There's an animated discussion going on at the moment about EU proposals to include IP addresses in the category of "personal data". This piece by Wendy Grossman is as good a summary as any. In that context, this article on the CNET site is also interesting. It concerns ITU plans to implement an 'IP Address Traceback' function in the telecomms infrastructure.
Reading the CNET article, one might be forgiven for concluding that the whole thing was a dastardly plan dreamt up by the Chinese government as a way of regulating/suppressing use of the internet in their jurisdiction. However, probing a little further, I followed the link to one of the ITU's supporting documents, drafted by Tony Rutkowski of Verisign; in that short paper, which you can read here on the ITU website, he notes that in both the EU and the US, legislation has already been introduced which lays the foundations for requiring traceability of the origin of an online communications session.
That said, it's interesting to see the list of editors assigned to work on this for the ITU: the team of five includes representatives from China, Korea, Japan, and two from the US: Gregg Schudel from Cisco and Dick Brackney from the US DoD. I don't think I would be mis-representing Dick if I said his reputation is as something of a hawk in the security/privacy field; if you search, you will more often find his name followed by the letters NSA than DoD.
As far as the NSA is concerned, the CNET article has this to say:
It's not surprising, then, that the CNET article concludes with this expression of concern from Marc Rotenberg of EPIC:
"When NSA takes the lead on standard-setting, you have to ask yourself how much is about security and how much is about surveillance," said the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Rotenberg. "You would think (the ITU) would be a little more sensitive to spying on Internet users with the cooperation of the NSA and the Chinese government."
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