Maryland bans employers from asking for employee social media passwords

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/09/maryland-bans-employers-from-asking-for-employee-social-media-passwords/

by Suraj-Sun • 14 years ago

100 76 14 years ago

dailycaller.com

paulhauggis5• 14 years ago

"no" has been replaced by laws and regulations. Nice.

paulhauggis5• 14 years ago

It's true. People can't be adults and say "No", so they have to have laws passed to do it for them.

It's a strange world we live in...

angdis4• 14 years ago

In theory I agree, but for people who are in a situation where jobs are not plentiful, saying "no" is not a realistic option. Unless, of course, one is willing to back-up that "no" with arbitrarily expensive legal wrangling (which also happens to blacklist the individual with other employers).

ktizo2• 14 years ago

no. just, no. but go read this, you may find it strangely soothing.

http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/

loverobots• 14 years ago

You can still say "NO," but when rent is due and you're down to the last pack of diapers, you cannot afford to be that brave. Real life and all

hippee-lee7• 14 years ago

You can also anticipate this with a fake account just for that purpose. Sure you can have my login, I joined a while ago but I am not very active on there.

bishnu2• 14 years ago

There's a difference between "no" and a "no + no economic coercion".

banthar2• 14 years ago

Earning money usually means doing lots of hard and unpleasant things. Giving your facebook login information is hardly the worst thing employer can ask you to do. Why is it so special? How do you determine what should and what shouldn't be allowed?

angdis4• 14 years ago

Good of them to do that and nip this practice in the bud before it has a chance to become widespread.

After having just pee'd in cup last week for a pre-employment screen, I do hope that someday governments will also ban senseless and stupid drug testing for jobs that don't actually require 24/7 sobriety (eg software engineering).

untog• 14 years ago

When I moved to the US I was absolutely blown away at how common this practise is. A friend applying for a common office job had to do it- I had assumed it would only be for people handling live firearms and the like. Little did I know...

drucken2• 14 years ago

The only place I know it is routine outside of the US is in trading roles for banks.

Then again, many financials are American...

paulhauggis5• 14 years ago

"ban senseless and stupid drug testing for jobs that don't actually require 24/7 sobriety (eg software engineering)."

It should be my right as an employer to hire anyone that I wish (just like it is your right as an employee to not accept a position or quit).

You say it has no effect, but you can't tell me it has no effect on productivity, I just won't believe it (I've known too many pot heads in my life). Also, if my company required my employees to be on-call with customer support, I don't want someone under the influence of anything handling these sorts of emergencies.

If you ban drug testing, employers will just hire people who they think are drug users less often and you won't really be able to prove it.

drucken2• 14 years ago

I hate with all my passion recreational drug users or to be more precise, of those who make their behaviour known or otherwise affect my life.

However, for the purpose of employment, drug testing is needlessly intrusive in all but a few special cases. It is just simply not needed and risks creating far more problems than it attempts to solve.

Going down the path of money trumps all other concerns or "perfect market results in perfect results", you would soon arrive at a "Gattaca" situation and beyond where unless every single DNA base you possess is perfect, every behaviour is perfect from birth, everyone you have ever networked with is similiarly perfect, etc., you will never be employable or move beyond a specific bracket alloted to you by society. In the meantime, costs to existing businesses and challenges to entrants would skyrocket in a self-defeating spiral, while incredible talent that may suit your company dies by the wayside unused or misallocated.

Drug testing and much more, as technology now and in future allows, may be fine for the cutting edge of physical endeavours or positions of massive responsibility for human individuals where even a second of downtime could make or break a company, but for anyone else, that is well beyond reasonable.

A basic analogy in one respect would be like applying military critical software certification standards and testing for bug-free processes (the kind that causes operating systems and software designed in the 70s to still be used) in all software ever produced from now...

chimeracoder• 14 years ago

> It should be my right as an employer to hire anyone that I wish (just like it is your right as an employee to not accept a position or quit).

Would you also refuse to hire an employee who drinks heavily on Friday/Saturday nights, yet never once comes to work drunk? Furthermore, would this even be legal (or ethical)?

