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U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#51

Post by mixologic »

onion2k wrote: post #50
Causality1 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it would have been a breathtakingly easy problem to solve using technical means instead of legal threats. They could've required logins to view profile information. They could have blacklisted any IP address exhibiting automated behavior.

That sort of 'solution' is just a game of technical whack-a-mole as one party finds a new way to scrape the data and the other finds a new way to stop them though. If you want to permanently stop scrapping you need a non-technical solution that stops someone even trying.

But thats exactly the issue here. If they find a way to limit the data such that they can split who is "authorized" and who is not, then they have found something that falls under the now new reading of cfaa.

It's not going to stop scrapers from entities outside of the jurisdiction of the US legal system, but it's going to end up icing companies in the US who do this.

But I think Microsoft/Linked In is going to have a very difficult time redefining authorized when the data is publicly available to anonymous access.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#52

Post by bryan_w »

rurabe wrote: post #19

Note that LinkedIn could make this whole issue moot by putting their data behind a login tomorrow. The 9th circuit decision pretty clearly stated that. The only reason the data is public is for marketing purposes, to sign up more users.

I thought they were prevented from doing that (at least at some point, by injunction)

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#53

Post by dannyw »

cletus wrote: post #33

The Supreme Court curtailed the broad scope of the CFAA recently in the van Buren case. I personally agree with that decision (and also find it funny as it continues the long trend of Clarence Thomas being on the wrong side of history). While van Buren's actions were obviously problematic he was an authorized user of the computer system. The issue is the vagueness of the CFAA has been a prosecutor's wet dream and a p…

My counterpoint: companies shouldn't get to have their cake and eat it too, as in offering public content, but then preventing competitors from using that public content.

To use another example, what if Google+ was a success, and Google blocks every other competing search engine from indexing even public posts on Google+? Is that a good outcome?

There are already copyright protections to stop Shutterstock from ripping, say, all of Getty Image's photos.

What we are talking about here is information so banal, so unoriginal, so uncreative, that copyright doesn't even apply.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#56

Post by danuker »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #46
austincheney wrote: post #3

It is because I am a strong advocate for privacy that I believe Microsoft is wrong. If Microsoft really wanted to protect user privacy they would restrict access to user data on their platform. This is basic entry level security: apply access control . Microsoft wants to split hairs in order to both maximize revenue and prevent competitor access, which is nothing to do with privacy. If Microsoft wins companies will b…

Is hiQ a competitor to LinkedIn? They scrape people’s profiles so they can snitch to employers about employees whom they think are job hunting. AFAIK, that’s not a service LinkedIn provides. Moreover, I would like it both ways. Access control would be great, but it sidesteps the underlying issue. I’m fine with my profile being public — in fact, I want it to be — but I don’t want my data to be vacuumed up and weaponiz…

> I’m fine with my profile being public — in fact, I want it to be — but I don’t want my data to be vacuumed up and weaponized against me.

LinkedIn is a authwalled garden only available to those with accounts. "We may or may not have a Jake Lazaroff. Who's asking?".

Sounds like you need a personal website.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#57

Post by XenophileJKO »

bingidingi wrote: post #10
austincheney wrote: post #3

It is because I am a strong advocate for privacy that I believe Microsoft is wrong. If Microsoft really wanted to protect user privacy they would restrict access to user data on their platform. This is basic entry level security: apply access control . Microsoft wants to split hairs in order to both maximize revenue and prevent competitor access, which is nothing to do with privacy. If Microsoft wins companies will b…

Yes, important to note that Microsoft is going after a competitor here; there are a bunch of data brokers that have been scraping LinkedIn for years and this is the case they're going after. I hope the Supreme Court can see through this BS and tell them to go pound sand. (If Microsoft wanted to go after data brokers I'd be on board for that tho)

LinkedIn pretty much tries or at least tried to stop ANYONE from scraping other than search engines, etc.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#58

Post by mcny »

bryan_w wrote: post #52
rurabe wrote: post #19

Note that LinkedIn could make this whole issue moot by putting their data behind a login tomorrow. The 9th circuit decision pretty clearly stated that. The only reason the data is public is for marketing purposes, to sign up more users.

I thought they were prevented from doing that (at least at some point, by injunction)

Each Linked In user has the option to make as much or as little of their information public. I don’t see how any injunction can stop that. None of this data belongs to LinkedIn. It nudges us to make more of our data public.

I don’t even want to get into what goes on in the mind of a Linked In “influencer”.

I am convinced salvation cannot come from the courts and at the same time Congress has ceded all authority to the White House. The goal for everyone in our industry must be complete abolition of the CFAA but that can’t happen until we can get Congress to act.

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#59

Post by anfilt »

nulbyte wrote: post #30
Goety wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with that SCOTUS decision. It completely obliterated CFAA. Imagine if they said nurses/doctors could do that with their terminals and it didn't violate HIPAA. I will say there is a ridiculous amount of redtape around law enforcement using data. Loopholes with third party access is already something that exist. So if it's above board monitoring would be easier... But I'm not sure we have adequate monitoring…

> I disagree with that SCOTUS decision. It completely obliterated CFAA. Imagine if they said nurses/doctors could do that with their terminals and it didn't violate HIPAA. I don't see the similarity between CFAA and HIPAA, here, and SCOTUS didn't obliterate the CFAA. Theybsimply said, if you are authorized to use a system, your use of the system isn't unauthorized. That's fairly straightforward. HIPAA, on the other h…

And HIPPA covers more than just computers. It includes paper records. Using just the CFAA as crutch for data the should not misused still allows misuse of paper documents or overhearing a conversation ect...

Re: U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data

#60

Post by rurabe »

mcny wrote: post #58
bryan_w wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought they were prevented from doing that (at least at some point, by injunction)

Each Linked In user has the option to make as much or as little of their information public. I don’t see how any injunction can stop that. None of this data belongs to LinkedIn. It nudges us to make more of our data public. I don’t even want to get into what goes on in the mind of a Linked In “influencer”. I am convinced salvation cannot come from the courts and at the same time Congress has ceded all authority to th…

Yeah each user gets the choice right now as a consequence of LinkedIn's product design.

As far as I know, there's no reason it couldn't be "Log in to see this profile".

I believe the injunction bars LinkedIn from blocking hiQ specifically from accessing the publicly available information (which again is public by LinkedIn's choice). They made a point to draw a distinction between the public stuff and stuff behind a login/password.

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