Slashdot Mirror
Teacher's Aide Fired For Refusing To Hand Over Facebook Password
An anonymous reader writes "You can add this one to the short but growing list of employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. After refusing to give her Facebook password to her supervisors, Kimberly Hester was fired by Lewis Cass Intermediate School District from her job as an aide to Frank Squires Elementary in Cassopolis, Michigan. She is now fighting a legal battle with the school district."
Kimberly Hester does not have clean hands. Posting an offensive picture of a co-worker with pants around ankles could be considered sexual harassment.
This is not harmless fun "A parent and Facebook friend of Hester’s saw the photo and complained to the school."
What teachers and employees do reflects upon the schools.
Teachers and school employees have a higher standard of care especially when posting comments about other employees.
Schools can and have been sued for failure to act in cases of sexual harassment. The school district had reasonable suspicion.
TFS gets it wrong and TFA never clarifies.
The administrator asked to view the Facebook account - no request was made for her password. Whether or not this is OK remains up for debate, but having the facts is always preferable...
It's called a run-on sentence composed of multiple comma-splices, and it's incorrect. Learn about it.
Well, the "Right To Work" moniker is indeed misleading. Seems to be the trend lately; giving your policies a title which will appeal to the people you're targeting it at -- hopefully, a few (or a lot) won't do any research and just agree with you. Having said that, I think I agree with the policy, I just think they should call it something more descriptive. "Union Neutral" or something. Anyway, Michigan is an "at will" state, meaning employers or employees can sever their relationship for any (non-illegal) reason. I'm sure being under contract trumps that however.
Funny enough there is a legal term for that "tortious interference". That is the act of encouraging someone to break a contract. She could have raised that position. Of course there is still the standing issue of whether account agreements are actually contracts at all but...
As far as I know, RTW only prevents contracts from forcing all shop members to join a union. That's it. Having been forced to join a union in the past when I got absolutely no benefit from it, aside from the academic problems with it, I have very low patience for the concept. I was essentially subsidizing services that, in my particular job, I wasn't even allowed access to.
From what I can tell, wages are higher in non-RTW states, but cost of living is also much higher as well. Significantly higher, in fact. And you can go to the article above for the citation on that. In the end, the contracts that force all members to join simply limit liberties of individuals without providing an actual benefit to all of them.
I don't have a problem with collective bargaining, especially when it is done with the free will of the workers behind it. That's freedom of association right there, and unions are a good use of the liberty.
However, forcing me to join and pay for a union is not liberty at all, its just a different boss telling you what to do and who to vote for. And it doesn't matter that you can vote individually, because that is neatly undermined by having your dues handed over to the campaigns of the people who you voted against. Indeed, if you have to force people to pay for your operations, it seems to me that perhaps you aren't providing all of the benefits that those people need.
Ironically, this is exactly what facebook started out as. .edu email address was required to register for the first couple of years, and the entire system was designed to facilitate inter-class communication between students and professors.
An
Then they added the "friend" feature, non students started trying to register, Zuckerberg got greedy, and things went downhill from there.
Did you look at the picture?? I'm thinking you have not. Watch this video to see the picture:
http://www.southbendtribune.com/news/wsbt-teachers-aide-in-legal-battle-after-refusing-to-let-school-district-access-her-facebook-page-20120328,0,6869936.story
It is a picture of shoes and a pair of pants with some skin from her calves showing - that's all. It is NOT a picture of her co-worker - it is a picture of herself. No one was exposing anything. I guess the inference is that she's sitting on the toilet.
So - let's change the scenario slightly. Let's say she lost some weight and she proudly posts a picture of herself, fully clothed, but the outfit is tight enough to show she is obviously much thinner. Is that offensive? Inappropriate? Exhibitionist? What if she posts (again fully clothed) before and after pics from a boob job?
But set all that aside - judges make calls every day on harassment & inappropriate behavior - and they can do the same thing here. The bigger issues are that the employer wants her to give up a personal password for an "investigation", and that not complying meant she was fired. So - if someone reports that she has a porn magazine at her home, does that mean the school will demand to enter her home? This whole thing stinks. The employer is a jackass. The "friend" who reported her is a jackass. Kimberly is a typical clueless facebook user that doesn't understand that you need to separate real friends from people who shouldn't know what you post to your real friends.
Television, movies, magazines and online media continually gets more and more raunchy - yet our workplaces become more and more rigid and unrealistic. Our society is doomed.
Funny and true, Ron Jeremy still has a valid teacher's license. However, I think his current job pays a bit better.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
they have no contract with the company, so they cannot forbid them to do so. But they can forbid their clients to give away login credentials.
I heard Spazmania belongs to an online sex cult.
Umm, no. The "Friend" feature arrived pretty darn early. It was originally limited to HARVARD e-mail addresses (then other elite schools and eventually all .edu), because they were trying to get elite students on first so it would be cool and a place to socialize and hook up. Professors were very rare on Facebook for the first 3-4 years it existed, so it was not at all designed as a way for them to communicate. It was always about socialization, just first among elite college students.
Demanding another person's login and password sounds like a pretty clear violation of "boundaries" as well, much more so than this woman's ill-advised facebook activity. The fact that you neglected to mention this shows that your understanding of "the idea of boundaries" is not so great either.
I believe the legal term is tortious interference and Facebook could pursue civil action for it. Possibly even pursue criminal action under the CFAA by arguing it is still unauthorized access despite the fact that the password was disclosed.
"Tortious interference with contract rights can occur where the tortfeasor convinces a party to breach the contract against the plaintiff, or where the tortfeasor disrupts the ability of one party to perform his obligations under the contract, thereby preventing the plaintiff from receiving the performance promised."
X(7): A program for managing terminal windows. See also screen(1).
Ban? They should bring criminal prosecution for "unauthorised access to computer equipment" or whatever the US equivalent is. This is hacking via social engineering, pure and simple, case closed.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.