Your password not your employer's business

OLYMPIA – There is an old saying in politics that sometimes the law has to catch up with technology.

That is exactly what is happening now as we confront a world of Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Pinterest. Almost everyone I know regularly posts family pictures, updates on their life and sometimes relatively personal information for the entire world to see.

While this new technology has helped grandmas see the latest photos of their grandchildren and old friends stay in touch, it has also opened up a new world for your employer to peek into your personal life.

Around the country, legislatures are confronting new rules about how much an employer or prospective employer should be allowed to snoop into your social network life. Washington State joined that list of legislatures this week.

As the Ranking Member of the House Labor and Workforce Development Committee, I had the opportunity to make sure that no employer ever asks you for your Facebook password and no prospective employer requires you to turn over your password as a condition of employment.

I believe this is a step in the right direction and will make sure that our privacy rights are protected in an era where privacy is becoming all too limited.

It almost didn’t happen that way.

Earlier this week, my committee heard Senate Bill 5211, sponsored by Sen. Steve Hobbs (D-Stevens Lake). His bill prohibited any employer from asking for an employee’s Facebook password and prevented any potential employer from asking for the password as a condition of hiring.

Unfortunately, some powerful interest groups tried to amend the bill and crafted a vague amendment that would allow employers to request a Facebook password if there was a “suspicion” that an employee was engaged in wrongdoing. The Chair of the Labor Committee agreed to sponsor the amendment.

I had grave concerns with the amendment, and in a rare partnership, so did the ACLU. I felt the amendment was a backdoor vehicle to allow employers to demand employees' Facebook passwords on the tenuous notion that someone might be doing something against company policy.

Such language is so open to interpretation, almost anyone could demand a password. I had a chance to express my concerns with the chair and many other members of the committee.

Eventually, almost every member of the Labor Committee came to agree that the amendment was a bad idea. It was withdrawn and the original bill passed.

There are some things that are just none of your employer’s business, and your Facebook password is one of them. I am proud that Washington State is going to be one of the first states to prohibit employers from asking for your social network passwords.

This is a privacy issue for me. Sometimes I have to stand up to government to protect privacy, and sometimes I have to stand up to big business to protect your privacy. Either way, citizen privacy should always come first.