In a European Union hearing, an EU official preparing a report on search engine privacy policies said IP addresses should "be regarded as personal data." Google, Yahoo and other search engines would be the ones most obviously affected by a tough privacy stance on Internet issues, but telecom service providers should expect to be affected, too, if they move ahead with sophisticated content filtering strategies.
AT&T has discussed its plans to do so, but the Internet privacy debate may have only just begun.
For more:
- read this story in The Seattle Times