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Password Protection Act: Bans Bosses Asking For Facebook Passwords
An anonymous reader writes "On the heels of a similar bill introduced last month. A group of Democrats today introduced legislation in both the House and Senate to prevent employers from forcing employers and job applicants into sharing information from their personal social networking accounts. In other words, Maryland may soon not be the only state that has banned employers demanding access to Facebook accounts. The Password Protection Act of 2012 (PPA) would also prevent employers from accessing information on any computer that isn't owned or controlled by an employee, including private e-mail accounts, photo sharing sites, and smartphones."
Business practices that seem to want to coerce people to provide information they normally would not do for their job, or to actively violate laws (e.g., federal laws that prohibit, at least in letter, sharing of passwords for online resources) in order to interview for a job, things like that? You know, laws that the Congress passed in the first place?
Shouldn't take too much lobbying by US Chamber of Commerce, et al, to make sure this bill doesn't even make it out of committee or otherwise dies a quiet procedural death. But, because it's sponsored by (D)'s, even if it did make it to the floors, it's going to be voted down just because.
As an applicant, you are not yet an employee. If they want to demand that I give them that information after I am an employee, and I refuse, I would not be surprised if there can be a wrongful termination lawsuit.
Yeah, it didn't make sense. After reading the article, it was clearly a typo, and should have said "from accessing information on any computer that isn't owned or controlled by an employer". Ie. employers can still demand you hand over passwords on *their* systems, which seems reasonable enough.
Actually, from TFA it sounds like they meant to say it prevents employers from accessing personal information on any computer that isn't owned or controlled by an employer. I'm pretty sure the intent is that an employer should still be able to access and demand passwords to servers it owns, even if the employee runs them, etc, and anything else is none of their business.
the constant stream of news about police brutality, unjust situations, erosion of rights, destruction of the economy, etc., etc. has left me hopeless, with only the prospect of gaming the system instead of fighting it.
Not me. These things have made me start looking for jobs outside the USA.