On Mar 7, 1:18 pm, Travis <baconl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> ** **
>
> *State agencies, colleges demand applicants' Facebook passwords*
>
> By Bob Sullivan****
>
> If you think privacy settings on your Facebook and Twitter accounts
> guarantee future employers or schools can't see your private posts, guess
> again.****
>
> Employers and colleges find the treasure-trove of personal information
> hiding behind password-protected accounts and privacy walls just too
> tempting, and some are demanding full access from job applicants and
> student athletes.****
>
> In Maryland, job seekers applying to the state's Department of Corrections
> have been asked during interviews to log into their accounts and let an
> interviewer watch while the potential employee clicks through wall posts,
> friends, photos and anything else that might be found behind the privacy
> wall.****
> ------------------------------
>
> Previously, applicants were asked to surrender their user name and
> password, but a complaint from the ACLU stopped that practice last year.
> While submitting to a Facebook review is voluntary, virtually all
> applicants agree to it out of a desire to score well in the interview,
> according Maryland ACLU legislative director Melissa Coretz Goemann. ****
>
> Student-athletes in colleges around the country also are finding out they
> can no longer maintain privacy in Facebook communications because schools
> are requiring them to "friend" a coach or compliance officer, giving that
> person access to their "friends-only" posts. Schools are also turning to
> social media monitoring companies with names like UDilligence and Varsity
> Monitor for software packages that automate the task. The programs offer a
> "reputation scoreboard" to coaches and send "threat level" warnings about
> individual athletes to compliance officers.****
>
> A recent revision in the handbook at the University of North Carolina is
> typical:****
>
> "Each team must identify at least one coach or administrator who is
> responsible for having access to and regularly monitoring the content of
> team members' social networking sites and postings," it reads. "The
> athletics department also reserves the right to have other staff members
> monitor athletes' posts."****
>
> All this scrutiny is too much for Bradley Shear, a Washington D.C.-lawyer
> who says both schools and employers are violating the First Amendment with
> demands for access to otherwise private social media content.****
>
> "I can't believe some people think it's OK to do this," he said. "Maybe
> it's OK if you live in a totalitarian regime, but we still have a
> Constitution to protect us. It's not a far leap from reading people's
> Facebook posts to reading their email. ... As a society, where are we going
> to draw the line?"****
>
> Aside from the free speech concerns, Shear also thinks colleges take on
> unnecessary liability when they aggressively monitor student posts.****
>
> "What if the University of Virginia had been monitoring accounts in the
> Yeardley Love case and missed signals that something was going to happen?"
> he said, referring to a notorious campus murder. "What about the liability
> the school might have?"****
>
> Shear has gotten the attention of Maryland state legislators, who have
> proposed two separate bills aimed at banning social media access by schools
> and potential employers. The ACLU is aggressively supporting the bills.****
>
> "This is an invasion of privacy. People have so much personal information
> on their pages now. A person can treat it almost like a diary," said
> Goemann, the Maryland ACLU legislative director. "And (interviewers and
> schools) are also invading other people's privacy. They get access to that
> individual's posts and all their friends. There is a lot of private
> information there."****
>
> Maryland's Department of Corrections policy first came to light last year,
> when corrections officer Robert Collins complained to the ACLU that he was
> forced to surrender his Facebook user name and password during an
> interview. The state agency suspended the policy for 45 days, and
> eventually settled on the "shoulder-surfing" substitute.****
>
> "My fellow officers and I should not have to allow the government to view
> our personal Facebook posts and those of our friends just to keep our
> jobs," Collins said to the ACLU*
> *at<http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/want-job-password-please>the
> time.
