Social Media Privacy Protection Act Moving Forward in State House

The rapid change of technology creates problems never anticipated by all levels of government, which are often slow to adapt. If someone had suggested ten years ago a need to consider how Facebook and Twitter impacted our daily lives, people would have considered them crazy, mainly because Facebook and Twitter hadn’t even been invented yet.

As technology advances and social media makes the world a smaller and in many ways more intimate place, we have to consider what the appropriate lines should be for protecting personal privacy as it relates to the workplace. Just how much should your employer really be allowed to know about you so long as it doesn’t impact your job performance?

Personally, I believe your employer or prospective employer should only be allowed to see as much as you are willing to put out for the public to see. Private messages between family, friends and significant others should be just that—private. Unfortunately, some employers in some states have been asking for passwords to the social media accounts of individual employees and prospective employees. This would allow them to log into your account as you and see all the things you never intended anyone else to see.

I believe this practice is wrong, and I have written The bill was approved last week by the House Labor and Industry Committee with a bipartisan 25-0 vote and is now headed to the full House of Representatives for consideration.

I introduced the legislation after the practice made national headlines last year, when a state corrections officer in Maryland complained that the Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services sought his password to search personal Facebook posts during a re-certification interview. As a result, Maryland became the first state to ban the practice in 2012.

Employers should not be able to take advantage of a tough job market by forcing employees or prospective employees to give away their personal information. This is the online equivalent of forcing someone to give up their house key so an employer can go and dig around through their underwear drawer, and this invasion of fundamental privacy rights should be stopped.

Following Maryland’s lead, similar workplace protections were enacted in Arkansas, California, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico and Utah, while a similar bill in New Jersey was recently sent to the governor.

Companies open themselves to lawsuits by this practice because viewing an individual’s private profile might uncover membership in a protected class that the applicant might not wish to publicly disclose. In this case, the employer would be privy to sensitive and protected personal information, increasing its exposure to discrimination lawsuits.

Social media users should always use caution about what they post online, because employers do have time-tested and effective screening methods to secure quality employees. However, this type of password-protected access could give employers information they could never ask about otherwise under federal law, such as whether you are pregnant or ill.

The bill does not restrict an employer's right to maintain workplace policies or monitor an employee's use of electronic communications devices, the Internet, social media or email accounts while at work.

The Social Media Privacy Protection Act is a common sense, balanced approach to the kind of new issues we need to address as technology improves and expands into our daily lives. HB 1130 protects the privacy of workers and protects companies from unnecessary legal liability. Hopefully the bill will continue to move through the legislative process and become law soon.