I have a client who is interested in allowing new users to his site to also bring in their LinkedIn contacts info (profile, skills, email, location, etc...)
Is this possible or do users explicitly need to give permissions to access their profile info?
From what I have read at the following links it looks like you can only get basic profile info about an authorized user's connections.
The only options you have for this are indeed the basic profile info for the users contacts. You can how ever send a message to there contacts on there behalf.