Drug testing in the work environment has been shown to be counterproductive for many reasons. Since you seem to care more about the practical impact (not the ethical one), I'll focus on this one: marijuana remains detectable in the system for two weeks after use, whereas most drugs (like cocaine) are undetectable after two days.

So what's the message that you're sending your employees? 'On Friday night, rather than use marijuana, I'd prefer it if you used cocaine or methamphetamine instead.' That way, they'll be sure to pass Monday's drug test, which they'd have failed if they had been 'foolish' enough to inhale from a bong instead of a crack pipe/meth pipe!

So even if you think your employees shouldn't use drugs on their own time, even if it never affects their work, drug testing in the workplace is the worst way to encourage healthy behavior.

barrkel3• 14 years ago

It should be my right as an employer to hire anyone that I wish

No, it is not your right; it must not be that absolute. That gives free reign to racist and other discriminatory practices, and the greater good absolutely and certainly trumps one's individual right here.

The kinds of practice you are advocating here - absolute freedom on the part of employers - have had a strong part in fomenting civil war and terrorism in various places around the world. Closest to my own home, Protestant practices in Northern Ireland - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_in_Northern_Irelan... - and laws curbing this kind of segregation have had significant effects in reversing it.

It's hard for me to express how certain I am that the real world (tm) has proven your point of view wrong here. People do kill over this.

angdis4• 14 years ago

Sorry, but productivity is best measured by evidence previous work-- not one's piss, blood, hair, or facebook friends.

The other reason that drug testing is senseless and stupid is that it is imprecise. "False positives" do wreck careers and/or cause enormous hardship on good people, you might call it collateral damage, but to the people it occurs to it is a disaster.

In my own case, I had been scheduled to submit to a hair test as pre-employment screen. I showed up at the testing facility and was told my hair was too short and that a urine sample was required instead. These are different tests and the urine sample does check for alcohol consumption whereas the hair test does not. The previous night I shared a bottle of wine with dinner with my wife and I had also taken advil because of the headache induced by the stress of giving my termination notice at work. Everything turned out OK, but the stress caused by worrying about a stupid false positive because of the wine, advil, or my prescription was really not a nice experience. If there had been a false positive, I would have been begging for mercy, disclosing my drug prescription, explaining away the advil and wine. I guess some people would see value/pleasure in that. I fucking don't.

drcube• 14 years ago

It should be your right to fire poor performers, regardless of their drug history, and your right to continue the employment of top performers, regardless of their drug history.

If someone isn't up to snuff, cut them loose. If someone works hard, smart and productively every day, why do you care what they do in their off time?

This isn't like mandating your employees be sober, which is a worthwhile rule. But imagine if you had a test which would detect whether an employee has had a beer any time within the past month. Do you think that would be a worthwhile test to base their employment on?

It's a waste of money in addition to a violation of privacy. Fire the people who don't perform to your expectations. Keep the ones who do. How hard is that?

carguy1983• 14 years ago

Half the people in silicon valley are stoned nearly every night. Including all the ones that work at Google, FB, Twitter, whatever.

Trust me, I've known a lot of pot heads too.

Whoever you are, stay the hell out of California please.

nirvana5• 14 years ago

It was the US government that created the drug testing for jobs, when they passed laws requiring it for a variety of government jobs. This had a secondary effect of requiring it for private employers working with government, and then it grew from there.

I did it once, many years ago, and then adopted a policy of refusing it (even though I don't use drugs or even alcohol.)

hippee-lee7• 14 years ago

What I find funny about the drug testing policy is how easy it is to circumvent and the side industry that exists to provide the tools needed to circumvent it.

I could see the same thing happening if employers started requiring social media credentials. An new kind of social network would have an easy differentiator - "Come to our new social network, along with everything else, you can trust us because we give you two logins: a secure login that you keep for yourself and a compromised login that you give to the government and your employer."

tocomment• 14 years ago

But how can you work on your side projects that employers expect you to have done if you're not sober 24/7?

glimcat• 14 years ago

Headline actually understates it. It sounds like the real deal was less microtargeted than the headline implies: according to the article, they banned "requiring or requesting employees or job applicants to disclose electronic passwords, such as for social media sites."

seanp2k2• 14 years ago

That is awesome and exactly what I was hoping would happen.

Cali, you're up next (I hope!)

