Manuel Valdes of Associated Press reports:
A Democratic senator from Connecticut is writing a bill that would stop the practice of employers asking job applicants for their Facebook or other social media passwords, he told The Associated Press on Thursday.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said that such a practice is an “unreasonable invasion of privacy for people seeking work.’’
Read more on Boston.com.
This is exactly the type of privacy-protective legislation I had hoped Senator Blumenthal would promote when he was elected to Congress. I hope that both parties treat this in a nonpartisan way, but it will be interesting to see how this bill gets lobbied (for and against). Will state AGs argue that state agencies should be allowed to do this? What FUD will be used?
It’s a shame that it’s come to this – that we need laws to stop businesses from being so intrusive of employees’ or potential employees’ privacy. But then, we’ve also seen an upsurge in states invading privacy via drug-testing laws and mandated ultrasounds, and we’ve seen schools increasingly invading students’ privacy via searches and penalizing them for out-of-school speech and activities.
So good luck to Senator Blumenthal and let’s hope this is a positive sign that Americans have found a straw that broke the camel’s back on privacy invasions.