Employers, Facebook, Privacy, and Drawing the Line

By alancleaver_2000

The vast majority of posts here on Context Over Dogma deal with social media specifically with respect to use in marketing. But as we all know, social media has implications throughout our lives and across numerous business and personal disciplines. Every so often, we like to address a non-marketing facet of the social media world in which we live and play. These issues will, in some way, affect us all.

Early last week, I came across an article that detailed goings-on at The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services. During a recent job interview with the Department of Corrections, Officer Robert Collins was forced to give up the password to his private Facebook account. Rallying to Officer Collins’ defense was the ACLU, which sent a particularly scathing letter to the Maryland Department of Corrections, in which it called the move “a frightening and illegal invasion of privacy” and stated that “[n]either Officer Collins nor his Facebook ‘friends’ deserve to have the government snooping about their private electronic communications.”

I shared the article with my own Facebook friends, and watched the comments roll in: “NO!”, “$%*& NO!”, “%@#&#* &#*&@!” etc… If colorful metaphors can be taken as indication, clearly, a nerve had been touched.

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