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Bill Banning Employer Facebook Snooping Introduced In Congress
suraj.sun writes "According to The Hill, 'The Social Networking Online Protection Act, introduced by Democratic Reps. Eliot Engel (N.Y.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.), would prohibit current or potential employers from demanding a username or password to a social networking account. "We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private," Engel said in a statement. "No one would feel comfortable going to a public place and giving out their username and passwords to total strangers. They should not be required to do so at work, at school, or while trying to obtain work or an education. This is a matter of personal privacy and makes sense in our digital world."' Ars adds, 'The bill would apply the same prohibitions to colleges, universities, and K-12 schools. ... Facebook has already threatened legal action against organizations who require employees to reveal their Facebook passwords as policy.'"
Maryland beat them to the punch, and other states are working on similar laws too. We'll have to hope the U.S. House doesn't kill this one like they did the last attempt. The difference this time is that the concept has its own bill, while its previous incarnation was an amendment to an existing bill about reforming FCC procedures.
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I would love to rant about the privacy we are compelled give up even applying for a job - companies pull credit reports and wont hire you unless youre a good consumer and all but um...we need a law to prevent employers from demanding LOGON CREDENTIALS? I just love MBAs.
will work for dragon quest localization
Why not simply an affirmation that private companies, corporations both foreign and domestic, as well as individuals, are fully bound by the constitution and all of it's amendments and no contract clause or condition can abridge the constitution and it's amendments in any way shape or form. Then legislate major penalties for any attempt to do so, both a major fine and prison term.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Never heard of him.
023AD01("Child", "Evil");
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If the Employer can't demand a username or password, they can't verify you even have a Facebook account. Or, even if they knew of the existence of an account for you, you would have plausible deniability as to if the account was yours. After all, there's nothing to stop someone who knows you from setting up an account and posting information to it that might reflect badly on you in a job interview -- which is exactly why HR shouldn't be "Googling" applicants or looking for them on social networking sites. They have no proof what they read is true.
I truly don't get this. If an organization requires a law to tell it that it shouldn't do this - YOU DON'T WANT TO WORK THERE.
Consider yourself lucky that they demonstrated that right up front in the interview before you spent weeks/months/years there.
"The crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw."
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Is this not the same Congress that just passed CISPA? Does anyone think this is some great victory?
I've wondered, since this came up in the news, how those poor, poor employers screened candidates in the old days, before they could readily get information from Internet search engines, social networking sites, and inexpensive background checks.
Oh, right- they had to actually talk to them, and had to evaluate them after they hired them, and had to consider firing them if their professional lives had problems...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private"
Oh, the hypocrisy...
That's one of the few guaranteed ways of killing something, attach it to the FCC.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Look out everyone, it's SNOPA!
I don't use Facebook, am I unemployable?
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
This is the USA. We haven't had a Constitution since 2001. 9/11 to be exact.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
Same idiots that probably voted for SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA..
I would agree on this subject, no one should be able to ask or know your social networking accounts. However, I do not see these idiots pushing to ban employers from exposing your credit history or bank accounts. Fuckin waste of time!!!!!!!!!
If ALL laws were written in a form representable by a DFA, we wouldnt have the disagreements in the 1st place
Hahaha, you think 9/11 was the beginning of the loss of a constitution? Really? It goes back much much further than that, trust me.
What about companies or govt agencies paying Facebook for such data?
Yes, I wouldn't want to work there.
No, that's not how it works. There are more workers than employers, so without any external force employers are free to set the rules as they see fit. When many employers adopt a policy, workers have to band together if they want to fight it; and that's exactly what we're seeing here.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Yeah that's kinda funny. Well no, might want to look at Obama in the last year, since he's gutted the constitution more than Bush did in 8 years.
How about governments stops meddling with every single business and person out there, introducing all these nonsense laws, while actively snooping on everybody on this planet without any justification, cause and mandate?
Just this NSA data center is a much bigger privacy risk than any number of employees who are dumb enough to ask for FB access of their potential hires and these potential workers being dumb and unprincipled enough to give it to them.
