Employee Rights

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Your Facebook Password Should Be None of Your Boss’ Business

"It’s an invasion of privacy for private employers to insist on looking at people’s private Facebook pages as a condition of employment."

New Examples of Facebook Password Demands, Facebook's Response, and the Need for a New Law

By Ateqah Khaki at 3:29pm

Let your members of Congress know that you want a law that would protect your private social networking information!

High-Tech “Mind Readers” Are Latest Effort to Detect Lies

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 11:41am

I recently wrote about how difficult it is to know which technologies on the horizon will turn into genuine privacy nightmares and which remain menacing but distant threats. One group of technologies that we’ve had our eyes on for a while are those that purport to read minds. On Sunday the Washington Post ran an article on a Maryland case where a murder defendant is trying to introduce fMRI “lie detector” evidence in his defense. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) allows researchers to look at neural activity in real-time by using powerful magnets to trace blood-flow changes in the brain.

California Social Media Privacy Laws Give Students, Employees Online Rights

By Chris Conley, Technology and Civil Liberties Fellow, ACLU of Northern California at 11:15am

On Thursday California Governor Jerry Brown signed two bills into law that will protect the privacy of employee and college student social media accounts in the state of California. While these bills aren’t perfect, they are an important first step towards recognizing that our rights—including our fundamental right to privacy—apply just as much in the online world as in the offline.

Password Protection Act of 2012: A Good Start Against Employer Snooping

By Chris Calabrese, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:06pm

Today Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Representative Martin Heinrich (D-NM) and a number of cosponsors filed the Password Protection Act of 2012 in the Senate and House to prevent employers from strong-arming employers and job applicants into sharing information from their personal social networking accounts. It’s an important idea and one that we’ve been pushing for more than a year, but the bill itself doesn’t go as far as we think it should.

Maryland Passes Nation's First Social Media Privacy Protection Bill

By Melissa Coretz Goemann, ACLU of Maryland at 4:30pm

Just this week, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law the first bill in the nation prohibiting employers from requiring or requesting employees or job applicants to disclose their user names or passwords or any other means of accessing personal internet sites as a condition of employment.

It all started last year when Robert Collins came to the ACLU of Maryland still angry about the invasion of his privacy that he had to endure to get a job.   He had been forced to give his Facebook password to his past employer, the Maryland Department of Corrections, when he reapplied for his job after a leave of absence to deal with a the loss of a family member. While being interviewed, he was forced to turn over the password to his personal social media account and sat mortified as his interviewer logged onto his account and told him that he was looking through all his personal messages, wall postings, and family photos.   ACLU-MD took the case up and tried to resolve the issue with the Department but was not satisfied with the response. Fortunately for Maryland job seekers and employees, they will no longer have to make the difficult decision to choose between their privacy and a job. . 

Your Boss Shouldn’t Read Your Email

By Catherine Crump, Staff Attorney, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at 5:02pm

Senator Charles Grassley got it right: officials at the Food and Drug Administration “have absolutely no business reading the private e-mails of their employees.”

On Sunday, the New York Times ran a lengthy story detailing how the FDA monitored the communications of its own scientists, including communications with members of Congress, lawyers and journalists. Those scientists had blown the whistle on what they believed were flawed internal procedures that led to the approval of unsafe medical imaging devices. The FDA engaged in a massive email monitoring campaign to read their communications—including their private, personal emails. The emails that the FDA collected included those of a former member of Senator Grassley’s staff, presumably because he had exchanged messages with one or more of the targeted FDA officials.

Maryland Legislature to Employers: Hands Off Facebook Passwords

By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 4:13pm

Maryland just passed the nation's first-ever bill barring employers from asking for the social media passwords of job applicants and employees.

Status Update: Employers Asking For Your Facebook Password Violates Your Privacy and the Privacy of All Your Friends, Too

By Ateqah Khaki at 2:49pm

After the objections raised by the ACLU and others about this issue, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) announced that he is writing a federal bill to outlaw the practice.

18 More Cents...in 50 Years

By Deborah J. Vagins, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 10:58am

Over the last five decades, women have broken many barriers in education, business, and government. We need look no further than Congress to see the progress women have made: in 1963, Congress had only 14 women. In contrast, the new 113th Congress seated 97 women, the highest representation of women in United States history. The progress of women is also evident across the workforce. Today, women make up half of all workers in the United States and are increasingly becoming co- or primary breadwinners for their families.

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