

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

======
wccrawford
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-lee
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.

~~~
wccrawford
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'.

~~~
hippee-lee
True, everyone has something to hide. My point was that if the manager/company
interviewing me want's me to show them everything by asking for my login/pwd's
they should be willing to provide me with the same out of mutual respect when
I ask. If they are willing to ask me to provide that personal detail yet are
not willing to reciprocate (on both the managerial and company level) , what
does that tell me about the value they place on their employees? Our
relationship is already getting off to a poor start.

I'm all with you when you suggest that people stop working for
unethical/abusive companies. One way to figure out how much they value their
employees is during the interview process when you have the chance to ask them
smart questions. Employment is a two way street and the more tools employees
have to make it an equal give/take relationship the better for all.

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

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

------
angdis
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).

~~~
paulhauggis
"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.

~~~
chimeracoder
> 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.

~~~
ericd
You're creating all kinds of strawmen here. Pot being banned doesn't make
people smoke crack.

And sure, it's legal and ethical for an employer not to want to employ anyone
they don't want to work with, as long as it's not a protected class. Drug use
wasn't one of those, last I checked. It's not necessarily a smart idea to fire
qualified people who smoke pot on their own time just because you don't like
the idea of having pot smokers represent your company, but it's not wrong.

~~~
mattmanser
It's not wrong for your employer to start dictating what you do on your own
time?

Damn you Americans have one fucked up country, all hail your corporate
overlords!

Guess who doesn't take those tests too? The CEOs and the directors and the
partners. They can snort as much coke as they want, but woe betide the worker
bees doing it.

The utter hypocrisy of it all is astounding.

~~~
ericd
You're missing the point - it's their right to employ who they want (with a
few mandated exceptions), just as it's the workers' right to work for whomever
they want. Yes, some employers use that right to make decisions based on poor
metrics, but that's the price of freedom for all, and other employers who
aren't bigoted can benefit.

------
Karunamon
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
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+?

~~~
Karunamon
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.

------
RobertKohr
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
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.

------
noarchy
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?

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

~~~
paulhauggis
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...

~~~
angdis
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).

~~~
baddox
If you say "yes," it means you preferred the job to the alternative
(unemployment). Like every other decision in your life, you either prefer one
option or the other. I dislike the weaseling rhetoric of "I didn't _really_
want to give up my passwords, but I _had_ to find a job." That just means that
finding a job is more important to you than keeping your passwords secret.

~~~
ubernostrum
And this, kids, is the bridge that takes libertarianism from "force and fraud
are wrong" to "but luckily there's no such thing as force or fraud when _I_ do
it".

~~~
paulhauggis
It isn't force. Employees aren't slaves. They can start a business or move
onto a company that doesn't ask for any of this info.

This is why the majority of people starting a business, fail. Looking at the
comments here, people just give up at the first sign of trouble (or need mommy
and daddy government to step in and make decisions on their behalf).

~~~
potatolicious
I downvoted you for blatant use of a straw man and an ad hominem attack of
pretty much everyone who's disagreed with you by categorically stating that
they're all looking for "mommy and daddy".

> _"They can start a business or move onto a company that doesn't ask for any
> of this info."_

Riiiiiiight. Because the blacks totally had _that_ choice. And the women! And
the Irish! And the Jews! It's kind of weird to me how libertarians model the
world so simply - where culture doesn't exist, humans are perfectly rational
actors, and all systems are 100% efficient. Real life isn't game theory.

------
nirvana
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.)

~~~
barrkel
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.)

~~~
nirvana
> (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.

~~~
barrkel
My "assertion" comes from real-life experience. It's been demonstrated to me
in substance, not as some "liberal ideological belief" - that kind of insult
has no place in an intelligent discussion either.

I expounded further here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3826441>

You could do with re-reading the guidelines -
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> \- specifically:

 _Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it
makes boring reading._

 _Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you._

Your specific baiting played a significant part - perhaps 70% - in my decision
to downvote, the other 30% was because the comment was so high on the page (it
was first IIRC), and such a wrongheaded comment (by my experience, not my
ideology) being afforded such prominence disturbed me.

PS: value is highest for me from HN when I ignore politicized topics like this
one. But sometimes I get sucked in. Don't leave in a huff simply because of
this; it's not worth it.

