Wifi seems different in that it's somewhat traceable when necessary, and the person or institution would likely help with that in cases of serious issues, unlike willingly putting your personal identity at the end of an anonymized network you can't control the actions of.
I support privacy in almost every case, but this even prevents actual subpoenas of serious magnitude or importance, and makes that individual the final point of contact, you know?
IP addresses of what is connected to can be hidden by proxies or anonymizing networks, or even just TLS. MAC addresses are spoofed routinely. It's wireless so fat chance it's reachable from places not under your surveillance, if you have any of that in the first place.
I also don't agree that an IP address is your personal identity, I think that's a very harmful idea. I am not a computer and I just barely control part of what my machines do.
Do you believe in the possibility of a risk-less society?
I agree with you that an IP shouldn't, in every case, be your personal identity and that legal situations should take context into account. Everyone from advertisers to the government uses your IP address as a personal identity for you, though. It unarguably leads investigators to your person, and that's our only real method of dealing with cybercrime. Leading investigators to an incorrect individual seems different than to an obvious wall, such as a VPN, that would require a lot of effort and justification on the investigator's part to break through.
Risk-less society in what way, if you could rephrase?
That's a very debatable claim, from both a legal and technical viewpoint
I highly doubt that an individual who commits a serious crime over the internet without masking their IP won't be investigated.
Wifi routers are insecure and often can't be flashed with more transparant/secure software, so in practice anyone within 100m with a directional antenna can connect to your wifi.
People let guests on wifi, and students tend to share internet connections.
Some devices randomize their MAC address by default (Apple stuff I think) and MAC addresses are trivially spoofed.
If I'm on your wifi router I can probably spoof the MAC addresses of any and all of your devices, and I definitely can if you've ever connected to an AP managed by me.
Lastly, ISP's can spoof everything and fabricate logs with ease.
So no, technically there is no proveable link between IP address and person or device. Perhaps legally but that has no bearing on the technical reality.
EFF agrees with you: https://www.eff.org/wp/unreliable-informants-ip-addresses-di...