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IANAL but anyone who uses that list will likely get sued for housing discrimination by opportunistic lawyers. All it takes is a sympathetic jury in a low income

IANAL but anyone who uses that list will likely get sued for housing discrimination by opportunistic lawyers. All it takes is a sympathetic jury in a low income area with lots of protected classes and a subpoena to show them that the list is disproportionately made up of those protected classes - which it almost certainly will be because socioeconomics.

reaperducer 7y ago
IANAL but anyone who uses that list will likely get sued for housing discrimination by opportunistic lawyers How would the lawyers find out if a landlord chose not to rent to someone based on this information?
- zentiggr 7y ago
  That's called discovery, once the suit is filed alleging it happened.
  - nieve 7y ago
    And given their general attitude of hoping to keep things secret instead of working within the law discovery would probably find quite a few incriminating emails & IMs talking about the best ways to hide their dirty laundry. They seem to have the same kind of arrogance about legal matters that's brought down literally hundreds (or possibly thousands) of startups over the decades. I'm not sure why they thought this wasn't going to turn into news, but it's a pretty common mindset.
- clairity 7y ago
  subpoenaed server logs can provide evidence of access during a relevant time period. it's not sufficient by itself, but provides some basis.
monkeywork 7y ago
Proving use will be damn near impossible. Getting the list shutdown is more likely if a lawyer can prove they are acting as an unlicensed credit reporting service.
- unloco 7y ago
  >Proving use will be damn near impossible. That's easy. The servers are going to record who accessed the api, what data they retrieved, and when. I wouldnt be surprised if we receive and anonymous data dump soon.
  - monkeywork 7y ago
    that only proves that someone looked at the list - not that they made a decision based on it... PROVING that someone based their decision on something they read on the internet is basically impossible, especially if you have even a half intelligent lawyer

reaperducer 7y ago

IANAL but anyone who uses that list will likely get sued for housing discrimination by opportunistic lawyers How would the lawyers find out if a landlord chose not to rent to someone based on this information?

zentiggr 7y ago
That's called discovery, once the suit is filed alleging it happened.
- nieve 7y ago
  And given their general attitude of hoping to keep things secret instead of working within the law discovery would probably find quite a few incriminating emails & IMs talking about the best ways to hide their dirty laundry. They seem to have the same kind of arrogance about legal matters that's brought down literally hundreds (or possibly thousands) of startups over the decades. I'm not sure why they thought this wasn't going to turn into news, but it's a pretty common mindset.
clairity 7y ago
subpoenaed server logs can provide evidence of access during a relevant time period. it's not sufficient by itself, but provides some basis.

monkeywork 7y ago

Proving use will be damn near impossible. Getting the list shutdown is more likely if a lawyer can prove they are acting as an unlicensed credit reporting service.

unloco 7y ago
>Proving use will be damn near impossible. That's easy. The servers are going to record who accessed the api, what data they retrieved, and when. I wouldnt be surprised if we receive and anonymous data dump soon.
- monkeywork 7y ago
  that only proves that someone looked at the list - not that they made a decision based on it... PROVING that someone based their decision on something they read on the internet is basically impossible, especially if you have even a half intelligent lawyer