Slashdot Mirror
House Kills Effort To Stop Workplace Requests For Facebook Passwords
An anonymous reader writes "House Republicans today defeated an amendment introduced yesterday that would have banned employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. While the practice isn't widespread, it has caused a big brouhaha after reports surfaced that some organizations were requiring workers to hand over Facebook passwords as a condition of keeping their current job or getting hired for a new one."
When is the last time Congress passed *any* law that benefited consumers at the expense of corporations? If a near national economic collapse can't even get Congress to reinstate Glass–Steagall, you think ANYTHING is going to get through without the coporatocracy's seal of approval?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Oregon Republican Representative Greg Walden responded to Perlmutter during the floor debate by saying:
I think it’s awful that employers think they can demand our passwords and can go snooping around. There is no disagreement with that. Here is the flaw: Your amendment doesn’t protect them. It doesn’t do that. Actually, what this amendment does is say that all of the reforms that we are trying to put in place at the Federal Communications Commission, in order to have them have an open and transparent process where they are required to publish their rules in advance so that you can see what they’re proposing, would basically be shoved aside. They could do whatever they wanted on privacy if they wanted to, and you wouldn’t know it until they published their text afterward. There is no protection here.
I'm not so naive as to take his reasoning at face value, but neither am I so cynical as to assume it's a lie outright. The one thing the text does show me is that I don't know enough about how things currently stand or how the amendment is worded to make an informed decision on whether I would have supported it or not.
Walk out of interviews where you're asked for these details, then post online so people in the sector know not to even apply there.
Ironic "Boycott Facebook login details requests at interviews" Facebook group anyone? We made Rage Against the Machine Christmas No. 1... Surely we can apply this logic to something which actually matters.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Businesses just hate it when they can't use dirty pool against workers.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
OK, so Congress thinks it's perfectly OK for employers to demand access to employee social media accounts, right? Let's think about that for a second:
Who is Congress' employer?
Time to start flooding congresscritter inboxes with requests for their facebook passwords.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
... and only "forever alone" guy trolls Slashdot.
What's your point?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Here's why it was voted down. Nobody disagreed with banning the practice, just the implementation:
"I think it’s awful that employers think they can demand our passwords and can go snooping around. There is no disagreement with that. Here is the flaw: Your amendment doesn’t protect them. It doesn’t do that. Actually, what this amendment does is say that all of the reforms that we are trying to put in place at the Federal Communications Commission, in order to have them have an open and transparent process where they are required to publish their rules in advance so that you can see what they’re proposing, would basically be shoved aside. They could do whatever they wanted on privacy if they wanted to, and you wouldn’t know it until they published their text afterward. There is no protection here." - Greg Walden (Oregon GOP rep)
Why expect government to do anything?
Someone could set up a web site to gather the list of companies that are doing this. Better yet create a blacklist on FaceBook. If the applicant pool is reduced then hiring becomes more expensive or quality suffers. Hit 'em in the purse.
Isn't Facebook planning to sue companies that do this in a civil court? And aren't there laws in place that effectively prohibit this? (the Stored Communications Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act come to mind - especially since if you RTFA the Justice dept is already looking into whether these would apply)
I'm all for some Republican-bashing, but we should really consider whether we already have a law in place for this before we add new ones. The legal code is cryptic and mountainous enough as it is without adding unnecessary cruft.
It also may not have been appropriate as an amendment to this particular bill - note that the article states that Republicans would consider separate legislation.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
The Corporations of course. So there's no catch-22 at all.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
How would you prove that you have no password to hand over?
My fear is I don't use facebook. At all. And if I am required to give up this information, I am just automatically deemed a liar and or passed over. If I don't try to represent myself as an agent of the business, my private online presence shouldn't matter to whom I work for.
Forever alone Slashdot troll is still a step above Facebook users.
Who is Congress' employer?
Themselves. You can choose to believe in "government by the people" if you are so inclined; I'll continue to believe in reality.
Except GOP didn't present an alternative, so they still failed. And what's worse, they didn't even try.
This!
Facebook is garbage...
Rather have 5 real friends than 2,342 fakes ones.
-- Ethanol-fueled, perma-banned from Slashdot because fascist editors.
Say "Facebook? What's that?"
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Teacher Aide fired in Michigan.
“in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly."
It is simple, the EULA prevents you from disclosing it to employers. If an employer were to deny you a job for not disclosing your logon details, depending on which state you are in, is against employment laws. In effect they are requiring you to void a binding contract (EULA).