How about NSA stops doing THAT? Never mind the extra-judicial murder the president is involved in.
Shouldn't laws apply to the government first?
Shouldn't the government not be allowed to do things that an individual isn't allowed to do in the first place?
You can't handle the truth.
The country is circling down the shitter, and this is the best thing the Congress has to occupy themselves with? If a prospective employer asks me to provide my FB account, I'll tell them to go pound sand, and so should everybody else. My photos of funny kittens shall be mine alone.
So if there's no bill banning a certain activity, a company may engage in it, is that how it work in the USA? You know, in other western countries corporations aren't allowed anything unless it's granted to them explicitly.
Is there a bill forbidding cavity search by corporations? Or one that forbids corporations from harvesting the organs of their employees? It seems apt to ask, in case I ever dream of working in the USA.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
[citation need]
It would be useless, because "it is amendments" doesn't make any sense at all.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Is that what they used to do before the makeover - back when it was called "personnel"?
Sounds like a fuckton of work to me. I mean, that's what computers were invented to avoid, isn't it?
http://www.cartoonstock.com/lowres/jmo0663l.jpg
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
They don't need to pay any more, not with CISPA.
This does seem awfully two-faced - ban us from snooping, give themselves unlimited access, constitution be damned.
No sig today...
That question is easy to answer. Because the constitution bounds the powers of the FEDERAL government. Period. It says very little about what state and local governments can't do, and it certainly doesn't say what employers (and private citizens) can't do. The word "murder" doesn't appear in the constitution either. The constitution isn't concerned in the slightest whether Joe Blow goes on a killing spree. In fact the laws against murder are all state laws. A state could decide not to have any law against murder as far as the constitution is concerned.
Dig it. It took an act of congress to implement a ban on discrimination and desegregate the public schools. There was an amendment passed at the same time as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 specifically to ban poll taxes, but that was the extent of it. Similarly, there is nothing in the constitution that says an employer can't ask employees for various concessions. That is for states to limit.
The Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." That's the ENTIRE text. So the First Amendment says CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't stop a state from limiting free speech.
The selection of candidates by the two parties effectively limits the choice of voters. Yes, they can vote third party or write somebody in, but if no one of half decent mentality, morality and freedom from control ever competes for the nomination of either party, or if those who do are quickly weeded out by the respective bought and paid for establishments, the general election is just a fraud.
There are already plenty of laws that can be applied to employers who want to do this. Computer security laws, tortuous interference with contract both would seem to apply.
Even more that makes it remarkably dangerous for the employer if they see something that makes the employee a protected group.
Facebook are willing to sue. They don't want people to do this either. It devalues their service (even if the users are the "product", they still need to provide something of value to attract users). There's no need for an explicit law. By the time this makes it through to become actual law, it will be pointless.
I truly don't get this. If an organization requires a law to tell it that it shouldn't do this - YOU DON'T WANT TO WORK THERE.
That is of course correct but not the point. The problem is because sometimes people need jobs that they do not want. My father is a very smart guy but he doesn't have a college degree and he worked for many years in a job with limited applicability outside of a handful of companies. He didn't really want to work there, he had to out of economic necessity. The pay was better than probably anything else he could get and he had a union to protect him from idiots who might demand unreasonable things from him. (one of the good cases for unions actually) It would have been very easy for some moron to demand some ridiculous intrusion into his personal life without some form of external protection like a union or a law.
Bills like this are not to protect (presumably) you or me but rather to protect people with limited options. If your options are to hand over your facebook password so that you can feed your family, you're probably going to give over the password. It's completely wrong to even ask but sometimes we have to make laws to prohibit such behavior explicitly because a few idiots can't figure out why it is wrong. A law gives protections and recourse to those who might be vulnerable to being taken advantage of.
Because the constitution bounds the powers of the FEDERAL government.
And the state governments as well via Article Six. Government at all levels is bound by the Constitution.
