The ACLU of Connecticut will tell a legislative committee today to stop the growing number of Connecticut employers that demand passwords to the personal email and social networking accounts of job applicants and employees.
David McGuire, staff attorney at ACLU of Connecticut will tell lawmakers, “This is not just about whether the applicant thought that dress was blue, white or gold or some other public posting. Employers are trying to access deeply personal messages between applicants and their friends, families and loved ones.”
McGuire added, “Emails and social media websites are the modern day equivalent of mail boxes. Employers are not permitted to search through an individual’s personal postal mail and accordingly they should not be able to rifle through protected electronic correspondences.”
Employer access to personal password protected “online-accounts”, including email and social media accounts, overrides the privacy protections users have erected and therefore violates their reasonable expectations of privacy in these communications. This bill would protect current and prospective employees’ privacy rights in their personal online-accounts by prohibiting employers from requesting user names and passwords.
To date, 17 states have enacted social media privacy legislation. In 2015, similar legislation has been introduced in 19 states including New York and Massachusetts.
March 5, 2015
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