Well, I won't comment on the rather slimy move by the gov't, and their clear lack of ability to stand up for the reasonable privacy of their people... wait I think I just did. However, there is a simple solution to all this -- don't use Facebook. I used to use the site, but deleted my account about 6 months ago (permanently deleted... not just suspended as they do by default), and I've never been happier. I found I didn't like the practices of the sites owners, and it was just a constant drain on my time. I have better things to do with my day then look in on the lives of distant friends / relatives I don't care about. Anyone that I really consider a close friend doesn't need FB to see what I'm up to, nor do I need it to see what they're doing. If you don't have a FB account... certainly no employer can demand access to it If they ask you for your FB login information you can quite honestly and frankly tell them you don't use the service. Still, I think that it's supremely slimy for an employer to want this information from you. Just another reason that if you use these social networking sites, you should never post anything of significance on them.
Any republican applying for a public job, please submit your FB password to the public.
(stated without the benefit of reading TFA or the fine comments here pointing out that the Reps also dislike this practice)
Since a request such as this would violate your 4th Amendment rights, it is fully within the purview of the Congress to legislate against such an intrusion. All corporations are within scope as they are creations of legislatures.
After reading the article, you can tell submitter left off a significant portion of the context in the summary. Even in the Republican's statement of opposition to the amendment, it's clear that they don't want employers access to employee passwords. It's probably useful to also look up the bill that the amendment tries to fix. H.R. 3309 is a bill that outlines new procedure for the FCC in its rule making process. It mostly has to do with transparency, 30-day public overview of new regulations, etc. You can read it here http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3309/text
So in a bill that is altogether unrelated to pro-privacy legislation, some rep proposes a highly specific instance where the FCC would be immune to the outlined procedure. It's kind of like adding an amendment to a general police powers bill that suspends proper procedure in a highly specific instance like when they catch a carjacker. Sure that sounds good to people who have suffered from car jacking or are afraid of what carjackers can do, but does it make sense to be in this bill or would it be better in a separate bill? I understand the sense of urgency that people feel, and I'd probably agree with those who want some federal rules on what employers can demand of their workers. However, it's also not unreasonable when you read the amendment to think that it doesn't really belong in this particular bill.
The more I think about the context, the more it looks like a way for a rep on one side to embarrass the other side without trying to do anything significant. You can probably put this in the same category as "think of the children" amendments that come from the Republican side meant to embarrass their opposition politically in the realm of public opinion. Only this time it comes from the Democrat side. What saddens me is that since the summary puts Republicans in a bad light, we at /. are more willing to take the summary at face value, and don't get as many nitpickers willing to pore through the context to find the bullshit.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
timothy,
You're an ass for submitting such a misleading and inflammatory headline.
Heh, there was an article in our local paper yesterday about how our local police and fire departments do this and are proud of it. Well, they don't ask for the credentials, they have you log into your account in front of them and then hand the machine over so they can browse around to their liking. They called it an "in-depth background check" or something like that, and touted the usual "it's for the children!" BS. They have implemented this practice for all potential new hires, and have also said they will begin doing it for all current employees as well in the next month or so. Sigh.
Forget about the politics, looking to the government to solve our problems is a fool's errand, one past generations have mistakenly taken too many times.
Let's fix this problem ourselves, and let's start by listing and tracking exactly WHICH companies are engaging in this kind of activity.
needs to be a law. corporations ONLY fear laws. they don't fear market pressure since they completely control that.
only something with teeth (legal stuff) will force a corp to change, these days.
this is why the redundant law is needed. to 'send a clear message'. again. and yes, it IS redundant but the first law didn't scare the corps enough, it seems.
it will help employees a lot more if they can say 'you know, they just passed a new LAW about forbidding to ask these details...'. that will silence the company much more than your walk-out protest ever will.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
allowing access by a CURRENT employer and allowing logins by a future employer are galaxies apart (one can be done by simply Friending your employers account)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Can someone point me to a list of companies/organizations that are making these demands of perspective employees? This is madness!
Not only will Glass Steagall not be put back, read the Republican agenda, all of them want to eliminate Sabannes Oxley, the law that requires CEO's sign off the accounts of companies as truthful and pay back any bonuses they received if the account turn out to be false.
