I don’t know much about Arkansas. My knowledge consists of Gennifer Flowers, Wal-Mart, and this handy-dandy iPhone app for harvesting deer. I also hear that the official state beverage is milk.
How about that?
But now I know one more thing: Arkansas has a new social media privacy law, which prohibits an employer from requiring or requesting that a current or prospective employee do any of the following:
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA. CISPA provides for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.
However, the majority vote was not without a speed bump, according to this report from Josh Wolford at WebProNews:
Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter attempted to tack on a provision to CISPA that would make it illegal for employers to require prospective employees to hand over their social media passwords as a condition of acquiring or keeping a job.
Perlmutter’s amendment was voted down 224-189.
When I first began drafting social media policies and offering social media training for clients, I preached that friending the boss was a bad idea. The lawyer in me was concerned for two reasons: (1) Facebook’s informality would facilitate behavior from a supervisor that a company would not otherwise tolerate in the workplace; (2) if a supervisor knew about, but failed to report, employee actions on Facebook that would violate an anti-harassment policy, the company could lose a valuable discrimination defense.
What do non-lawyers have to say about friending the boss on Facebook? Find out after the jump…
No way, Heisenberg is gonna be cool with this. Not a chance.
Earlier this month, New Mexico joined Maryland, Illinois, California, Michigan, and Utah, by becoming the sixth state to pass a law, which makes it unlawful for an employer to request or require that a prospective employee fork over a social media password as a condition of gaining employment. However, this New Mexico’s law is unique in that it only covers prospective employees, and not the existing workforce.
Lest anyone get the wrong idea, I am not in favor of employers asking candidates or current employees for social media passwords. Instead, as I’ve noted before, there is no empirical evidence that employers asking for social media passwords is a common practice. Therefore, these laws seek to regulate a “problem” that rarely, if ever, exists.
While some people; namely, hockey players with local ties, use Twitter to congratulate an ex-wife on end of divorce payments, others spew venom about their bosses.
I know. I should have warned you to sit down first. Let me know when the shock subsides.
K-thx.
I’m a little late to the game on this case (Gatto v. United Airlines). It’s about a personal injury case in which the defendant sought discovery of a the plaintiff’s Facebook page. Yadda, yadda, yadda, plaintiff deletes his Facebook page and the court sanctions the plaintiff.
But here’s the part I like:
While Facebook did respond to the subpoena served upon it, Facebook objected to providing certain information related to Plaintiff’s account due to concerns regarding the Federal Stored Communications Act. Facebook instead recommended that the account holder download the entire contents of the account as an alternative method for obtaining the information. Defendants allege that this issue was discussed with the Court during a telephone status conference on January 6, 2012, where Plaintiff’s counsel advised that he would be willing to download the account information and provide a copy to the parties. Defendants allegedly agreed to Plaintiff’s proposal, with the condition that Plaintiff would also provide a certification that the data was not modified or edited since the December 1, 2011 settlement conference.
Welcome citizens of the Utah.
I’d say welcome back, but, according my blog stats, so few of you have seen my blog a first time. How could that be? Some of my best posts involve the Beehive State:
For much of the week, I’ve blogged about Adria Richards, the employee who got fired for tweeting complaints about discrimination. On Monday, I offered my legal analysis (here).
On Tuesday, I followed that up with this simple poll that purported to remove the law from the equation: Was the decision of Ms. Richards’s employer, SendGrid, to fire her “fair” or “unfair”? “Fair” and “unfair” were the only two answers and they were randomized such that either one could have appeared as the top choice when taking the poll.
Now the results are in. 129 of you responded and 70 of you (54%) said that the firing was fair. 59 respondents indicated that the firing was unfair (46%).
Whew!
Got a little carried away with yesterday’s post about the employee who got fired for tweeting complaints about discrimination, didn’t I?
Then again, I’m not the one who came up with the hashtag #donglegate.
Is this Retaliation 2.0?
Two weeks ago, Adria Richards attended an industry conference at which she overheard sexual jokes from two attendees sitting behind her during a session. So, she complained…on Twitter:
Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…
— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013
And then she blogged about it here. The social-media complaints resulted in one of the joke tellers getting fired. And, last Wednesday, Ms. Richards tweeted that her employer supported her.
Hey @mundanematt, it’s clear from the last 24 hours you’re a bully.@sendgrid supports me.Stop trolling.
— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 20, 2013
That same day, SendGrid, Ms. Richards’s employer, fired her.
(Jon Brodkin at arstechnica.com has the full story here).
We can argue about the propriety of using social media to publicize a harassment complaint, especially when a private complaint could have sufficed. Still, the SendGrid response certainly seems harsh and unfair.
But did SendGrid go so far as to retaliate (as a matter of law) against Ms. Richards?
Find out, after the jump…
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