Hi Denis, all,

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

We looked into this and the answer varies depending on the situation.

Allocations and assignments can be made to either natural or legal persons. In the inetnums and inet6nums to be created the contact details of the relevant person will be inserted.

For example, if a /27 IPv4 block is assigned to a legal person, the geofeed data will likely not constitute personal data. This will not be the case if an IPv4 /32 (single IP address) is assigned to a sole trader and the assignment is registered under the sole trader's name in the RIPE Database*. In this latter example, the inetnum will contain the contact details of the sole trader and the geofeed data will qualify as personal data.

This is because personal data under GDPR is defined as any information that relates to an identified or identifiable natural person.

Based on the above and before introducing the geofeed attribute, a full impact analysis of its implementation would have to be conducted by the RIPE NCC.

If you have any questions, please let us know.

Kind regards,

Maria Stafyla
Senior Legal Counsel
RIPE NCC

* Please note that the relevant RIPE Policy (https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-733#62) is allowing not to register assignments on the end user's contact details but as part of the service provider's internal infrastructure.

Hi Denis, all 

Please allow us some time to look into this and we will get back to you
with our feedback next week.

Kind regards,

Maria Stafyla
Senior Legal Counsel
RIPE NCC

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: denis walker <ripedenis@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 2021 at 15:59
Subject: Re: [db-wg] Fwd: proposal: new attribute 'geofeed:
To: Hank Nussbacher <hank@interall.co.il>, <legal@ripe.net>
Cc: Database WG <db-wg@ripe.net>


HI Hank, colleagues

Whilst I can't answer your basic question, I could say that if the
IETF approves a change to RPSL, with the RIPE Database data model
based on RPSL, in principle we should implement the RPSL change.

Perhaps another question, to the RIPE NCC legal team, if I have a
fixed IP address or block of addresses, is this geofeed location data
personal data under the terms of GDPR?

cheers
denis
co-chair DB-WG

On Wed, 6 Jan 2021 at 07:01, hank--- via db-wg <db-wg@ripe.net> wrote:

I guess I am not understanding something.
Why do we need a geofeed attribute?  What problem are we trying to solve?

I understand why each block of IPs needs to be associated with a
country, so that certain language specific auto-customizations will
work.  But what purpose is there to know that a /24 is in central
Amsterdam?  Is the purpose to assist marketers in geo-targetted sales?
  Is the purpose for network engineering (not sure what major problem
we have that needs this)?

Is the purpose to know where you are so that in the event of an
emergency (terror, tornado, etc) you can get emergency targeted
alerts?  If so, then the geofeed has to be at the /32 level and since
many if not most IPs are mobile, and that is where you will get the
alert from - from your cellphone provider, I still don't quite
understand the reason for a geofeed tag.

Can someone clue me in?

Thanks,
Hank

Caveat: The views expressed above are solely my own and do not express
the views or opinions of my employer