U.S. Supreme Court revives LinkedIn bid to shield personal data
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&#x27;s actions were obviously problematic he was an authorized user of the computer system.<p>The issue is the vagueness of the CFAA has been a prosecutor&#x27;s wet dream and a predictable source of overreach. Case in point: Aaron Swartz.<p>So here&#x27;s what&#x27;s interesting: by taking up this case SCOTUS is potentially going in the other direction. The Appeals Court held that the CFAA didn&#x27;t apply, allowing hiQ to continue. And here&#x27;s where (in my layman&#x27;s view) SCOTUS may choose to act: The Appeals Court stopped LinkedIn taking action to impede hiQ&#x27;s access.<p>I personally view this as overreach. There&#x27;s a difference between not &quot;hacking (in CFAA) terms a website and blocking the information provider impeding bots.<p>As much as Microsoft&#x2F;LinkedIn is a nightmare of data misuse and dark patterns (eg to obtain contacts), I think it would be a bad decision to let the current hiQ ruling stand. Disallowing sites from taking action to block scrapers from systematically taking all that information and building a competitor seems like a bad idea.<p>But given the van Buren ruling, it seems unlikely SCOTUS will reverse course and declare hiQ&#x27;s actions &quot;hacking&quot; (in CFAA terms). I suspect they&#x27;ll curtail the remedy.