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.

Comments

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[Yew2]

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.

Why is this needed?

[_pi-away]

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.

Re:What about friending HR?

[TWX]

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...

List of what's not allowed - ridiculous.

[blind biker]

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.

For people with limited options

[sjbe]

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.

Re:We don't need this law!

[Jon Stone]

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).

Facebook probably wants to be able to charge companies for access to potential employees' data

Re:Article Six of the Constitution

[Zontar The Mindless]

So say a state makes a law abridging the freedom of speech. That does not violate the constitution in any way.

Evidently you failed high school civics class. Article Six doesn't say anything about Congress; it specifically binds *judges* to rule according to the *Federal* Constitution in the event of a conflict between it and the laws or constitution of any state. Note also that it doesn't say anything about State or Federal judges--it says *judges*, period.

US states that do not exist only in your imagination may not enact laws that contravene the US Constitution. States may not restrict or take away rights that are guaranteed by the US Constituion. Period.