Tobi Cohen reports: Canada’s privacy commissioner has received a formal complaint about a controversial new survey that requires current and would-be border officers to share deeply personal and potentially incriminating information if they want to keep or get a job. According to Anne-Marie Hayden, a spokeswoman for Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart, the office is now “looking at…
Category: Workplace
Governor Brown signs online privacy laws
Patrick McGreevy reports: College students will have free digital access to many textbooks, receive more warning about tuition hikes and have their social media accounts protected from snooping university officials under measures approved by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday. The new privacy laws also prohibit employers from asking workers or job applicants for their email…
Plaintiff has to turn over emotional social media content in employment lawsuit
Evan Brown writes: Plaintiff sued her former employer for discrimination and emotional distress. In discovery, defendant employer sought from plaintiff all of her social media content that revealed her “emotion, feeling, or mental state,” or related to “events that could be reasonably expected to produce a significant emotion, feeling, or mental state.” The case is…
Stepped-up computer monitoring of federal workers worries privacy advocates
Lisa Rein reports: When the Food and Drug Administration started spying on a group of agency scientists, it installed monitoring software on their laptop computers to capture their communications. The software, sold by SpectorSoft of Vero Beach, Fla., could do more than vacuum up the scientists’ e-mails as they complained to lawmakers and others about…