Karunamon2• 14 years ago

The armchair lawyer in me would love to see someone attempt to take one of these companies to court for tortious interference with a contract - as in the one that every single Facebook user has with Facebook where they agree to not share their password.

wmf• 14 years ago

We may not like where that line of thinking leads. Should Facebook be able to stop you from installing AdBlock or privacy tools as well? What if they say you can't join Google+?

Karunamon2• 14 years ago

The difference being that Adblock or Google+ does not interact with Facebook's services. They do, on the other hand, have every valid right to determine who interacts with their service and how.

georgemcbay• 14 years ago

Another potential vector is a discrimination lawsuit.

Considering how careful most companies are to avoid any interview questions that would possibly open them up to this sort of thing, I'm kind of shocked the same organizations are silly enough to ask for a Facebook password in the first place.

Ask for password -> log into applicant's Facebook account -> Facebook account clearly identifies the subject as an openly gay Muslim -> applicant is denied job.

Because of discrimination? Maybe, maybe not, but prying into the applicant's Facebook account certainly opens the door to it being a reasonable possibility, just the same as asking them what their race/religion/sexual orientation is in an interview would.

nirvana5• 14 years ago

Integrity is standing on principle, even when you don't like the outcome. Thus integrity requires me to point out that in this case, Maryland is violating people's rights.

While I think employers should not ask for these passwords, and don't have a "right" to, I also have the right-- freedom of association-- to not give them the password, and not work for companies that would even ask.

Maryland is interfering with these rights. Maryland is violating freedom of association by dictating what terms people might choose to associate under. I doubt the Maryland constitution gives them the power to do that, and certainly many interpretations of the Bill of Rights have claimed that they restrict state's lawmaking ability.

I don't know what employers might reasonably want this information. Possibly an employer might wish to conduct a background check for a highly security intensive position, and this check might involve access to some website (lets assume it is not Facebook) that the applicant feels perfectly comfortable with them seeing. Further, this access could be conducted with the employee present, with the employee changing the password immediately before giving the access and then changing it again immediately after, resulting in no ongoing access. I don't know what situation someone might find it reasonable to do this-- I can't know.

But neither can the government of Maryland. The problem with these kinds of laws is that they always have unintended consequences, and at the end of the day, any violation of peoples rights-- even with "good intentions" (though I bet this law exempts the state of Maryland itself) -- will result in less optimal outcomes.

For instance, consider the situation where this law is challenged and then upheld. That would establish a precedent that says the state can interfere with freedom of association, and such precedent might be used to undermine freedom of association in areas where we do care about preserving it. This has happened many times in the past-- for instance the "interstate commerce clause", which doesn't actually grant broad powers, but very narrow ones, has been rewritten via precedent to give the federal government essentially unlimited power, even where no commerce between states occurs.

I expect to be down voted for expressing this unpopular opinion. But hopefully Hacker News is the kind of place where making an argument -- even if most people disagree with it-- is respected. (and I'm curious to find out, having recently seen instances of it going both ways.)

mootothemax• 14 years ago

I also have the right-- freedom of association-- to not give them the password, and not work for companies that would even ask.

That right also, sadly, depends on how much choice you have in the first place. What about those in less fortunate positions, the cleaners of the world if you will, who need a job, and need it now?

Surely in such cases, an individual's perceived rights disappear as their desperation to pay the rent increases?

nirvana5• 14 years ago

I think it helps in these kinds of situations to imagine that instead of a job we're talking about, there's a girl. You're really desperate because your mother is hounding you to get a girlfriend and all your friends are teasing you about how maybe you're gay, but you're ugly as sin and no girl wants to go out with you. You ask a girl to go out with you, but she says she won't consider it unless you shave your head. Do you have a right to force her to date you without having any requirements? That's what the State of Maryland is doing here- they're forcing one member of an association to give up the freedom to decide not to associate based on some arbitrary (and we all agree) stupid criteria.

However, back to jobs, even if you're poor, you still have the right to refuse. Just as even if there aren't a lot of girls in your town you may not want to shave your head to date your first choice. Desperation doesn't remove choice.