In fact the laws against murder are all state laws
Demonstrably not true. Perhaps you should actually read about federal law or at least spend 20 seconds on Wikipedia before posting something so easily refuted. There are federal laws concerning murder for cases where state law would not apply such as for overseas military, on federal property, situations crossing state lines, involving federal officials, ambassadors, foreign officials, and numerous other circumstances.
A state could decide not to have any law against murder as far as the constitution is concerned.
Kind of a stupid argument since they all do have laws against murder.
So the First Amendment says CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. It doesn't stop a state from limiting free speech.
Actually it specifically does stop states from limiting free speech via Article Six, specifically "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Basically the First Amendment overrides any state law that contradicts it. If the Constitution was not applicable to states then it would be a useless document.
"We'll have to hope the U.S. House doesn't kill this one like they did the last attempt."
Hope - that's all you pen pushers extol. If patterns continue, that bill will be shot down like a patriot missile hitting an old cheap scud missile. What are you actually going to do if the bill is shot down?
I just love MBAs.
So to you holding the college degree of a MBA is shorthand for evil corporate behavior even if in reality is has NOTHING whatsoever to do with the topic at hand. You think that someone who tries to learn skills to manage a business more effectively must be simultaneously an evil and incompetent person. It must be convenient to see the world in such a way that you can easily scapegoat a group of people who aren't the cause of the problem. What you have said makes even less sense than blaming all engineers for the problem of spam. Most HR professionals don't actually have MBA degrees. But don't let actual facts intrude on your idiotic rant when there are mod points to be had by pandering to wrongheaded scapegoating.
nobody forces you to work for any of those companies and if you actively refused to work for them if they violated your privacy
A person might not force you to work for them but circumstances very well might. Unions came into existence precisely because it was difficult for some people to find alternative employment and some companies took advantage of that face. When your choice is between your privacy and feeding your family, your privacy is going to lose most of the time. Doesn't matter if it is wrong up in your ivory tower. You have the good fortune to have choices and live in a society that (generally) protects that right. Not everyone is so lucky.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
Or, in case someone doesn't get the reference, you really think that voting for anyone else would have made any kind of difference?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Some would argue that the constitution ceased to function properly during either the days of FDR or Abe Lincoln and has never been right since. Take your pick over who you'd like to blame more.
Wow, someone else who sees it for what it is?? Am I hallucinating??
I for one, welcome our six-digit apex libertarian overlords...
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
... how do they know you are? Well, if your profile is public, then you deserve it, moron.
Just find out the URL to their profile before hiring and inform them that "in order to be considered, you will need to Friend ".
Then HR just reads all the wall stuff they want.
>"We must draw the line somewhere and define what is private,"
And yet it is perfectly legal for an employer to demand fluid samples from an employee and test for whatever legal or illegal substances they choose. And in some states and fields, it is
even REQUIRED.
Same thing with a criminal background check. And others even run credit reports, with the assumption that someone with bad credit is a bad person or someone that is going to steal from the company. And others require physicals to gather health status information.
No probable or even remote cause needed in any of the above cases. So, yeah, demanding a social network password is certainly crossing the line, but there are plenty of other lines that are have already been crossed.
Your employer has veto power over what your health insurance covers, but asking for your Facebook password is too far? I'd love to hear what the Republicans in Congress say on this.
I just wrote to my Member of Parliament (I'm in Canada, eh?) to recommend the same thing here. I don't have anything on my Facebook page, nor Twitter, LinkedIn, or anywhere else I'd not like someone to see (some really bad web-page designs, but they just don't go in the book. ;-P ) but NO potential employer has the right to ask for my personal information. If you can't ask if I'm a seventy-six year old gay Catholic of Scottish extraction, you can't ask for this either... and if you do, I'll be spinning you on my upraised finger as I walk out of your door.
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. ~~ Hunter S. Thompson
Attach a rider that further deregulates the banks. Enjoy.
