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By Amanda White
The American Civil Liberties Union is supporting Maryland corrections officer, Robert Collins, who said that his employer have no right to scour his personal Facebook account as a condition of employment. "Here I am a U.S. citizen that hasn't broken any laws, committed any crimes," said Collins in a YouTube video, taped by the ACLU, ”and a prospective, or in my case, an employer, looking at my personal communications, my personal posts, my personal pictures."
Maryland state officials received the letter from the ACLU's Maryland chapter on Collins' behalf. According the ACLU, the Maryland corrections division has a "blanket requirement" that job applicants, as well as current employees undergoing recertification, should reveal their social media account usernames and personal passwords to the government for use in background checks.
The ACLU in this blog post calls the policy "a gross breach of privacy" and a violation of state and federal law "which protect privacy rights and extend protections to electronic communications." The state is yet to respond to the advocacy group. "While the ACLU appreciates the DOC's need to ensure that corrections applicants and employees are not engaged in illegal activities, the demand for an officer's personal Facebook password simply goes too far," says Deborah Jeon, Legal Director for the ACLU of Maryland. "It is equivalent to a demand that officers permit the government to listen in on their personal telephone calls as a condition of employment."
A spokesperson for the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services said that's not correct. "We don't require anyone to give us a password," the department told NBC4. "The ACLU drastically misrepresented this."
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