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New Illinois Law Protecting Social Media Rights In the Workplace
sl4shd0rk writes "Illinois (USA) Governor Pat Quinn signed a new law this week protecting employees' privacy rights concerning social media. Bill 3782 makes it illegal for an employer to request an employee's or job candidate's social network login credentials, in order to gain access to their account or profile. 'Members of the workforce should not be punished for information their employers don't legally have the right to have,' Governor Quinn said. 'As use of social media continues to expand, this new law will protect workers and their right to personal privacy.'"
Illinois did something that makes sense? WTF?
Read the full text of the law here
At least they cited the bill number. I hate it when news outlets don't tell you the bill and have to go searching for it.
We don't live in Shouldland.
Some sensibility in lawmaking. That's refreshing.
There's nothing like $HOME
This doesn't make sense at all. They can't ask for credentials? So they will ask to be "friended" or "circled" just to get an interview. Sucks for me, since I don't have a Facebook account and will be excluded as if I am hiding something...
Actually, it doesn't make sense.
If an employer wants my Facebook Password, it is really simple, "NO". I don't need a law to protect me.
And in fact, should anyone ever ask for my password, I'd start passing that info on to the social networking sites as a warning to others. We don't need government creating idiotic laws that will last well beyond the technology's life span.
If everyone acted the same way, with the same level of outrage, the problem would go away on its own. We don't need government to fix stupidity, we just need an educated public.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
What are these jobs that make you surrender your personal login credentials? Is this really happening? How would this ever be considered acceptable practice?
I would argue that their right to personal privacy is given up when they decide to broadcast information on a public international communications network.
Social networks is the worlds largest experiment in removing the safety labels on devices.
my 2c.
If the information were publicly broadcast, I wouldn't need to ask you for your credentials in order to access it, would I? Unless I'm much mistaken, the bill doesn't protect you from being axed for those public pictures of you sucking a skull bong(which can be accessed without login, or with an arbitrary set of credentials), it just prevents me from demanding your access credentials.
Always funny with a post and it's sig contradict each other.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
So you are ok with them asking for your email password? After all, you give up privacy when you send all those bits across the internet right?
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
There is arguably a difference between 'doesn't make sense' and 'will be relatively easy to evade'.
Most worker protection legislation suffers from the basic problem that there are just so many innocent-sounding reasons to get rid of someone for reasons wholly unrelated to any legally protected trait.
Whistleblowers, assorted wage/salary/time-worked accounting shenanigans, occupational hazards, harassment, and virtually anything else all fall into that category.
Trouble is, unless you've got a bold plan to achieve an enormous restructuring of the economy (at least to the point where the labor market is a seller's market, perhaps even to the point where most people aren't 'employees'(and no, the 'oh, he's an "independent contractor" because those are cheaper than employees, he just resembles an employee in all other ways'/permatemp doesn't count)), the condition of employees in your economy will be one of the greatest determinants of the welfare(and even the day-to-day freedom) of most of the population.
That makes ignoring the problem a bit... unpalatable.
Great, now I have to look up the definition of electronic mail. Is it going to be things which talk rfc822? Or it is going to be things which transmit messages between different users? (I just checked Facebook and it has some kind of messaging thing in it; would be hilarious if Facebook didn't qualify.)
I bet most sites which use logins, could be made to become social networking. Even banks, if you get creative.
I hate laws like this, which are so needlessly specific to handle ephemeral trends. Why didn't they just make it illegal to impersonate other people? Who profited by lobbying against that?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
And what about in a state like where I live, NC? Employeer "I want your facebook information" me "no" Employeer "ok you are fired" me "doh!" a lot of states are right to work states where they can fire you for nothing if they so chose to. Even if not they can find something to fire you for in no right to work states.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
We don't need government to fix stupidity, we just need an educated public.
There's this thing called a legislature. People elect other people to go and make laws in the legislature. It makes it easier for people to get things done so they don't have to organize a concerted show of outrage towards companies. Instead they argue the merits of such a law and the elected persons make it so.
If in an interview I am ever asked to friend a potential employer or give out my login credentials, I will politely say, "Thank you very much for your time and consideration but I am no longer interested in employment with your company." On one hand, I like the idea of making this illegal. On the other, I think it would be stronger to let market forces end this practice. If enough people simply stand up and walk out when asked to cough up their facebook information, the practice would stop immediately because the company would be unable to hire anyone. If the work force were more united and less divided, market forces could dictate more workplace friendly policies. However, because Americans live in such abject fear, most are likely to just aquiesce so we need a law to provide a security blanket for the fearful.
It's one thing to ask for somebody's Facebook user name, so you can see if they're posting embarrassing pictures of themselves and friending inappropriate people, and so you can look at their Mom's Facebook page to see if you can find her maiden name.
It's something entirely different to ask for their password, so you can post embarrassing pictures of them on their Facebook account, friend inappropriate people, and write stuff on their Mom's Facebook page wall.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If you are out of work, really need a job, and an employer is making an unreasonable (but still legal) demand, you are in a rather unequal bargaining position. It's all well and good to stick up for yourself if you have the luxury of turning down a new job or aborting a promising interview, but not everyone is in that position. The law levels the playing field by prohibiting employers from even asking for something they have no business getting.
Asking for their Facebook user name is one thing - a company might want to see the public profile the person presents, and a creepy HR department might want to see who their friends are. But any HR department that wants your password is exposing the company to legal liability for misuse of the information, and really has some 'splainin to do about why they want it the ability to forge the job candidate's information.