> ****
>
> Agency spokesman Rick Binetti confirmed the new policy, but wouldn't
> comment on it or the proposed law which may ban it.****
>
> It's easy to see why an agency that hires prison guards would want to sneak
> a peek at potential employees' private online lives. Goemann said that
> prisons are trying to avoid hiring guards with potential gang ties -- the
> agency told the ACLU it had reviewed 2,689 applicants via social media, and
> denied employment to seven because of items found on their pages.****
>
> "All seven of these individuals' social media applications contained
> pictures of them showing verified gang signs (signs commonly known to law
> enforcement which are utilized by gangs)," the Department of Corrections
> told the ACLU in response to questions it asked about the program.* *It
> stressed the voluntary nature of social media inspection, noting that five
> of the 80 employees hired in the last three hiring cycles didn't provide
> access. ****
>
> For student athletes, though, the access isn't voluntary. No access, no
> sports.****
>
> "They're saying to students if you want to play, you have to friend a
> coach. That's very troubling," said Shear, the D.C. lawyer. "A good
> analogy for this, in the offline world, would it be acceptable for schools
> to require athletes to bug their off-campus apartments? Does a school have
> a right to know who all your friends are?"****
>
> There have been many high-profile embarrassing moments born of the toxic
> combination of student-athletes and Twitter. North Carolina defensive
> lineman Marvin Austin tweeted about expensive purchases on his account two
> years ago, then became subject of an NCAA investigation about improper
> conduct with a player agent. The incident led, in part, to the school's
> aforementioned aggressive social media policy.****
>
> So it's not surprising that many schools want to keep a careful eye on what
> students are posting online.****
>
> But avoiding an uncomfortable moment is not a good enough reason to squash
> free speech, Spear says. Plenty of settled case law in the U.S. sides with
> students' rights to express themselves publicly, he said, including
> numerous cases involving student newspapers. Public displays of protest
> are also protected: A landmark 1969 Supreme Court decisions known as Tinker
> vs. the Des Moines School District said school officials couldn't prevent
> students from wearing armbands protesting the Vietnam War as long as they
> weren't inciting violence.****
>
> Colleges have legitimate concerns about the things students post on social
> media accounts, but they should "deal with that issue the way they deal
> with everything else. They should educate," Shear said.****
>
> "Schools are in the business of educating, not spying," he added. "We don't
> hire private investigators to follow students wherever they go. If students
> say stupid things online, they should educate them ... not engage in prior
> restraint."****
>
> Goemann also noted that the rush to social media monitoring raises an often
> overlooked legal concern: It's against Facebook's Terms of Service.****
>
> "You will not share your password ... let anyone else access your account
> or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account,"
> the site says in its policies. ****
>
> Frederic Wolens, a Facebook spokesman, wouldn't comment on the Maryland
> legislative proposals, but he said many of these school and employer
> policies appear to violate the site's terms.****
>
> "Under our terms, only the holder of the email address and password is
> considered the Facebook account owner. We also prohibit anyone from
> soliciting the login information or accessing an account belonging to
> someone else," he said in a statement to msnbc.com. Wolens said Facebook
> has yet to take a position on collegiate social media monitoring.****
>
> Social media monitoring on colleges, while spreading quickly among athletic
> departments, seems to be limited to athletes at the moment. There's nothing
> stopping schools from applying the same policies to other students,
> however. And Shear says he's heard from college applicants that
> interviewers have requested Facebook or Twitter login information during
> in-person screenings.****
>
> The practice seems less common among employers, but scattered incidents are
> gaining attention from state lawmakers. The blog Tecca.com last year showed
> what it said was an image of an application for a clerical
> job<http://www.tecca.com/news/2011/11/30/facebook-password-jobs>with a
> North Carolina police department that included the following
> question:****
>
> "Do you have any web page accounts such as Facebook, Myspace, etc.? If so,
> list your username and password." ****
>
> And the state of Illinois has followed Maryland's lead and is considering
> similar legislation to ban social media password demands by employers. ****
>
> But Shear says a patchwork of state laws isn't good enough when the stakes
> are this high.****
>
> "We need a federal law dealing with this," he said. "After 9/11, we have a
> culture where some people think it's OK for the government to be this
> involved in our lives, that it's OK to turn everything over to the
> government. But it's not. We still have privacy rights in this country, and
> we still have a Constitution."****
>
> ** **
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