This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway This is the road to hell
This legislation is designed to sooth those who whine about privacy while doing absolutely nothing. Most employers will use professional information services that compile a report based upon facts acquired in various data bases. You do not know where the data bases are or how the searches are performed you simply read a compiled report. If some of that data was from Face Book you would never know it. Secondly if an employer directly accesses Face Book simply avoiding using the business computer may make a complaint next to impossible. A response such as "My secretary seems to have looked up the guy's Face book posts as she seemed to have an interest in dating him." might be enough to dump the rather large cost of a failed law suit right on the job applicant. If the secretary did this from her home PC how could the business be liable? So all we have here is a hollow, feel good, pacifier, created to sooth a few people.
Abe Lincoln - more like president butinksi
I'm not in favor of employers (or colleges) demanding login credentials, but this bill seems like a fairly hysterical reaction to what is, in all honesty, a pretty rare practice. Given the ubiquity of social networking is this not something the market can sort out? I know I'd walk right out the door if a potential employer ever demanded my credentials (or even that I friend them).
People have a right to privacy. The Federal government has recognized it since the Constitution created the government: "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" is to have privacy. Our privacy defines what is private vs what is public.
Not only does the government of the US have no legitimate power to violate that privacy right, but neither does anyone else. It's our right. And we create governments like the US Federal government to protect that right, among others. Protect it from governments, individuals and corporations.
This boundary should be the most fundamental and obvious fact in the US, but it's not, since the enemies of privacy have steadily gained so much power. We need a new Constitutional amendment that spells out the privacy right and goverment's obligation to protect it from all enemies, public and private. It must say that "to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" is to have privacy that the government may not violate and must protect except as provided in the Constitution.
--
make install -not war
Which I'm sure is the point. People forget everything they post is viewable by the government and even local law enforcement, but when employers start demanding passwords and going through the 'frontdoor' it reminds everyone how public their data is. That may reduce the usefulness of FB to the government, hence the ban.
Of course, even if this law passes, the company just claim it's for cybersecurity purposes and, under the terms of CISPA, just ignore the privacy protections in this law.
Heheheh.
What is the Kolmogorov complexity of a completely unambiguous set of laws that decide on all matters that people want them to decide on?
Reflect on that, and then ask yourself, what is the Kolmogorov complexity of the laws provided that they are allowed to take human decisions on certain key matters as inputs?
Disambiguating the law isn't something that we have the resources to do.
since they believe that job creators are lords and should have supreme rights over the peasants i.e. you
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The two-party system has the entire country locked into the Prisoner's Dilemma. We don't vote for the candidate we want, we vote for the opposite of the candidate we don't want, just as those two prisoners will fuck each other even though cooperation would result in freedom for them both.
For the record, some don't even believe Bush won the election in 2000 at all. Regardless of what you believe there, I'm betting most people in this country would agree we need some serious election reform in this country (and especially campaign finance reform) but that's just not going to happen as long as the people that make the laws benefit from the way the laws are currently set up. We'd probably be better off if we selected our representatives at random via lottery, but that's obviously never going to happen.
I'm not going to give Lincoln too much shit over his increase in federal powers. The "States Rights" argument was just a bullshit way of saying "We want to continue enslaving people, and you have no right to tell us no".
Whatever Lincoln's true motivations were for freeing the slaves, if ever there was a justifiable reason for an increase in federal power, that would be one. If he hadn't been assassinated, Reconstruction likely wouldn't have been the huge bag of shit it turned into, and the following hundred years of Jim Crow and the Klan in the south would likely never have occurred (certainly not to the degree that it did).
We all know they shouldn't be, but they're going to anyway, whether it's legal or illegal. The days of having a separate private life are over in this increasingly 24/7 work environment.
Discrimination is one of those things that pretty much impossible to prove unless it's egregious. Even if a lawsuit is justified, many lawyers won't touch a discrimination case with a 10-foot pole. Plus, discrimination in itself requires the victim to be in a "protected class", which is why all the assholes posting job openings with "Long-term unemployed need not apply" can get away with their shit. Unemployment is not a protected class, therefore, an employer has every right to discriminate against you there. Neither is participation in social media. Neither is political persuasion, which how employers here in Wisconsin are getting away with checking potential applicants against a database of recall petition signers, because they don't want to hire people supportive of unions (in the words of one assho^H^H^H^H^Hgentlemen, who chose to remain anonymous of course, "this makes it easy to see who the parasites are").
