Teacher’s aide fired for refusing to hand over Facebook password | Hacker News Reader

Teacher’s aide fired for refusing to hand over Facebook password

zdnet.com

67 pointsBud14 comments

IANAL, but it seems as though an employer asking for a site password (consenting to which would cause you to violate the site's ToS) would be at a minimum guilty of tortious interference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortious_interference

In my opinion, if you are publicly posting inappropriate content and showing it at work to your co-workers and or students, then yes, there should be some consequence. However, if someone is snooping and around for personal info about a teacher or an employee, i believe there is a better approach to handling the situation. Perhaps maybe making the teacher or employee revoke public access to his or her webpage/personal info.

I can only imagine how many teachers and employees would be out of a job if all their personal and private life details dug up and investigated.

Everything is subjective in context.

if you are publicly promoting inappropriate content at work, there's no need for your password. the subject of inappropriate stuff on facebook needs context, employers asking for your password does not - there is no possible situation in which that could be justified.

Earlier discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3782462

There might be no law in them asking for it. But there is no law saying you have to give it to them either.

What I can't get my head around here is how these employers know someone has a FB (or any other) account, and what Earthly bloody business they imagine that it has to do with them?

Next, are they going to be asking for your bank card PIN numbers?

Tell them to go fuck themselves! And if they fire you, sue them. Better still, don't have an FB account. And if you do it certainly isn't going to be your "real" name.

A few test cases will soon put a stop to this business and take down a peg (or three) these "employers" with an inflated sense of their own importance.

Such impertinence!

A couple thoughts came to mind 1. How big of a jackass a person would have to be to think it's ok to ask for someones username and password to anything shocks me 2. I don't have a facebook account, so what would happen to people like me? Who would believe me? They might assume I'm a liar and treat me as though I'm being insubordinate I really hope Congress does somethings fast. Maybe we need a kind of "wall of shame" to report companies that do this in the meantime.

Total linkbait title, real story clears it up a bit:

"Hester was using Facebook . . . She jokingly posted a picture of a co-worker’s pants around her ankles and a pair of shoes, with the caption “Thinking of you.”"

I would be concerned too as a parent if a teacher's aid did that, and really if you have so little self-awareness that a public FB posting like that could get you in trouble you don't deserve to be employed around my kids.

You don't know what the picture actually looks like and also why would you even be looking at a teacher's aide's facebook? Don't these parents have better things to do and complain about. Waste of time.

Don't these parents have better things to do and complain about.

In the US, school administrators yield to every single one of the parents' whims because they fear lawsuits. It's a vicious cycle— parents feel more and more entitled to complain and make demands to the school, and administrators have to indulge them more and more. It's a sad mess.

The real story is about how this district handled the situation. These situations can be handled quite effectively without demanding anyone's password. The person who receives the picture needs to show it, not the person accused of posting it.

A "public FB posting"?

If it was so public, why did the school administrator find it necessary to demand her password and invade her personal privacy?

"I would be concerned too as a parent if a teacher's aid did that" How is that concerning? If she'd posted a picture of herself executing kittens, or planning a series of gruesome murders, yes, sure, that's concerning. But a pictures of pants and ankles? How is that something to be concerned about? Or are you saying that you don't think that's anything to worry about, but you only want your children to be near adults who spend their lives in some kind of insane fearful paranoia? If that IS what you want, what's wrong with YOU? What kind of people would your children turn into if every adult they ever met was a terrified paranoic?

The keywords are "co-worker" and "public" post(as "visible to co-workers and student parents) here. As much as I dislike violation of privacy by employers as parent I'd be concerned about this.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com