By Madi Monahan
Trojan Tribune Staff
Photo Courtesy of Web Pro-News
It’s not a surprise if you hear that a potential employer has checked out your Facebook page, but they’re actually going further than that. Some businesses are now asking potential and current employees for their Facebook passwords so they can inspect the employees’ profiles.
Catherine Crump, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, disagrees with these practices. “It’s an invasion of privacy for private employers to insist on looking at people’s private Facebook pages as a condition of employment or consideration in an application process. People are entitled to their private lives.”
Facebook isn’t too happy about the audacity of employers, either. Their long-time policies about sharing passwords haven’t changed, and they’re making sure the employers know what they could be getting themselves into. If a company were to ask and receive the login information of a potential employee, and then that person was not hired, claims of discrimination could be held against the company. The case would be messy; while the practice may still be illegal, there is no specific legislation against it. However, Senator Charles Schumer of New York and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut are currently working to change that.
The two senators are following the example that Maryland Senator Ronald Young has set. Young has already put in two pieces of legislation to stop an infringement of constitutional rights, and submitted it last year. It has since passed in the Maryland State Senate, and is now in the House. Schumer and Blumenthal are just now “drafting legislation that would fill any gaps in federal law that allow employers to require personal login information from prospective employees to be considered for a job.” Bradley Shear, a social media lawyer, has also mentioned that this controversial new interview question could be a violation of the first, fourth and fifth amendment rights. But, until the legislation is updated, the problem cannot be completely solved.
Shear states, “Until someone says no, you can’t do it, they are going to do it — that’s why the legislation is so important. This legislation is needed on a state and national level. It’s that simple.”
