Maryland passes bill to prohibit employers from requesting Facebook account information

The Maryland General Assembly has approved a bill prohibiting employers from requesting or requiring any online account information for current of prospective employers. The bill (SB 443/HB 894) comes after a firestorm of criticism related to news that the Maryland Department of Corrections required job applicants to turn over that information for their Facebook accounts.

An amendment to the bill specifies that employees "may not download [sic] unauthorized employer proprietary information or financial data to an employee's personal website, an internet web site, a web-based account, or a similar account." Further, employers are not prohibited from investigating violations of this provision. This entire amendment strikes me as odd as it seems to deal with an entirely different issue - theft of intellectual property - and not personal privacy. It essentially allows employers to obtain account information for all employees' email accounts if they hear that some information has been stolen.

I added "sic" to the text of the amendment because they used the word "download" when they actually meant "upload." Files are uploaded to a website and downloaded from a website.

If the governor signs the bill, Maryland will be the first state to address the issue by statute.  California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Minnesota have pending bills to do the same.