U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) are calling on the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to investigate the practice of employers requiring employees and job applicants to share their social networking passwords, PCWorld reports. Both lawmakers want the agencies to determine whether the practice violates federal laws such as the Stored Communications Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Meanwhile, a New Jersey assemblyman is filing legislation to ban the practice as is a California state senator. Future of Privacy Forum Director Jules Polonetsky, CIPP/US, expressed concern of overreaction. "The risk of all these five-alarm level outbursts," he said, "is that people will become inured about privacy and miss real privacy issues because of crying wolf when nothing is actually going on."
Full Story