Job Application: Must Disclose Personal Facebook Pages! Is This Right? Is This America?

Should businesses have the right to demand from their employees and prospective employees that they be given free access to employee’s private and personal Facebook pages and other social media accounts, before being hired, or to maintain one’s employment once hired?  If so, does this not amount to Corporations becoming the ubiquitous Big Brother—always watching, giving no privacy, stripping down personal boundaries?

Are we becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of Total Surveillance—George Orwell’s Big Brother is watching you—presumably for the good of Society, not to mention the good of the State and Company?

For the sake of safety and security, might we not be giving over too much?  Don’t businesses and corporations already have enough power?  Why should they also be given carte blanche access to an employee’s personal life via their Facebook or twitter accounts—access to casual everyday connections, personal though strangely public, communication between family and friends where we are supposedly free to ‘let our hair down’ and ‘be ourselves’?

“If I have nothing to hide, why should I worry,” one might say.  I say, let’s not be naïve.  Individuals have strong opinions, passionate likes and dislikes, and can negatively react towards thoughts and ideas that do not fit their viewpoint.  Corporations, companies, and businesses are no different.  Do we really think that there is no chance that we might not lose a job, fail to gain a promotion or obtain a transfer to a better position as a result of something we may have said on Facebook?  Oh Wait!  It’s already happened.  Been there, done that.  A school teacher loses her job for making pejorative and negative comments about her students on Facebook, out of exasperation.  Can you relate?  Anyone have sympathy for her?

We have a bad day at work, the boss was severely unjust and even oppressive; we say as much on Facebook—to our close friends, family members.  The next day, we’re called into the office.  We’re sacked.  Is this just?  Is it right?  Is there no place within our modern day social-media context where we can safely express our feelings, speak our thoughts, even admit our anger at someone, without repercussion for doing so?  Do we not have a right to social-media privacy, or is that just too much of an oxymoron for us to handle?

What about statements we may have made or may make about politics, about politicians that we like or dislike?  Is it right that we should fail to obtain a job because the company to which we submitted an application also required us to divulge our personal Facebook page, and thus they discover we support politicians who do not support said company with favored tax-break laws?  Is this just?  Is this real freedom of speech?  Is it freedom at all with Business Big Brother watching over us like that?

Of course, criminals, murderers, thieves, enemies and terrorists, they work best at night, behind dark shadows, that is to say, secretively, undercover, incognito, anonymously, on the sly, cloaked in layers of lies.  So we need some transparency and openness.  But we need it on both sides.  The power to know, to see, to uncover, and to force disclosure cannot be all one sided, as if corporations and big business are all innocent and squeaky clean while only lone Individuals are the sole threat to society.  Corporations can abuse and misuse privy information as much as any individual can.

Thus, it seems to me that our lawmakers should give some thought as to limiting how much businesses, companies and corporations can demand access to employee’s Facebook pages, twitter accounts, and so-on, especially as a front-end hiring procedure.  Unless, we really do think that Total Surveillance is the way to go, and we are thus willing to give up all right to privacy, forego all personal boundaries, and discard real freedom of speech.