The excuse is 'accountancy burden', i.e. the claim that to get the accounting numbers correct enough to sign off on means that they spend too much money!
Mitt Romney: "Corporations are people folks", has tax cuts planned, 58% of which target the super rich. I mean they're not even pretending at this point. The Koch brothers are using the 'corps as people' ruling to send their employees to political seminars (i.e. Republican brainwashing camps), money is pouring in from Wallstreet to ensure they keep their 30:1 lending facility from the Federal Reserve. Santorum is claiming Netherlands euthanizes 10% of old people and Fox is backing him up with the lies.
Why do you keep voting this lot in??!
It's a violation of Facebook ToS in the first place:
(Registration and Account Security)
8. You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.
9. You will not transfer your account (including any page or application you administer) to anyone without first getting our written permission.
(other)
6. You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under this Statement to anyone else without our consent.
Some problems here... "But University of Notre Dame labor law professor Barbara Frick said the school didn’t break any laws by asking for Hester’s Facebook information." That is a nice example of "those who can not do, teach." Sharing passwords in violation of the TOS is a violation of many laws, both state and federal. But, I think they are going with “He asked me three times if he could view my Facebook..." which is not sharing passwords, and not what the amendment was about. The answer to that is "sure." The next question of "Will you friend me" is no... I think this case will settle out of court, and soon.
re: "Frankly, the employer ought to be able to ask any damn think they want in an interview."
Wow!
Are you a Christian?
What denomination?
How much did you give to your church last year?
Do you have children?
How many children do you have?
How many hours a week do you spend helping them with homework?
Does your spouse work?
How old are your parents?
How much time do you spend caring for them each week?
re: "If some protections are really necessary, this is entirely within the power of the individual States."
Do you (or your spouse) use or have you ever used Birth Control for the purpose of preventing pregnancy? (Arizona)
Plus, it's not like corporations operate within one state. So, in one state they couldn't ask for my Facebook login and in another they can? How does that make sense? So, if I get hired in New York and then transfer to [insert nutty state here (plenty of them lately)] they can tell me they want my social media login information or can ask about private matters such whether or how someone in the family uses birth control?
Wow!
Maybe not the most last, but recent examples include:
Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (2010)
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)
HITECH Act (part of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act) (2009)
The same is a federal crime under the 1984 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (18 USC Sec. 1030) if the computer accessed is a "protected computer", including a government computer or, more relevantly, one "used in interstate or foreign commerce or communication, including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States".
Well, unauthorized access per se isn't a crime, but if one does almost anything with that access it is a crime, including if one "obtains...information from any protected computer".
And, as well as a crime, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act also provides a civil cause of action for anyone who "suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of this section" (note that conspiracy is also covered under the same section, so the civil cause of action would seem to be available if the damage was caused by a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access that didn't actually lead to unauthorized access, such as retaliation -- by refusal to consider for a job or, even more clearly, dismissal from one -- for failure to provide a password contrary to an agreement with the computer's owner.)
In what way? This is nominally personal, even private (if marked so) information. Consider it part of your "papers." You may share your odd manifasto - or your party pics - with close friends, or only with yourself. Those are not necessarily public information.
Unless there is a formal complaint that you are exposing privileged information (which is not the case) there is no right or expectation that private work is accessible to an employer. If it is a matter of sharing confidential information, they should be able to produce proof of the breach (screen shot of the offending material, for example), since if it was made public, it is publically viewable. If it is a criminal proceeding, then the defendant my be served with a warrant or discovery notice.
This is as simple as asking if you could do it in meat space: can your current employer or prospective employer ask you - as a condition of employment - come to your house and open up your personal draw of photos and correspondence for review. Neither is allowed, primarily due to workplace regulations mentioned elsewhere in this story discussion.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Both the HR drones that ask for this and the companies they work for.
Anon/Lulzsec, where are you now? Oh right, stealing our bank account and gaming account details instead of actually doing something to help people.
Make a list on the internet very publicly on which people and companies do this... Make their applications plummet to 0.
Having Facebook itself come out against this practice, Congressional action is NOT needed. We have more Federal laws than we need, or deserve.
Re-elect no one.
I would have voted against this amendment, and I can't think of the last time I voted republican on the national level. Littering bills with special exemptions is a horrible way to write laws, and indicates that the congressmen either haven't given enough thought to the general effects of the bill, or are just doing it for political reasons.
