IP address logging has many faces
A council question on whether IP should be treated as Personal Data as defined in Section 2 of Personal Data (Privacy) Ordiance was asked by CK Sin. This issue was raised because Yahoo Hong Kong gave Internet usage information to China official and resulted in some arrestments in China.
In reading the reply from government, I notice that government official referred to EU Directives but not China’s Law despite the fact that both EU and China adopt civil law legal system and HK is common law. I believe it is the intuitive reaction for HK government official to look for guidance from EU on privacy matters and it is this intuitive distinguish HK from other China cities. How will HK change to more like China cities or China cities changes to more like HK? I am not totally sure.
Back to the real issue. I always think absolute anonymity is a fake concept in the Internet since each and every bytes transferred can be recorded with little incremental cost. ISPs have both the ability and capacity to record every IP address used by their customer. Logging may be for good reasons like troubleshooting or security or for surveillance. No one knows how the log will be used after it is stored. Regulation on this area is needed, not only in Hong Kong.
Apart from Human Right and censorship, I recently finished Cyber Regulation course at HKU Law Faculty and our lecturer Maurushat Alana discussed another aspect of IP surveillance. Due to the emerging of Digital Right Managements (DRM) in the entertainment industry, many software is developed to control and monitor user usage of music or movie. Monitoring devices will sometimes log the IP addresses, data/time and OS platform information. There is a danger for DRM software recording and sending information silently to the entertainment companies. One day, some government officials may request Sony Music or Warner Brothers to provide Internet activity report for criminal or activists.
The issue of IP address logging and privacy is just a start of how Internet governance that will affect everyone life.
In reading the reply from government, I notice that government official referred to EU Directives but not China’s Law despite the fact that both EU and China adopt civil law legal system and HK is common law. I believe it is the intuitive reaction for HK government official to look for guidance from EU on privacy matters and it is this intuitive distinguish HK from other China cities. How will HK change to more like China cities or China cities changes to more like HK? I am not totally sure.
Back to the real issue. I always think absolute anonymity is a fake concept in the Internet since each and every bytes transferred can be recorded with little incremental cost. ISPs have both the ability and capacity to record every IP address used by their customer. Logging may be for good reasons like troubleshooting or security or for surveillance. No one knows how the log will be used after it is stored. Regulation on this area is needed, not only in Hong Kong.
Apart from Human Right and censorship, I recently finished Cyber Regulation course at HKU Law Faculty and our lecturer Maurushat Alana discussed another aspect of IP surveillance. Due to the emerging of Digital Right Managements (DRM) in the entertainment industry, many software is developed to control and monitor user usage of music or movie. Monitoring devices will sometimes log the IP addresses, data/time and OS platform information. There is a danger for DRM software recording and sending information silently to the entertainment companies. One day, some government officials may request Sony Music or Warner Brothers to provide Internet activity report for criminal or activists.
The issue of IP address logging and privacy is just a start of how Internet governance that will affect everyone life.
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