressure from the IP industry^W^W film and music industry for copyright infringement prosecution purposes, that doesn't seem likely.

npteljes 5y ago

To handle resources, like a jQuery library, I'd love seeing URNs being used. A Universal Resource Name is supposed to uniquely identify a resource solely by its name, and say nothing about where to find it - which is the job of its sibling, the URL. A website could state that they need "urn:uuid:6e8bc430-9c3a-11d9-9669-0800200c9a66", and then the browser could decide where to look that up. In my local cache? The cache distributed with the browser? The ISP's repository of resources? The original first party? My VPN provider's fancy anonymized lookup service? Whatever the case, it feels like a robust way to handle shared resources, and of course to introduce a myriad new ways to break UX but hey it's progress!

ratww 5y ago

> I can imagine a feasable future where it could be replaced with an anonymised IP from a larger pool generated by your ISP, with TLS for the payload. This is already a thing with NAT and Carrier-Grade NAT. However if the IP + port + time trio, coupled with other information (such as browser, stack, timezone, behavior) can be used to de-anonymise the user, this also instantly becomes PII. > This could be solved at the internet infrastructure layer, and not required by to be solved by website developers. It could, but until we get there, website developers will have to deal with it.

latk 5y ago
Identifiability for IP addresses uses an even lower standard. The GDPR says that for something to be truly anonymous, there must not be any “reasonably likely” means for identification, even with the help of third parties, even when relying on additional information. There has of course been litigation about this, in the form of the Breyer v Bundesrepublik Deutschland case. It was based on the GDPR's predecessor law, but it used virtually identical phrasing so the conclusion still holds. The European Court of Justice constructed a hypothetical scenario to show that identification can reasonably be likely. Let's say the website was attacked by a hacker. In a logfile, you find the attacker's IP address and want to prosecute them. So you report the incident to whatever authority is responsible for such incidents, which then gets a court order so that the attacker's ISP discloses information about the IP address. As long as the ISP knows to whom that IP was allocated at the time, there is now a reasonably likely chain of events that leads to identification of the person behind the IP address. In this case about Google Fonts, the court says that it's sufficient if the website operator or Google have the “abstract means” for identification, not whether they actually did this for this plaintiff's specific IP address. A solution would be if the EU forbids ISPs from keeping such logs, but given repeated attempts at mass data retention laws for national security purposes and pressure from the IP industry^W^W film and music industry for copyright infringement prosecution purposes, that doesn't seem likely.