The purpose of this bill is to define processes that the FCC must follow to preserve transparency in their rule making. Now either this bill does "limit or restrict" the FCC's ability to adopt privacy rules or it doesn't. If it doesn't, than this amendment is pointless; it just reasserts one specific power that the FCC already has. It is a feel-good act intended to make people think you are doing something, when all you are in fact doing is complicating the law for no good reason.
If the bill does "limit or restrict" the FCC in beneficial ways like ensuring transparency, then adding special exemptions to bypass that would be a bad idea. Alternately, if the bill "limits or restricts" the FCC in harmful ways, then I doubt that that harm is limited to just this case, and adding band-aid patches for your pet issues isn't going to fix it.
Finally, the FCC is limited to regulating the spectrum and telecommunication industries, so the scope of the amendment would only apply to people hired by "licensees or regulated entities", which only account for a small fraction of the businesses in this country.
If you are going to give this job to a regulatory body the FTC is a much better fit than the FCC. Alternately, you could create a new criminal law, which would then be enforced by the FBI/DOJ. Or you try using existing laws, such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or Tortuous interference with a contract, just like Facebook has announced they are willing to do, and only pass new laws if they are inadequate. All of these approaches would make sense, unlike this amendment which is a stupid approach to the problem in every regard.
Thing is, the modern Republicans demand strict conformity to an arbitrary standard of political correctness. If you miss out in any dimension, you're a "Republican In Name Only" and they'd rather expel you from their gated paradise.
It goes along with their moral relativism, where Romney's health care plan designed by the Heritage Foundation becomes "unconstitutional" when promoted nationally by Obama - not because it's morphed into something other than Heritage and Romney designed, but because it was passed by Democrats, and so is guilty by association with them.
The GOP used to be a diverse group of free thinkers who highly valued liberty. It's become a conformist cult that worships only power, whose only allegiance to liberty is wanting the world to be free from any power or influence other than their own. Which is tragic. We'd be far better off with at least two viable parties competing to truly server the interests of the majority of citizens. We need better Republicans, badly. Or else we need them to go the way of the Whigs and a new, better party to arise.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
If you work for a living, Republicans are not your friend. If your color spectrum falls outside 'beige', Republicans are not your friend. If your language is something other than English, Republicans are not your friend. If you're a woman, Republicans are not your friend. If your religion is something other than "Christian", Republicans are not your friend. If you don't toe the ENTIRE party line completely and unquestioningly, Republicans are not your friend. You may think you share their values, but if you fall into the above categories they do not like you and will never like you. They will say they do because you can't be THAT exclusionary and get anyone elected and they know that, but don't EVER think that they like you.
Go read Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." This is what Republicans actually believe. The world they want to bring about is an awesome place if you're a rich white man. The fact that everyone else will be living in varying degrees of squalor is something that does not bother them. Perhaps they simply choose not to think about it -- they don't like to think about "those people" if they can avoid it.
If your employer starts asking for private passwords, start talking to the other employees about forming a union. Nothing makes employer assholes clench tighter than union-creating discontent in the ranks.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
In both cases it's about not having a job unless you give up your privacy rights to the corporation.
An employer can't ask my age, how many kids I have. My previous employer can't tell them anything about me except the dates I worked, but a new employer /can/ ask for my very optional facebook account?
Me thinks the correct answer is
1)this would violate facebook's ToS. I'm a very law abiding citizen and I won't divulge any proprietary info of yours either.
2)I don't have a facebook because I didn't agree with their ToS.
3)I do not care to work for a company who would ask such a question.
This is password coercion, much like Kevin Mitnick used to get where he needed to go. Mitnick went to jail for ages.
So now, does that mean my boss goes to jail for breaking the existing laws on the books for computer crime?
And, as well as a crime, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act also provides a civil cause of action for anyone who "suffers damage or loss by reason of a violation of this section" (note that conspiracy is also covered under the same section, so the civil cause of action would seem to be available if the damage was caused by a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access that didn't actually lead to unauthorized access, such as retaliation -- by refusal to consider for a job or, even more clearly, dismissal from one -- for failure to provide a password contrary to an agreement with the computer's owner.)
Ianal but that sounds a lot like if a potential employer asks for your facebook password you should:
1) inform them that they have just asked you to commit a federal crime
and 2) if you refuse and they retaliate(such as turning you down for the position) you can sue them.
Seems to me that the best way to nip this behavior in the bud is to make sure as many people as possible know that if an interviewer asks you for a password, you refuse and then don't get the job, you can sue.
