An Ontario superior court has ruled that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy to subscriber information. If cops have your IP address, the judge says, they don’t need a warrant to get your name and physical address from your ISP.

Not surprisingly, the judge’s ruling is based on a faulty understanding of how the Internet works:

Judge Leitch accepted the arguments of Crown attorney Elizabeth Maguire that the information is similar to what is in a phone book.

“One’s name and address or the name and address of your spouse are not biographical information one expects would be kept private from the state,” Judge Leitch said.

But an IP address is not biographical information. It doesn’t identify me, it identifies my computer on a network. It’s also visible to every website I visit — and the sites I visit, like the books I check out of the library, should be kept private from the state (in the absence of a warrant). Why? Because they reveal a lot of personal information about me, including some information that I would consider no one’s business but mine. If an IP address were biographical information, that would mean you were giving your name and physical address to every website you visit … and I think most people would find that disturbing. Which means there is a reasonable expectation of privacy, quite literally: most people think, quite reasonably, that their online activities should be private.

I wonder how this decision will affect the Conservatives’ forthcoming lawful access bill.