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Employer Facebook Password Requests Suspended
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Post reports that Maryland's Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services has suspended a roughly year-old practice of asking prospective employees to voluntarily divulge their user names and passwords to social media Web sites such as Facebook. In a statement, the department said requests for user names and passwords had been voluntary, and had not been taken into account when evaluating job applicants. Nonetheless, 'in light of these concerns raised by the ACLU and because this is a newly emerging area in the law, the department has suspended the process of asking for social media information for 45 days to review the procedure and to make sure it is being used consistently and appropriately.'" We covered this story back when the ACLU took the case.
I'll give them my password! But I was taught to change my password if I accidentally show it to someone, so I guess I should go change it now, too!
Here is how I would implement a policy like that. I would ask, all applicants for their facebook username and password up front.
Then, everyone who gave it to me, would get a polite letter informing them that they did not get the job because they so easily violated the TOS of facebook, with whom they had a standing agreement before they applied with us. Thus, there is no way that we could trust them with access credentials on our system.
You failed the test, you are the weakest link, goodbye.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Only friends and advertisers that facebook sell you to. Remember, at facebook, your information is the product.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Wait, so "requests had been voluntary, and had not been taken into account when evaluating job applicants." If that statement is true then asking for the information serves absolutely no purpose at all. Seriously, was their only purpose to invade their employees privacy and put them in a potentially conflicting situation?!
If their statement is true then this raises even more serious questions about what this information was used for. If it was a lie then we need to ask why they feel they need to lie about this program (hint: it is illegal either way).
You say "they" as if the people who run the government are an entirely different species than everyone else. In the USA, "they" derive their power from the consent (albeit a rather apathetic consent) of the people "they" govern.
It is unfortunate, but a lot of the worst abuses of the rights and freedoms that Americans are supposed to have are widely supported by the people themselves. Try telling someone that the War on Drugs may not be constitutional, or that too many people are in jail, or that prison sentences are too long, or that the police have too much power, or that there are just too many laws, and see the sort of reaction that you will get; with the exception of my libertarian friends (I am not a libertarian), I am almost exclusively met with expressions shock when I make any such statements. The concept of a society in which our freedoms are not curtailed further with each passing year seems to make people uncomfortable; that is why the government gets away with it.
Palm trees and 8
do they think we're stupid?
They don't think you are stupid. They think the people they're hiring are stupid and have a passion for yielding/wielding command as part of a hierarchy with no regard to the consequences of their actions.
Considering they're hiring prison guards, that's a fair assumption.
Andy Dufresne unfriended the Sisters and they let him be, but I can't.
It is voluntary in that it will not count against you; however, the information contained within another person's account may be considered positively for them, and thus they will be more competitive. Welcome to the standard deception of the people who invent these policies; notice that instead of saying, "OK, bad policy, we are rescinding it," they said, "OK, we'll stop to make sure that the information is only being used appropriately!" Everything about their response is meant to divert attention away from the fact that the policy itself is a problem.
Palm trees and 8
To be honest, I don't think it deserves such deep analysis.
It probably started off simply being "a good idea" dreamt up by some clueless middle manager to exert some power over potential minions but, as usual for 21st Century Management Trainees, he/she didn't even stop to consider the ramifications of such a decision when it came to privacy etc.
I bet if you go to them in 45 days time and ask them what they're decision is on the matter, you'll get a "What Facebook password issue?" response - this is because middle managers, being bereft of backbones, are incapable of just saying "Yep, I fucked up, it was a crap idea and sorry for causing such hassle."
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."
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Anybody (American) who cares about these kinds of issues should send a thank you in the form of a few dollars to the ACLU. When the government tries pulling this kind of bullshit, they're the ones who have your back.