Richard Blumenthal said his bill would be ready 'in the very near future.' Dem: Facebook passwords off-limits

Sen. Richard Blumenthal has a status update for employers who ask job seekers for access to their private Facebook accounts: He’s writing a bill to outlaw the practice.

The Connecticut Democrat and former state attorney general told POLITICO that those kind of requests from prospective employers amount to an "unreasonable invasion of privacy" for those looking for work. Blumenthal said it ought to be prohibited, just like other banned employment practices such as administering polygraph tests to screen applicants.


"I am very deeply troubled by the practices that seem to be spreading voraciously around the country," Blumenthal said in an interview. He added that an "employer has a lot of ways to find out information" about potential new employees.

Blumenthal said his bill would be ready "in the very near future."

The senator's concern stems from a series of reports, first by The Associated Press, about employers asking job applicants and current workers for log-in credentials to their email accounts and social networking sites. The goal has been to check up on their online behavior.

Employers have always been able to scrutinize social network accounts when prospective and current employees allow their photos, comments and other data to be public by default. Of greater concern to privacy hawks, however, are managers who are cajoling new applicants with private accounts to hand over their log-in credentials as part of the hiring process.

While state regulators begin to examine the issue, Blumenthal said Wednesday he's drafting legislation that would outlaw it. The senator cited longstanding federal prohibitions against administering polygraph tests to potential employees as a rationale for a new law.

Even for prospective employees who voluntarily surrendered account access to improve their chances of landing a job, Blumenthal said there remain concerns. "The coercive element of the request," he said, "really makes it less than voluntary."

The bill, still not finished, would not touch the ability of businesses to search for what is publicly available about applicants. Blumenthal said he's still examining how to structure the bill to take into account the needs of existing workers.

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 6:33 p.m. on March 21, 2012.