Supreme Court Agrees To See Whether Or Not AT&T Has 'Personal Privacy' Rights
from the do-corporations-have-privacy-rights? dept
Back in May, we wrote about an important case questioning whether or not companies have privacy rights. Traditionally, privacy rights were seen as being for individuals, not companies, but AT&T claimed that it had privacy rights over data collected by the FCC in an attempt to determine if AT&T was bilking the e-rate program (for installing broadband connections to schools). Some people filed a Freedom of Information Act request over the data, and the FCC released some of it (keeping some secret to protect trade secrets). However, AT&T sued the FCC claiming that even releasing the limited info the FCC was planning to put out would violate the company's personal privacy. The Third Circuit appeals court in the case sided with AT&T, saying that companies could have personal privacy -- and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.The Supreme Court has now announced that it will hear the case. The Obama administration had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case, claiming that it did not believe "personal privacy" applied to companies. Elena Kagan, who had filed the brief for the administration, will obviously sit the case out now that she's a Supreme Court justice. However, this will be yet another, in a recent line of cases, trying to establish the boundaries (if there are any) between the rights of individuals and the rights of corporations.
Filed Under: corporations, e-rate, personal privacy, supreme court
Companies: at&t, fcc