I do computer security - anybody dumb enough to give us their password is too dumb to hire, unless it's a fake honeypot account, in which case if we're dumb enough to risk logging in then we deserve whatever happens to us. HR may think that the link showing they've made Godfather really goes to the real Mafia Wars, but it's a job offer they can't refuse.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't need a law to protect me
If the company can refuse to hire you because you refused to provide a password, even if they are violating the Facebook TOS, and if there is no legal recourse against that company for how they are behaving then yes, you need the law to clarify its position (which is more what this is).
Worse still is if governments have ruled through various agencies that they *can* ask for your passwords legally - which they probably cannot, and this clarifies that they aren't allowed to do that. Keep in mind that laws will be written to say blandly generally things like 'the police force should use all due diligence to ensure only reputable people are hired', so then some civil servants in an agency will try and interpret 'due diligence' and 'reputable' every year, and s/he doesn't want to get fired for not doing enough diligence.
The law isn't in this to protect the data on your facebook account, which is what you're talking about being able to protect yourself. It's about first protecting you from discrimination for refusing to do something stupid (and potentially illegal), and secondly it's protecting the government (and companies) from being on the losing side of a lawsuit for doing something they shouldn't have been doing.
Governments frequently grapple with the question of what employees are to do if they're given instructions they don't think are lawful or within the terms of their contract. This isn't just 'don't torture people because the vice president said it was ok', it's things protecting employees who demand gloves and sweaters when they work in freezers, or when laws are very very complicated, or overlapping or the like, and who trumps who and so on. You as a prospective employee need to be protected from being punished just because you're following contracts you signed, which was that you wouldn't give up your facebook password when you agreed to facebooks TOS.
If everyone acted the same way, with the same level of outrage, the problem would go away on its own.
No. It could very well go the other direction. If the bureaucracy makes a rule, and no one successfully challenges it (and remember, they might actually be authorized to demand your password if the law granting them authority was unintentionally over reaching) then you need to make new laws. Otherwise demanding your social networking passwords could easily become routinely allowed.
Like the Chicago Cubs say, "you can't lose 'em all." Actually, I've found Illinois politicians actually listen to their constituents (some are better than others, of course) and the constituent doesn't have to be a campaign contributor, or even in the same party (which party's primary you vote in is a matter of public record in Illinois).
As to Illinois doing something that makes sense, do farms make sense? Most of the state is famland. Does subatomic particle physics make sense? Before the LHC, Illinois had the world's biggest atom smasher. Oh, and Lincoln, Reagan, Obama, and Seven of Nine are all from Illinois. Of course, Reagan didn't make much sense, but he had Alzheimer's.
Now, Quinn signing a bill that makes sense, or getting anything at all right, now THAT'S weird! The saddest thing is, he's the best governor we've had so far this century (the previous two are in prison).
Free Martian Whores!
And what about in a state like where I live, NC? Employeer "I want your facebook information" me "no" Employeer "ok you are fired" me "doh!" a lot of states are right to work states where they can fire you for nothing if they so chose to. Even if not they can find something to fire you for in no right to work states. Sounds like you were fired for cause, and an unjustified cause at that. I'd hire a lawyer. They can't fire you for refusing to break the Facebook's Terms of Service.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If an employer wants my Facebook Password, it is really simple, "NO". I don't need a law to protect me.
What if you need the job? And what if the employer next door wants your password too?
No the worst from a tyranny is when you don't have the freedom to even do that.
Neither Oklahoma nor Texas has recently had a governor arrested, prosecuted, and found guilty of felony misdemeanors. That's not to say that those states don't have corruption problems, but we can make a damned convincing argument that Illinois might be the most corrupt state.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
YOU might not. Recognize that not everyone has the same position you do, and there are people who are very desperate for a job.
But I forgot, that infringes on your ideals of "Fuck them, I've got mine."
Going on Twitter or Facebook and marketing "I was fired for not giving my Facebook Password" would create enough backlash that the company would lose in the end
Unlikely. That doesn't mean that the person shouldn't spam every news outlet and social media site with the info, I just don't think it would have the effect you believe it would.
And why would you want to work for such a company in the first place?
I'm going to assume he enjoys paying rent and eating food. Not everyone has the perfect job mobility you apparently do, and some people really do have to tough out very shitty jobs for a while. This is just a measure to cut down on the abuse and make those jobs a little less shitty.
I hope that thought gives you comfort while you're starving in a gutter.
If I asked somebody for their Facebook password in a job interview, and they gave it to me, that would tell me that they don't have enough clue to be worth hiring :-)
If you are out of work for almost 2 years, and you're insanely desperate for any kind of paycheck, you'd do almost whatever they'd ask to try and get a job. And people like you would look down on them for this.
Illinois here. I have not had *a* governor arrested recently.
I believe I'm up to 6.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1865681,00.html
Try to keep up, haters!
Yes, it would... If you had a huge loyal social media following. If you just have twenty friends on Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ then those 20 friends will get outraged. Some of them might pass it on and some of those people might feel mildly upset about it. Perhaps one or two of them will pass it on, but it would peter out quickly. Yes, social media can amplify your audience. Your friends, by sharing your post, can get you a larger audience for your thoughts. It can't, however, get you a huge audience of people banging down your employer's door demanding that they reverse their policy unless 1) you have a huge audience to begin with, 2) you are close friends with someone who has a huge audience, or 3) you happen to get lucky and your post goes viral. Don't count on 3 happening every time... or at all. It may happen, but it is far more likely that it won't.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.