I don't participate in social media much (outside of commenting on websites like this, which are obviously not tied to my real name in any way), and I'm lucky in the fact that my name is about as common as 'John Smith', plus there are professional athletes, musicians, and actors that have the same name also, so any potential employer trying to Google me is going to come up with about a billion garbage results before they get around to something that could actually be tied to me (I tried myself just to see and made it 20 pages in before I gave up). It allows me to kind of hide in plain sight, and that's just fine with me. If an employer truly wishes to discriminate against me for a lack of a window into my personal life, I rationalize it by recognizing that I would not want to work for an employer that does that shit, anyway.
Yes, it was called work for a reason. Yes, people actually spent time talking to people looking for someone who could truly contribute.
Today, HR hides behind algorithms and software that supposedly screen a candidate before a human ever speaks with them. So much for the "Human Relations" side of things. They utilize recruiters who pre-screen. Those same recruiters are in it to make a profit based on either their contracting rates (less they can pay you the better) or percentage of the salary of the person hired (higher the better). Just the other day, I received three emails for the same position. Each one specified a different duration and offered rates that varied from $60/hr up to $80/hr - W2. WTF? All were from offshore firms, BTW.
It doesn't matter if the individual has the knowledge, experience, motivation and personality to improve your company and make it a better place any longer. If your resume isn't in the right format or you don't use the latest and most correct keywords or you put dates that can help narrow down your age as being older than dirt, your application goes into the bit bucket. It's a numbers game, pure and simple. And, may the Lord help you if you are unemployed - those systems identify you as such and that you are no longer on top of your game. You are so screwed once you get that label on you profile.
Oh, I already passed a bill for that too...by not having a facebook account. Seriously, half my tech friends don't have one because of the massive privacy, functionality safety, security, and annoyance factors. I thought we were already in the age where anyone with a brain doesn't have an account. In fact, if anyone is stupid enough to post a bunch of racist crap and them partying and drinking and mug shots of them in prison, they probably shouldn't get the job. That said, NOBODY is getting my password for anything ever so maybe they should expand it to that.
Only one Republican voted for it. 183 Democrats (and Independents?) did. So there's a real difference.
http://www.dailytech.com/Proposed+Amendment+to+Prevent+Employers+from+Asking+for+Facebook+UsernamesPasswords+Fails/article24337.htm
If you don't look too close, you can call it bipartisan and be pissed at both parties. If you look closer, however, you see the blame falls primarily on one side of the aisle, as with this amendment. Same thing with CISPA, SOPA and PIPA.
Yeah that's kinda funny. Well no, might want to look at Obama in the last year, since he's gutted the constitution more than Bush did in 8 years.
And your evidence would be...? I guess that's why you posted as an anonymous COWARD.
An effective "democracy" creates the illusion the people have a say in their government.
The amendment was rejected by a vote of 236 to 184. Of the 184 yea votes only one was from a Republican. For reference, there are 242 Republicans and 190 Democrats in the House.
Sure, this law would be great... they will just require employers to do a formal CISPA request to access all the information about potential employees. Is that better?
This is the USA. We haven't had a Constitution since 2001. 9/11 to be exact.
It took the government of the United States of America only seven years to begin eroding the freedoms enumerated in its Bill of Rights.
The Sedition Act was passed in July of 1798, less than seven years after the Constitutional amendments that make up the Bill of Rights came into effect in December of 1791.
Why does every f*cking problem require a new law? Doesn't anyone see the connection between the fundamental philosophy of every societal problem having to be resolved by government action--and the creeping totalitarianism in the form of TSA, DMCA, etc. that most Slashdotters despise?
Seriously, if the marketplace of competent workers simply says "no" to employer requests for this bullshit, won't they quickly stop asking rather than have their good employees walk out the door?
