EU says IP addresses are private data

The top adviser to the European Court of Justice has issued an opinion finding that IP addresses are personal data and thus subject to data protection law.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) announced that Advocate General Manuel Campos Sánchez-Bordona has commented on a case involving German Pirate Party politician Patrick Breyer.

Breyer is suing the German Government over the practice of logging visits to government websites. He has argued that people should have the right to access information online without being monitored.

The Advocate General’s opinion finds that static IP addresses are personal data and subject to protections.

While the opinion is torn on the topic of dynamic IP addresses, it finds that combining dynamic IP addresses with collecting certain patterns of behaviour for internet users could potentially interfere with the right to privacy guaranteed by the European Convention for the protection of human rights.

While the opinion is not legally binding, such missives generally serve as an indication of the way courts will eventually rule.

Such a precedent could have significant repercussions for technology giants such as Google and Facebook that rely on data gathering for their business models. Website operators could ultimately be inhibited from tracking users’ activity for commercial purposes in the EU.

Image courtesy of Cédric Puisney under CC