The New York Times reports Clearview has hired a prominent First Amendment lawyer -- one that has defended the paper in the past -- to make the argument that selling government agencies data scraped from the web is protected speech.
Floyd Abrams, one of the most prominent First Amendment lawyers in the country, has a new client: the facial recognition company Clearview AI.Abrams is the lawyer who gave us the Citizens United decision -- the one that allows companies and other "non-persons" to express their political beliefs through unrestricted campaign donations. If the arguments fall along these lines, Abrams will be claiming that Clearview has the First Amendment right to "talk" about other people to government agencies and private customers. If people want to talk about themselves on the open web, Clearview can't be prevented from "discussing" what it's observed with anyone who asks questions about who these people are. Of course, Abrams was also a lawyer for Hollywood who insisted that copyright being used to take down websites, while possibly censoring speech, wasn't really a 1st Amendment concern, which has always raised questions about how committed he is to the 1st Amendment as opposed to just supporting the interests of his clients.
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“Floyd Abrams is without peer as the nation’s pre-eminent First Amendment attorney, and it is clear that there are potentially groundbreaking First Amendment issues relating to the cases involving Clearview AI,” said Lisa Linden, a spokeswoman for the company.
