Legislator introducing legislation to formally ban practice
Calling it one of the most abusive practices he has seen, state Rep. Paul Opsommer today announced that he will introduce legislation to make it illegal for employers to ask for access or passwords to the private portions of people’s social networking sites. Opsommer has heard of some cases where employers have even asked for private email passwords.
“This is beyond outrageous,” said Opsommer, R-DeWitt. “If 50 years ago as part of the interview process an employer said they needed to look through your mail or put a bug on your phone before they would hire you there is no way the practice would be tolerated. That is essentially what these employers are now starting to do.
“For people who choose to use Facebook, if through privacy settings there are things that they only want their closest family members to see, there is very little reason why a potential employer should have access to that. They don’t have a legal right to see private pictures of a newborn in a birthing room, or to read a person’s private conversations with loved ones over the loss of a grandparent, or see that you have Friended people from a specific organization, church, or group if you don’t put that information on the public portion of your page. This could effectively make all privacy settings meaningless. People should not have to choose between the internet age or becoming a Luddite if they want to continue to relate to their family and friends on personal level.”
Opsommer said that whether it is an employer who specifically asks for a password, or one that would attempt to force or coerce a person to “friend” them at the highest sharing level, that both current employees and potential interviewers have a right to try to keep portions of their professional and private lives separate.
“I don’t think anyone argues that there aren’t security sensitive jobs out there that require a background check,” Opsommer said. “Those things are still going to continue, and for anyone foolish enough to post things onto Facebook in a public way where the whole world can see, I think all job applicants know that in this day and age an informal check on anyone is just a search engine away. But what we are talking about here is fundamentally different, and giving away passwords for Facebook and email accounts is not something I think a person should have to do in exchange for an interview. Just because we have lost some privacy to the computer age doesn’t mean we should lose all our rights.”
Opsommer said it is also important to have the conversation now, because if left unchecked it could quickly spread from interviewees to current employees. He also has concerns that people who don’t make their entire webpages public by default or who don’t use Facebook at all would be discriminated against.
“It will put job applicants and employees into a horrible catch-22 situation,” Opsommer said. “Once people understand that they can’t share something with their mother that they also don’t have to be willing to share with their boss, the amount of self-censorship will reach the point where people will stop using Facebook. I envision many scenarios where that will hurt the job applicant’s chances, either because the company will think they are being lied to or that the applicant has something to hide.”
Opsommer said the other obvious problem is that once someone turns over their passwords then other people can upload things onto the websites or send emails in their name. If they were interviewing with several different companies, it would be difficult to determine who did it. He also said that some hirer’s claims that handing over Facebook and email passwords is somehow strictly voluntary is nonsense.
“We have huge unemployment right now,” Opsommer said. “If people have to put food on the table, while I would hope most would still refuse to go along with this, it still seems like an unfair choice for people to have to make. If legally they can do this, then they could also ask to see your private cell phone on the spot to read your last 10 texts. They could flip through your contact list and calendar. If this precedent is allowed the possibilities are endless.”
Opsommer said he hopes to have the legislation introduced in April and will ask for a quick hearing. He also said he would be talking to his colleagues in Congress to see what can also be done on the federal level.