Legitimate interest still requires the data subject to be informed under Art 13. Not sure how that would be accomplished without at least an info banner. (This goes for server logs too.)
Firewalls are a curious case. It is argued that the data is not collected but transmitted to the controller. Almost as if you get a letter with personal data and now have to deal with it.
Yes, it's a stretch. Not happy with it but I don't see any practical solution either...
> (4) At the latest at the time of the first communication with the data subject, the right referred to in paragraphs 1 and 2 shall be explicitly brought to the attention of the data subject and shall be presented clearly and separately from any other information.
I am not a lawyer, but as far as I can tell, there is no legal way to collect PII (including IP address) or place tracking identifiers on the user's device without at least informing the user explicitly under the GDPR and the ePrivacy Directive.
But soon there was an agreement that Art 13 lit. 4 could be interpreted that as long as you don't have any data collection beyond server logs this would be deemed as sufficient. Or in other words if you won't invoke the Art 21 lit. 1 of the GDPR.
But since everybody wants to track you on basis of their legitimate interest the web became full of cookie banners