‘Serious Implications’ in Fight to Harvest LinkedIn Data
SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — In a case pitting privacy rights against the freedom to public information, a federal judge Thursday weighed whether to restore a company’s access to LinkedIn data so it can tell employers which of their workers are “flight risks.”
“If restrictions are placed on that process, that has serious implications for future research, access and speech,” U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said at the Thursday hearing.
Plaintiff hiQ collected and analyzed data from hundreds of thousands of public LinkedIn profile pages. Its attorneys on Thursday asked Chen to grant a temporary restraining order to bar LinkedIn from cutting off its access to public member profiles.
LinkedIn claims hiQ uses anonymous, automated bots to bypass security measures that block entities from scraping data from its website.
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