RULEBREAKER No. 6
Taking on Cambridge Analytica? Tick. Facing up to Facebook? Tick. Tackling the online advertising ecosystem? Tick. Where many lawyers use their legal education to become sellswords for big corporates, Ravi Naik has used his to fight them. As a specialist in technology, the Brit is the main legal brain behind many of the key campaigns against what he describes as abuses of our data rights.
Naik made his name during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when he filed claims on behalf of U.S. citizen David Caroll seeking full disclosure of the data held by the notorious political consultancy, and threatened to sue Facebook for damages for the role it played in the scandal. He used that experience as a springboard for other headline campaigns, helping Johnny Ryan, then a policy officer at privacy-focused web browser Brave, file claims against Google’s data handling practices. Now a legal director at AWO, a London- and Brussels-based digital rights firm, Naik continues to be a much sought-after name for those seeking down-to-earth legal nous on Big Tech’s latest controversies.