One other thing: people who have financed their lifestyles with debt instead of savings are in a much weaker position when it comes to making principled choices about switching employers (or countries). That the current economic/financial system (note to leftists--not free market capitalism, but a centrally planned capitalism--fascism, we should agree) greatly incentivizes debt and literally punishes saving is no coincidence. This is a critical element of control and limitation of the freedom of action of "civilians" as our militarized law enforcement so likes to call us.
of tacking it on as a rider to a 'must pass' bill e.g. one that increases military spending?
The bill will eventually have so many extra clauses that it will fail. Someone will want to tack on their special interest to the bill.
So I'd like to see a bill that states the bill as written, and put for vote, is the bill. No additions or subtractions, that goes in another bill.
Then this bill will have a greater chance of passing.
Yeah that's kinda funny. Well no, might want to look at Obama in the last year, since he's gutted the constitution more than Bush did in 8 years.
Parent didn't mention Bush. You did. Which makes you stupid. Not only are you stupid for assuming he blamed Bush, you totally overlooked the fact that PATRIOT passed with veto proof majority in both houses. Not only are you stupid, but whoever modded you up is also stupid. So please, take George Bush's cock out of your mouth *before* you fire off a post. Please.
The question remains : who is Bill Banning?
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
should == we need a law huh?
Where do we draw the line: that companies can't call so and so about your past, can't look here, can't look there? If you're putting personal info where every single person in the world can view it, then why should that info be off limits to potential employers? I know I know, accessing said info and requesting id/pwd is the line, right?
--
damaged by dogma
Or even that it is you. I once tried to look up an old friend. I found someone with the same name, same interests and hobbies, the right age, the same odd sense of humor, the same job living in the same city. When I finally ran across a picture, it was someone else.
For the record Bush didn't get as many actual nationwide votes as Gore, but since we have the electoral college instead (not a bad thing) he got more votes there. Had Gore actually contested and recounted the *entire* state of Florida, he would have won. But since he only contested certain districts once those were counted, he would still have lost electoral college wise even without the SCOTUS getting involved.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The disenfranchisement of third parties is just a symptom. The cause is our one vote, plurality wins election system. It's been mathematically shown to gravitate towards two parties.
The fix is any host of alternative election systems. While no system is perfect, most are better than one vote, plurality wins. One of the simplest to implement is instant run-off.
Just create an empty facebook account with your real name, and nothing else in it, and tell them you do not use facebook that much.
And, to add autheniticy to it, just create some fake posts to neutral news items (e.g. how my cat woke me up this morning, etc).
Lincoln invaded the South to preserve the union, not to "free the slaves". The war began in April 1861. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn't issues until January 1863. Furthermore, the proclamation applied only to the states that were part of the Confederacy, There were still border states where slavery was legal and they were unaffected. In addition, any confederate state willing to re-join the union was also promised an exemption.
Other nations managed to eradicate slavery without a bloody civil war. It was clearly the bitterness engendered by armed conflict and the North's attempts to basically rub the South's face in their defeat that perpetuated racial hatred in the country.
State powers are enshrined in The Constitution. The Southern states had a very valid legal argument.
The unfortunate fact is that when people bring up the issue of state powers and the 10th Amendment these days, the absurd counter-argument is that rolling back federal power-grabbing means that South Carolina could and would re-institute slavery.
Perhaps every member of Congress should make their Facebook password freely available to their employers, aka, the general public.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
Well, we actually haven't had a constitution since Lincoln. And before that, assault on the Constitution began with Alexander Hamilton.
Serious because the US Government is Evil and Dangerous to the entire population of the world. There is no honor among thieves.
Silly because AT&T, Google, the NSA... but I repeat myself... I mean G-mail... Hello.. Government Mail. Google has a sweet deal with the NSA. All that data, all those twitter tweets, linkedin, etc etc...
This facebook rule amounts to anti-competitive anti-privacy. All the crony corporations that write the rules for the rest of us, small business, et al, already have back-door access to our online data- in fact cispa is recognition of that well after the fact.
If you are a lowly small business- sure if this passes you would be locked out... but the big guys have the access- this law will not stop them- and no they will not be successfully sued. The government recently gave crony telecoms a pass on all lawsuits of people who are snooped on by the government- because they knew there was already a queue of lawsuits from people being snooped on due to the impotent cooperation of telecoms that give a rats ass for our 4th amendment protection (what a knee slapper...4th amendment...)
