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On a more professional level though, we find a more serious problem. There have been many cases where people have not gotten and have even been terminated from jobs due to social media, and we all know how hard it is to find a job without that being another problem. Yes, employers are stalking your Facebook, MySpace (if anybody even still has one of those), and Twitter accounts in order to see whether you would be an asset or a detriment to the company based on photos and posts that they deem to be “appropriate”. According to an article put out by The Michigan Daily on www.michigandaily.com, employers are even asking some people for their Facebook passwords on job applications! There are several instances I could use as to how employers are invading privacy via social media, but the example I found to be most interesting is one where an employer forced a Facebook friend of the employee to open their Facebook account on one of the work computers and show him the employee’s comments on a post. The exact story as told by Brian Wassom on his website www.wossom.com goes as follows:
Social media is a HUGE contributor to modern day invasion of privacy that everyone takes part in during this day and age. Everyone is free to see everything everyone is doing, feeling, and thinking with the simple click of a button or swipe on a touch screen, at times, whether you want them to or not. With the invention of check-ins and location settings on mobile devices, your friends in the social media world can even locate where you are at when you post something or even send a “private” message. It’s become kind of a big problem not just for people that don’t want their friends to know where they are or what they “like”, etc. but it has become an especially large problem when it comes to finding work, as employers are searching profiles for questionable material on applicants and employees, going so far in some cases as to make someone go on Facebook and forcing them to show them their postings on the site. I’ll give examples of how overly-personal these social media sites can be on both the personal and professional level.
It’s frightening to think how much employers think
they need to know about you and what they can find
out about you through social media. Not only
employers, but even people that could potentially
harm you can have access to your personal
information through these sites. The bottom line is
people need to be aware and be careful of these
websites that, although they help you keep in touch
with friends and family more simply, they can give out
too much information to people who really should not
know that much about you.
We're Watching You
On the personal level, the ability to be the world’s biggest stalker is available to you right at your very fingertips. Allow me to show you what I mean. One time I was messaging my friend on Facebook and decided to press on a little button and see what it did. It led me to a page like this that offered directions to his exact location, which ended up being our other friend’s house that he said he was visiting. But for this example, I’ll show you messages I sent to myself. As you are about to see, I can locate right where I was when I sent this [ www.facebook.com ] and get directions from either Bing or Google maps to access my location. I can go even farther as to click again and see actual satellite pictures of where I was sending this from. Talk about your stalker girlfriend or boyfriend’s dream come true! You can keep track of your significant other at all times with just a couple clicks of a button!
Workplace surveillance Employees in nearly every country are vulnerable to comprehensive surveillance by managers.
In many countries employers can tap phones, read email and monitor computer screens. They can bug conversations, analyze computer and keyboard work, peer through CCTV cameras, use tracking technology to monitor personal movements, analyze urine to detect drug use, and demand the disclosure of intimate personal data.
Performance monitoring.
"Smart" ID badges track an employee's movement around a building.
Telephone Management Systems (TMS) analyze the pattern of telephone use and the destination of calls.
“In Ehling v. Monmouth-Ocean Hospital Service Corp., a case decided in 2012, the District Court of New Jersey acknowledged the need for a consistent approach to the undefined legal boundary between public and private online communications. Deborah Ehling worked as a paramedic, employed by the Monmouth-Ocean Hospital Service Corporation (“MONOC”). Ehling alleged that only individuals invited to be her Facebook “friend” could view postings on her wall, but that a supervisor coerced one of the invitees into accessing Ehling’s page from a work computer. There was a comment posted by Ehling after a museum guard was killed in a shooting and the shooter survived, “I blame the DC paramedics…This was your opportunity to really make a difference! And to the other guards…go to target practice.” The supervisor allegedly copied the postings as a screenshot, sent them on behalf of MONOC to various health organization boards, and Ehling was later terminated. Ehling sued MONOC for invasion of privacy by intrusion upon seclusion or private affairs. MONOC argued that Ehling did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy because the posting was disclosed to dozens, if not hundreds, of people.
The court refused to dismiss the privacy claim in light of two extremes established by courts. On one end of the spectrum, courts have held that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy for material posted to an unprotected website that anyone can view. On the other end, courts have found there to be a reasonable expectation of privacy for individual, password-protected online communications such as email messages. Although most courts hold that a communication is not necessarily public just because it is accessible to a number of people, courts differ dramatically in how far this theory extends. The court cited comparable cases that showed a reasonable expectation of privacy granted for facts revealed to sixty people, but rejected a privacy interest alleged in a separate case for facts disclosed to two people.
The open-ended nature of the case law proved Ehling’s claim to be a highly fact-sensitive inquiry. Due to the lack of a coherent, middle approach, it was held plausible for Ehling to have a reasonable expectation that her posts would remain private. The court placed emphasis on the active steps Ehling took to protect her posts and the lack of information regarding the number of friends she had at the time the post was made. Ehling failed to state a claim under the New Jersey Wiretap Act because she did not allege that her Facebook posting was in transmission when viewed by the supervisor, a statutory requirement. The Wiretap Act aims to prohibit intentional unauthorized access, but only protects electronic communications which are in the course of transmission, or backup to a transmission. Ehling’s posting was instead in post-transmission storage when accessed.”
Sources of information
* http://www.wassom.com/common-law-invasion-of-privacy-claims-in-social-media-guest-post.html
* http://stlr.stanford.edu/pdf/determann-socialmediaprivacy.pdf
* https://collaboration.bus.emory.edu/course/social_communities/Course%20Topics/3%20Social%20Media%20Invade%20Privacy.aspx
* http://www.michigandaily.com/opinion/daily-employers-shouldnt-get-too-personal