Slashdot Mirror
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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");
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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...
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?
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Facebook probably wants to be able to charge companies for access to potential employees' data
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.
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.
If a prospective employer asks me to provide my FB account, I'll tell them to go pound sand, and so should everybody else.
Which will be of consolation when the righteous themselves are pounding sand trying to figure out how to make money to put food on the table. I'm sure the 300 blue collar workers who just lost their jobs when a local metal foundry shut down this past week will gladly hand over a facebook password in exchange for not having to try and live of welfare payments.
Here's a quick tip for those of you not paying attention to the current economy. At the moment common people will take what they can get. It's up to the heads of the country to ensure that people aren't being taken advantage of while we flush down the financial bowl.
>"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.
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
I'd love to hear what the Republicans in Congress say on this.
Well, there were 184 votes in favor of the amendment banning this practice. Only 1 vote was from a Republican.
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.
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.