Posted on 02/21/2011 3:50:37 PM PST by FromLori
The American Civil Liberties Union has taken up the cause of a Maryland man who was forced to cough up his Facebook password during a job interview with the Department of Corrections in that state.
According to an ACLU letter sent to the Maryland Department of Corrections, the organization requires that new applicants and those applying for recertifications give the government "their social media account usernames and personal passwords for use in employee background checks."
The ACLU calls this policy "a frightening and illegal invasion of privacy" and I can't say that I disagree. Keep in mind that this isn't looking at what you've posted to a public Twitter account; the government agency here could look through private Facebook messages, which seems a lot like reading through your mail, paper or digital.
While it's not surprising that some employers might want to snoop in your social media life, it strikes me as a remarkable misapprehension of what Facebook is to think that it should be wholly open for background investigations. Legally, things are probably more complex, but it seems commonsensical that carte blanche access to your communications should be off-limits.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Twitter, My Space, ButBook.......
but what happens when they go after FR...
Precisely.
Tell them you will “friend” them and they can look to your heart’s delight. But no one gets your passwords.
They have no need of your passwords.
Having said that, I'd wonder just how effective this kind of request would be. An applicant can create multiple Facebook pages and selectively show the employer which one paints him/her in the best light, or can (as someone else pointed out) simply tell the employer that they don't have a Facebook account.
I was thinking similar, but I thought of calling it a "throwdown" facebook account.
Reading what I’ve published is fine. Asking for my password is not.
I walked out of a job interview (I badly needed the job at the time) for this sort of invasive crap. Way back when- I applied as a store manager for a convenience store chain in California (no, not 7-11). The application form was more than 30 pages long, and asked about things like the serial numbers of firearms that I owned. It got worse from there.
I think I still have the thing somewhere, I’ll keep an eye open for it. Anybody that has any appreciation of personal privacy would be appalled by it.
I have two facebook logons.
One is personal, and one is professional.
Ah, they’re not too keen on the 1st Amendment either.
If employers can ask to take a sample of your urine, I guess they can *ask* for this, too.
Doesn’t mean you have to give it to them.
I could care less. Employers can ask for whatever they want.
I, of course, reserve the right to tell them to kiss my ash. After which they can decide whether to hire me, and I can reconsider if I want to work for them.
Of course it does help, to be able to pull that off, to be very good at what you do. Then again, if I were conducting a job interview(and I do)... seeing just how far someone would spread cheek would tell me a lot about them.
This is so stoopid. Everyone knows all the real ganstas use My Space.
Gonna be hard to explain why your face is on another FB page with your name on it.
What about FREEPER postings???? Those live on forever.
How about voting for?
Good for you. Unless the job was for a LEO or some thing like that its none of their GD business what the S/N of your firearms are or if you even own any.
MySpace has pretty much become obsolete.
FB essentially became the standard in the last 12 mos.
This is a type of social media site...
Can I have your password?
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