The first time one of these gets to court, the legal department of every company in the nation will come down on HR like a ton of bricks to make sure it never happens again...
Unless you are employed by the government, you do not have a right to privacy. In fact, you don't have a right to privacy. You have a right to keep your things private. Privacy comes into play when you have 1 option: divulge. In this case you have 2 options: divulge or quit.
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act benefits no one, and it really improves the lot of insurance conglomerates if you read the fine print. Not to mention the myriad of exemptions to requirements passed out to corporations that the Obama administration gave out like free passes to the Tilt-A-Whirl.
I wonder where it will all end? It depends on the SCOTUS ruling about making people buy insurance. (Which I find a gross overstepping of Interstate Commerce powers..)
Dodd-Frank? The Congress didn't want to hammer out the details of regulation, so they left it up to the 20 or so regulatory agencies built expressly from Dodd-Frank. You can see it may have hindered corporations a little, but it also burdened the rest of us with more and more expenses to fix a problem that would've been simple to fix had the current regulatory system done its job rather than ignoring/colluding with the perpetrators.... And Dodd-Frank is still far from being "in practice" because the regulatory agencies are having problems ironing out the "details." :) Go figure. A "responsible" law still mired in the buck-passing of Washington....
The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act as a whole was a disaster, throwing money away and getting no (or little) results. Even the CBO can't nail down the job numbers supposedly "created" by that act. I do not know about the HITECH Act portion of it, but in the aggregate, the morons in Washington again screwed us over for corporations and lobbyists...
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
I think all senators and members of congress should be required to publicly post passwords to THEIR Facebook accounts.
-- Ethanol-fueled, perma-banned from Slashdot on account of me being a douche-monkey and all.
FTFY
The article, likely from poor understanding of process, misrepresents what happened. The clue is in the actual "amendment". It's not an amendment. It's a "motion to recommit" (MTR; http://www.rollcall.com/issues/55_135/-46346-1.html). This particular one is a procedural motion which would change and stop the underlying bill, preventing a vote on the bill by sending it back to committee.
So, while technically the R's voted against this idea, they did it in a procedural motion which would have had other ramifications for what they were trying to do. It does not mean they are opposed to the idea (although some surely are). The D's offered it to embarrass the R's, not because they thought it was something that could pass or improve the law. And, in this article, they are succeeding.
Disclosure: I used to work for a D in the USHR.
Noting that I have no fb account or any other social media account and never have pertaining to what they would do if I told them no because no such thing exists. Some OCD monkeys here of course pointed out I was typing on this site so I'm a wrong remtard derp herp. Given the sense that most people don't actually care about this, ok I quit. I give up. The OCD monkeys are right and herp derp it is. I no longer care which freedoms you surrender.
If I was interviewing a candidate for an IT position and that candidate freely gave me his passwords when I asked, there is no way I would hire him or her. In fact, if I was hiring for any position where the candidate would have access to sensitive corporate data or anything else that a company would not want disclosed to the public or competitors, I wouldn't hire an individual who gave up their password. If they offered to provide me with screen shots or print outs of their social networking pages, fine. But to hand over control of their account under any circumstances would automatically disqualify the individual for the job in my eyes. People like that are how users with just enough knowledge to be dangerous (or worse, someone with bad intent on a fishing expedition) end up with domain admin rights.
Silly rabbit, everything is interstate commerce. By the simple act of regulating something, it enters congressional jurisdiction.
Now for those of us with a functional brain, the premise is insane. But that argument has been used at the Supreme Court and actually accepted.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Lawsuit for wrongful dismissal in 3...2...1.....
And even if that was somehow wrangled through the state education employment bilaws and somehow legal, it is likely illegal under Federal level.
Granted she's a Teachers aide, so ... she's only just now blackballed for the entire state of Michigan. No biggie. O_O
No, they don't have the right to compel you to turn over your personal photos at their whim. They specifically are prohibitied from asking you to divulge certain things like sexual orientation and religious beliefs in interviews, or discriminating you in firing or promotion decisions.
You may not have the constitutional protections from the government regarding privacy, but you have specific legal protections which limit what companies may ask of you. Contrary to what corporations would like to think, they do not own the entire life of their employees, and they are generally restricted - by common law and court precedent if not written statute - to only that part of en employee which affects the corporation.