All the liberals who care about civil liberties... if only the government would protect us! Asking Pure Evil to protect you is completely senseless.
You don't ask favors of the enemies of liberty... you must defeat them.
I don't know the details of the bill, but there is a loophole that some employers are using now, and it should be banned too. The employer requires the applicant to log on to FB. Then the employer watches over the shoulder while the applicant scrolls through their timeline. Technically, they aren't asking for your password, but this loophole needs to be banned as well.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Facebook doesn't give a hoot about your privacy, it only cares about its own bottom line. If employers keep demanding passwords, it will hurt Facebook in two ways...
1) People will "clean up" their FB pages and info, to make them more job-friendly. Telling lies in their info will make targetted advertising less effective. E.g. gays will list themselves as heterosexual and end up receiving ads for Playboy.
2) Some people will decide to delete their accounts altogether, or simply not join. Fewer members means fewer eyeballs for FB to sell to advertisers.
BTW, you are *NOT* a freak if you don't have an FB account. See http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/ for statistics by country. English-speaking countries (US/Canada/UK/NZ/Australia) run around 50% penetration. That's number of accounts versus population, so the numbers are likely inflated. Remember that...
a) some people have multiple accounts to help out Farmville scores. Also a "clean" job-friendly account and a "real" account
b) sites like Freelancer.com have people buying+selling 5,000 or 10,000 "Likes". That means that some outfits have thousands of fake accounts they use for this purpose. It may not be very noticable in large countries. But in Monaco, the number of accounts is over 122% of the popolation... including infants, children under 13, and pensioners who don't know how to run a computer. Obviously inflated.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Because the Federal Government is not given the power anywhere in the constitution to tell a citizen what insurance he MUST buy with HIS money.
This is an argument based on a false distinction. There is no logical difference between the government taxing me and using that money to buy an insurance versus the government forcing me to contribute directly to buying insurance. Either way it is a tax even if for political reasons you choose to call it something else. The fact that it doesn't go into a Treasury department bank account is irrelevant. The government already has the power to tax and taxes can come in many forms. This is just one more form of taxation.
Just in case that wasn't clear enough try this example. The government taxes me and buys airplanes for the military. I as a taxpayer effectively have purchased a share of that airplane. It would be NO different if the government forced me to send a check directly to Boeing for the same amount to pay for a share of that airplane. I'm still forced by a duly elected representative body to send a portion of my money to a third party. The only difference is the government doesn't handle it along the way. Saying the government doesn't force you to buy things is a load of baloney. They do it all the time and it is perfectly legal.
Edge cases affecting a vanishingly small part of the population of the US.
You are calling the number of people affected by the Uniform Code of Military Justice a "vanishingly small part of the population"? Curious definition of "small" you have there. We're talking about many millions of people who are covered under those laws. Anyway the point was that you claimed that "the laws against murder are all state laws" which is the bit that is plainly wrong. There are federal laws against murder. The fact that the states have them too simply makes having a redundant federal law unnecessary for certain cases.
That article you are so fond of has no bearing on this matter.
Spend 20 seconds looking up the term Supremacy Clause and then rethink your argument. You could not be more wrong on this point. Seriously. Stop arguing with me in public about it and go do some reading. This is an important part of the Constitution to understand. I'm trying to help you here.
The constitution says CONGRESS shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Fine. So say a state makes a law abridging the freedom of speech. That does not violate the constitution in any way.
In the event that a state makes a law that contradicts the Constitution, the Constitution takes precedence. Article Six Clause Two specifically addresses this and binds state laws to not contradict the Constitution. If the states could make whatever laws they wanted they could easily declare slavery legal again or remove the rights of women to vote within that state. The entire point of the Constitution is that it binds all levels of governments with some basic common rules. Otherwise there is no point to the document. If the Constitution does not address a specific issue then the states are free to make whatever laws the like but freedom of speech isn't one of those areas. States governments are bound the same as the Federal government in this case.