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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

> FWIW, the prospect of being suspected and questioned (but not necessarily raided) because of your IP location is one of the best metaphors to relate what it's like as a minority to be searched just because you are of the same race as a suspect in an nearby active case.

That's an absurd analogy. An IP address isn't perfect, but it's far more specific than knowing the perp is an "asian male." What's the size of the universe of people who might have had the same IP address over a given period of time? A few?

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The point is that an IP address is not part of a physical person in the same way that their race is.

Anyone can use my laptop and "have" the same IP as myself.

In truth, nobody "has" an IP address. A computer has an IP address. Who can tell who is using a particular computer at a given time just by looking at an IP address?

In that sense an IP address is a way, way more tenuous connection to a physical person than a description of (apparent) race and gender.

> An IP address isn't perfect, but it's far more specific than knowing the perp is an "asian male."

No, it's not - one example the article lists is a Tor exit node.

Statistically, what's the probability that it's a Tor exit node, versus being the IP address the actual perpetrator has had for months?

I made this argument in a different comment [0], but often the IP address only points to a router. The router then routes the traffic to devices on an opaque LAN (opaque from the WAN side).

In residential settings, there's a collation that whoever owns the router is likely to own the devices on the LAN - but there are also enough cases where this isn't true. Hotels, universities, cafes. Also, Tor exit nodes or people with compromised Wifi. I'm sure it's possible to come up with more scenarios. As for a statistical probability, no idea. Is 80% or 95% acceptable? I think that's EFF's argument, that there's still enough room for error.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12561381

Seems I remember a previous article estimating 1.5 million Tor exit nodes, but I may be wrong. And in another article from memory, active ip address estimates were in the 100's of billions maybe. My bet is most illicit activity from a perpetrator would go through Tor, but I wonder how many of the police raids are due to people being 'swatted'?

You shouldn't trust your memory...

There's only just under 4.3 Billion IPv4 addresses available. And you can write off a decent chunk of those as being not available for public use.

As of right now there are only 891 listed Tor Exit nodes.[1]

[1]https://www.dan.me.uk/tornodes

When I include 'I may be wrong' in a comment, I'm not trusting my memory.

https://metrics.torproject.org/userstats-relay-country.html

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/06/06/internet-grows-by-tri...

I am indeed guilty of ignoring details when indifferent.

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