From TechDirt:
Should companies have privacy rights? With recent legal rulings suggesting that companies have similar legal rights to individuals, does that include privacy rights?
According to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, it does.
Background: the FCC investigated AT&T for overbilling the government. A Freedom of Information request was made to get the FCC to release details of the case, which the agency agreed to do. AT&T sued to keep the information private, citing its right to "personal privacy."
As TechDirt notes:
It's hard to see how a company has "personal privacy." You can understand not releasing confidential information that involves a trade secret, or other such information. But claiming that details of an investigation of how you may have bilked the government is "private" info seems a bit absurd. If that was the case, then any company could demand that any embarrassing information never be released.
Next step is to seek a Supreme Court review of the case. As an amicus brief notes:
Unless the Supreme Court takes the case and reverses the Third Circuit decision, records about safety violations at a coal mine, environmental problems at an offshore oil rig, filthy conditions at a food manufacturing plant, financial shenanigans at an investment bank and many other records like these may be the subject of so-called corporate privacy claims that could result in agencies withholding those records from the public under FOIA.
Can we just end this whole "corporate personhood" sham, like, yesterday?