In at-will employment states there is more leeway on the part of an employer but the courts frown on anything that appears to be retaliatory or could be associated with any protected class.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The best way to nip this in the bud is to apply at one of these places with protected information in your profile (age, sex, race, religion) then when they reject you sue them under the federal anti-discrimination laws. They'd have to prove they didn't look at any of that protected information when they accessed your account. Then after a few companies end up paying out a years salary to someone they never hired this will be so toxic an issue that the every companies legal department will hand down rules forbidding it.
Frankly I'm surprised a lawyer hasn't jumped all over this and isn't advertising all over the place asking people to come forward so he can win a slam dunk case and make a lot of money. Think about it for a minute, the company has to convince a jury that they didn't ask for, or look at the protected information when it's a critical part of the profile and there is absolutely NO way to review the profile without seeing the protected information. Frankly I don't see how a company could win a case when they asked for access to that very information they aren't allowed to ask for.
The real seats of power in Congress are the Committe Chairmanships, currently assigned by the party leadership in majority, usually by seniority. Wanna shake up the system? Random drawings for Committee leadership seats at the beginning of every new Congress and after every major break. I'd go one more and have the drawings done from all Congresspersons, not segregated by party, as the worst thing that happened in US politics was the ossification of just two parties that are now quasi-branches of FedGov. Of course, the only way this would happen would be after the revolution when all the current porkbarrelers are, uh 'brusquely excused' from power.
How about they just pass a rule that says no government agency or agent of government can do this, because despite the hype over this issues, it's really just governments, police departments, and schools that have been caught doing it.
Because both parties would insert an escape clause saying that the prohibition rule does not apply in cases of national security (and if they didn't the President would add it on as a 'signing statement').
The cases which have been reported have all been instances where it was requested as an element within some form of government security investigation. Although I think it crosses the line in that it asks the applicant to surrender someone else's privacy, be aware that (so far) the people being asked to expose their facebook content are also being asked to sign waivers surrendering their HIPAA medical privacy rights, waivers surrendering their financial privacy rights, etc. In that context the request to see facebook content is just a ham-handed attempt to go lazier/cheaper on the background investigation.
-- Ethanol-fueled, perma-banned from Slashdot due to bad grammar.
FTFY
Is 1563649 a prime number?
This entire fiasco is stupid. It's already completely illegal to request someone's Facebook login information as a condition of hire, since it divulges restricted information (marital status, age, orientation) that it is already illegal for them to ask of you. You can already tell them "I'm sorry, but that would divulge my marital status, age, and other information that is illegal for you to request."
If you can't ask them to follow one law, what makes you think that you'll be able to ask them to follow a new law? This entire law is redundant, and it is quite right that it was eliminated.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
All they have to do is prove/claim that even if they came in contact with that information, it wasn't used to influence a hiring decision. Companies collect that kind of information from applicants all the time (i.e. to support audits on job retraining programs, veteran employment, equal opportunity employment laws).
Companies with large enough HR teams do this by compartmentalizing access. A company might designate an HR rep to handle information pertaining to protected classes. So long as the hiring manager doesn't see that information it's not a big deal.
According to TFA, the Aid posted a picture of a coworker's pants around their ankles to a semi-public forum. Yeah, she may have meant it in fun, but we don't know if her coworker appreciated it, and schools are notoriously nervous about sexual harassment cases. Asking for the aid's password was stupid on the part of the administrator. But if I were this person's boss and she had stonewalled me giving up the photo and related correspondence, I would have fired her as well.
i don't use facebook, linkdin, or twitter.
Consider one is on unemployment and is offered a job, but you refuse to provide your password. When you're not hired will your unemployment terminate since you refused an offered job?
*looks at form*
"What is your Facebook username?" writes it down
"What is your Facebook password?" writes down " **************** "
What I see is what they get.
And tell them you do not have much time for Facebook, since you prefer other activities.
The point here is that the hiring manager is the one asking for the password AND reviewing the information. Unless they were VERY careful they wouldn't have the access segregated and then they have to prove the negative, that they had access, didn't look and it didn't affect the hiring decision. Something that I contend would be damn near impossible to prove.
BEGIN SARCASM
Don't worry everyone, the "free market" will quickly drive the FB password seeking employers out of business because workers in the free market will elect to seek employment elsewhere. END SARCASM
You're an idiot.
And idiot with a job, but still, and idiot.
What you wrote:
What I first saw:
Gah.
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."