Further, the way things work out, there are a whole lot fewer Chairman of Goldman Sacks type jobs than there are janitor type jobs. Thus the fewer skills you have, the more jobs there are to choose from. This makes sense if you think about it- unskilled means no special training, so there are lots of industries that one might work in. While being skilled means training which immediately limits the number of industries where that training is relevant.

People want to accumulate skills and valuable ones, not because there are more jobs the more skill you have, but because there are fewer, and thus they are higher paying because there are even fewer people who can do them.

Further, remember that every employer is competing with each other. Employers do compete on quality of life for their employees.

I've seen others compare someone's assumed need for a job to a form of coercion-- as if because you imagine they might "really need" the job, then they're being "coerced" into submitting to something that we all disagree with.

But this is, strictly speaking, factually incorrect. Coercions is compelling someone to behave in an involuntary way. Even if-- and I think this is an absurd hypothetical-- there were absolutely no other possible jobs you could do, there's no coercion here if you're asked for your password and refuse and thus don't get the job.

Coercion would be the situation if, when you refused, not only did you not get the job, but they broke your kneecaps. It would have be an act that the employer threatened to do to you if you didn't comply. Your external situation cannot make it coercive.

I think this is the problem that a lot of people have-- they confuse need with right, and thus actually advocate coercion -- the coercion here is the State of Maryland which has threatened prosecution if a company violates this law.

A job is an expression of freedom of association, and people have that freedom on both ends. That is to say, the employer has the freedom to not hire people for arbitrary reasons (e.g.: programmer knows C++ but not Java, doesn't get the job.) These reasons might be stupid, but using stupid reasons is competitively disadvantageous.

By the same token, employees have the right to refuse to take a job for arbitrary reasons (I won't work anywhere that makes me write windows software, for instance.) That choice lowered my income for some years (then it had the opposite effect later.)

binarymax• 14 years ago

Are you married? Have any children? Expecting a child? What is your sexual orientation? Democrat or Republican? Do you have communist leanings perhaps? Have you ever had cancer? Any other health problems? ...and so on.

States enact laws preventing employers from asking these questions for very good reasons. Most of this information can easily be obtained by accessing a persons Facebook account.

Your argument presents several hypotheticals. I would not trust a potential employer to do any of them. Not because they are evil, but because are charged with protecting the company from unwanted employees. And the definition of unwanted in that situation varies wildly from one to another.

It's good that you have integrity. People should stand up to such nonsense. But if you have a red flag on Facebook and everywhere you apply asks for your password, then you are SOL.

barrkel3• 14 years ago

Employers usually have significant power advantages over those they employ, and they may abuse that power. In particular, discrimination for reasons of race, religion, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. is pernicious and has been a demonstrated historical problem in lots of different places all over the world. With access to a person's Facebook, a prospective employer most likely has all the information they need to act on their own prejudices.

For background checks, frankly I believe a licensed, disinterested third party should perform them where they are necessary.

(I downvoted you because I strongly disagreed with you. Freedom of association is a poor defense for permitting discrimination, particularly where employment is concerned, IMO.)

nirvana5• 14 years ago

> (I downvoted you because I strongly disagreed with you. Freedom of association is a poor defense for permitting discrimination, particularly where employment is concerned, IMO.)

Exactly, you don't wish to engage in intelligent discussion, you're punishing me for not being politically correct.

> Employers usually have significant power advantages

Unlike this and the other assertions you made, I actually made arguments to defend my position. What you've given here is the standard liberal ideological beliefs.

Don't worry, you're not the only one-- this is true of everyone else who responded to me.

You all chose convenience over principle, you all ignored my argument and you all gave me unintelligent answers.

Hacker News is not a place for intelligent discussion.

rmc• 14 years ago

By that logic nearly the vast majority of laws (e.g. minimum wage laws, discrimination laws, etc.) would have to be struck down. This would lead to an outcome that lots of people wouldn't like, and hence lots of people are willing to give the government some limited power for the greater good.

beedogs• 14 years ago

Okay.

What if these companies asked to inspect your home before making you an offer?

What if they were asking for your medical records?

