European Court advisor: Dynamic IP addresses are personal data
Dynamic IP addresses are subject to privacy protection rules, the Advocate General said in a non-binding opinion.
The chief advisor for the European Court of Justice has declared that
dynamic IP addresses are tantamount to personal data and should be
protected under Europe's privacy laws, the Electronic Privacy
Information Center (EPIC) reports
.
The opinion,
issued by Advocate General Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona, is online but
has yet to be translated into English. The advocate general's opinions
are non-binding but they typically dictate how the European Court of
Justice will rule.
Sánchez-Bordona's opinion concerns the lawsuit
that Patrick Breyer, a privacy activist and German pirate party
politician, filed against the German government for logging visits to
government websites. "Banning governments and Internet giants from
identifiably recording our browsing habits is the only way to
effectively shield our private life and interests," Breyer has said.
The website EU Law Radar gives the background of
the case, noting that the EU generally bars processing personal data
before consent has been granted. However, consent is not required in
every instance, and German law specifically allows for personal data
processing without consent in certain situations. Breyer contends this
is not one of them.
The German government has argued that logging
government website visits helps in the prosecution of individuals
responsible for network attacks. The case made its way up to the German
Supreme Court, which asked the European Court of Justice to consider the
case, and whether German law is compatible with the EU's data
processing law.
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