Clearview Hires Prominent First Amendment Lawyer To Argue For Its Right To Sell Scraped Data To Cops
Clearview AI faces mounting legal challenges for scraping billions of personal images from the web to sell facial recognition services to law enforcement, despite claims of crime-fighting utility lacking empirical support. The company is now defending its business model by arguing that its activities are protected under the First Amendment, rather than relying solely on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. This strategic shift highlights a critical tension between privacy regulations and fundamental free speech rights in the digital age. By hiring a prominent First Amendment attorney, Clearview argues that collecting and disseminating publicly available information constitutes protected speech. If successful, this precedent would establish that companies have the right to aggregate and sell observations of individuals to third parties, similar to how traditional media disseminates information. This legal theory challenges existing data privacy laws in several states, potentially shielding data brokers from liability for how they utilize scraped content, regardless of the invasiveness of their collection methods. This case is vital to open data discussions because it threatens to expand the definition of public data rights at the expense of individual privacy. If the First Amendment interpretation prevails, it could legitimize mass surveillance infrastructure and commercial data scraping, creating a chilling effect on online anonymity. The outcome will determine whether open data principles can coexist with strong privacy protections or if they will be subsumed by broad free speech protections for data aggregators.
Source: techdirt.comPublished on 2023-09-09
Related news
- Arkansas Republicans launch all-out assault on FOIA
- Mailbag: What’s at stake in the fight over the Augusta County closed session recording?
- WTF is going on with FOIA? Here's a rundown of what could change
- Twitter's Terms of Service now bans AI data scraping but does that protect you?
- Arkansas legislators to debate limiting public information available under Freedom of Information Act