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IP addresses are not people
by iakh 3y ago
IP addresses are not people
- colejohnson66 3y agoThey are when correlated with a timestamp and logs from an ISP
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoThat may correlate to a given host, device, or customer connection, but none of those are natural persons. Who had control of said device on that connection? Was a child using it? Remote-execution malware or a botnet? Was a criminal hacking their home WiFi? You absolutely cannot map an IP address to a person, without additional forensic evidence that usually entails some non-technical circumstances as well.
- jqpabc123 3y agoYou absolutely cannot map an IP address to a person Maybe you can't ... but people sitting on jury do this all the time.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoPlease don't misquote me.
- jqpabc123 3y agoI didn't and everyone can easily see that by looking above.
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoIf you didn't, then your point is entirely invalid, isn't it.
- jqpabc123 3y agoNot at all. See post below for a more detailed explanation.
- gremlinunderway 3y agoThis is a pedantic and pointless distinction given the fact that the law regularly does in fact map IP addresses to people without additional forensic evidence. People are successfully convicted on the basis of an IP correlation to a device owned by an individual. Juries aren't going to care about this distinction because the CSI effect makes it seem like anything technical is basically an immutable fingerprint.
- prepend 3y agoIn this case they clearly are as the IP address was traced to a particular person. I think it’s more accurate to say “IP addresses are not always people” but they frequently are identifiers and enough to be useful in these cases. So it’s a bit of an odd statement to make regarding a case where the ip address literally uniquely identified someone. It’s like saying “fingerprints aren’t people” in a case about fingerprints linking to an individual.