Should a company be able to do whatever it wants to current or prospective employees? My lone alternative is to "work someplace else"? Really?

lps41• 14 years ago

This law actually does not exempt the state of Maryland. This whole fiasco was brought up in Maryland when someone applied for a State job (I believe at a prison) and his interviewer asked for his facebook password. The man contacted the ACLU after his interview.

nirvana5• 14 years ago

And now I have my answer. By standing on principle, and arguing for that principle, I've been down voted to negative one. When I responded, at length, with an explanation to someone who raised a vague disagreement, that was down voted as well.

Yet the people who have disagreed with me have not made arguments, mostly just drive by comments. Mostly assertion and characterization. And one person even admitted he was down voting me simply because he disagreed.

Hacker News is not a place where intelligent discussion can take place, and thus its a waste of time to participate here.

I'm tired of getting responses that aren't insightful disagreements, but vague unsupported assertions of partisanship. I'm tired of personal attacks when I make arguments and the fact that it seems most participants on HN are 20 something and very uneducated about the world. (which means you can't' refer to things that should be well known--like the fact that Apple got a license from Xerox for the inventions such as the mouse et al.)

Hacker News is a waste of time, and its getting blocked in my /etc/hosts file for now.

wccrawford2• 14 years ago

I'm usually on the side of 'government, get out of my life', but this practice is unusually unfair and far too useful for the companies to think there will continue to be the option of 'work somewhere else'.

Companies wouldn't dream of searching my car or house before hiring me. How they ever got the idea that they should be able to require my passwords is beyond me.

Social media would not have been the last step, either. Email passwords would have been next. And then searching personal computers, especially cellphones and laptops.

And once they were drunk with that power, what else would they require? "Permission" to tap your phones? That sounds ridiculous right now, but a year ago it would have been ridiculous for a company to ask for your personal passwords. And now we're having to enact laws against it.

I hope other states are quick to follow on this... Or that the federal government gets their heads out of their asses and passes it nation-wide. Wasn't that the whole point of the bill of rights? To protect freedom, nation-wide?

hippee-lee7• 14 years ago

It is a big deal, but no so big that we are on a slippery slope. There are many things that could happen to combat it.

Employees or prospective employees agree to give up said passwords only if hiring manager/company gives them their social media account passwords. I.E - If I have nothing to hide, you have nothing to hide. You know employer an employee can never be to sure who they are working for ...

An entire side industry might spring up entirely geared toward managing and tracking who sees what on your social networks or, social networks might respond by letting you set up two logins - one for safe log in that only you know and one for compromised login that you give to an employer when they compromise you.

I hope that long before the states need to pass more laws like this that employees or prospective employees would publicly avoid business/government agencies asking for social media logins. "I really wanted that great job at Great Company, but it has asked me for my social media logins and stated that it would hold the things I did as a teenager against me."

The public perception that it is wrong to ask an employee/prospective employee is very strong and the more negative marketing associated to an employer gets around that will not only keep other employees away but it will chip away the confidence existing employees have that they work for a good employer.

hippee-lee7• 14 years ago

I would appreciate knowing why I got down voted for this. Thanks.

wccrawford2• 14 years ago

I'm betting you got downvoted for the 'if you have nothing to hide' comment.

Everyone has something to hide. And even if they were some miraculous existence that didn't, their privacy is still their right.

Sure, something might eventually crop up to stop it, but in the meantime, it's happening now.

And finally, when I suggest that people stop working for unethical or abusive companies, they reply, "But people need to eat." ... Yeah. So if they'll put up with that level of abuse, there's no way they're going to refuse a job on the grounds of 'password privacy abuse'.

noarchy• 14 years ago

So how might this affect, for example, the practice of performing credit checks on prospective employees? A credit check can also reveal a lot about someone. How do we determine where the limits are?

RobertKohr• 14 years ago

Beyond the one fuzzy source that has been repeated my numerous media outlets, is there any evidence that this is actually going on? Any blogs where people are ranting about a specific company doing this?

It seems like a lot of people are up in arms about something that may not actually be a problem.

meiji• 14 years ago

Do we even have the names of companies that have done it or is it just one or two and the rest is just urban whispers making it sound like everyone does it?

I have, and will continue, to check people out on social networks using publicly available info but I wouldn't ask for account access any more than I would ask if I could go around to their house and read their mail. I will repeat though, information that they have placed in the public domain is fair game.

Maryland bans employers from asking for employee social media passwords

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