They just said an IP can't solely be used to identify someone. You can use the IP address to get the name and then acquire additional information to prosecute the case. But you need to start with the IP address to get the ball rolling.
In the linked PDF in the article written by the FBI agent the IP address is used as a piece of evidence in addition to other evidence like emails with addresses and names, so I guess the answer is yes.
An IP address can legally identify a person, e.g. in the industry of lawyers sending cease & desist notices (and taking you to court) if you torrent something.
There’s a whole bunch of legal precedent for that in the EU.
No. It might be becoming more common but an IP address does not identify a person. You need to search a suspect's possessions before you can have any evidence. It might be reasonable for the police to use this lead to obtain a physical address then search for CP but an IP address along should not be sufficient.
Thankfully courts are beginning to realise this fact in regards to copyright infringement. [1]
If I'm looking into an internet-related crime, the IP address of the offender is gonna be one of the first things I look at. Can someone falsify it? Yes. But not every offender _will_ falsify it, and so it's useful information to at least look into further, even if IP address by itself shouldn't be adequate evidence for a police raid.
That’s not what I’ve seen from my admittedly cursory research, but I don’t see how that matters anyway: how would you know if the IP address could personally identify an individual, so it seems like you would have to assume that it could?
My last info is that the ECJ ruled that IP addresses are PII. And as I quoted above it doesn't matter if information can be matched to a real name but it matters if you can single out one person e.g. a unique visitor.
IP only tells the investigator whose name is on the ISP account, not which person was at the keyboard. Your recommendation only helps the police know where to set up the surveillance, not who to bring charges against.
I could be wrong, but isn't the precedent that IPs aren't adequate evidence of a person's identity? I don't think that a dynamic IP address that was used 18 months ago is going to be of any use now.
> Again, it's not always saying an IP address is a personal identify. It just is often enough.
Well, that's not what you said or implied. I'm just thinking of all the cases in the US were the defense is you can't assume that an IP address ties to a specific person. Anyone could use the computer, or someone could attach to an open wifi.
Basically, if the legal argument is the IP address can be associated with a person, that raises legal concerns.
> You can ask the ISP. They are supposed to store metadata.
What you say is true, but prosecutors/investigators have little incentive to jump through another hoop. If they are willing to prosecute someone with just circumstantial evidence of an IP address, they aren't really looking to find the perpetrator, only a fall guy.
> IP address information was designed to route traffic on the Internet, not serve as an identifier for other purposes.
I think you're going to have a hard time here convincing a jury or judge with this argument. In general LOE isn't concerned with the intentional of what an IP address was meant for. At least with today's ISP an IP address can be a reasonable approximation of a person or persons.
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