State Rep. Paul Opsommer today voted to pass House Bill 5523 out of the House Energy and Technology Committee.
The bill, sponsored by state Representative Aric Nesbitt, would ensure that employers could not ask to be given password access to people’s personal Internet accounts, such as for social networking, email, or banking, as a prerequisite to get an interview or to keep a job.
Rep. Opsommer thanked both the bill sponsor and Committee Chairman Ken Horn for their work on the bill.
“Technology is often moving faster than legislation can keep up,” 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 it simply would not have been tolerated. We may now live in a digital age that makes such sharing possible, but just because this private information would be useful for an employer to know doesn’t mean they have a right to it, any more than they have a right to read your diary.”
Opsommer said that while most people are on board with the bill that some feel technology should trump privacy because it could help employers in the hiring process.
“I firmly reject this idea that just because truly private information would be useful to others that we should turn a blind eye to our fundamental rights,” said Opsommer. “That idea seems very similar to me in how the federal government is trying to justify their expansion of the census and their decision to release private census information to the agencies and businesses. I believe it to be a very traditional and conservative stance to push back against the efforts of those looking to turn peoples’ lives into their own personal fish bowl just because the law has not kept pace with the digital age”.
In addition to providing employee protection, the bill also applies to schools so that students do not have to grant private access to social networking accounts as a prerequisite to apply for or get accepted to a university.
HB 5523 now heads to the full House for consideration.