Grade school teacher’s aide fired for refusing to hand over Facebook password

[proud2BlibKansan]

Kimberly Hester, a grade school teacher's aide in Michigan, was fired for refusing to hand over her Facebook password to her supervisors. Hester posted a picture of a co-workers' shoes and pants bunched around her ankles on Facebook in April 2011 with the caption, "Thinking of you." She posted the picture in jest, but a parent who's on her Facebook friend list saw the image and reported it to Frank Squires Elementary where Hester was employed, prompting the investigation.

Teachers have gotten in trouble for Facebook status messages before, but in Hester's case, it's her refusal to hand over her password that actually got her fired. One of the supervisors from the Lewis Cass Intermediate School District (ISD), the regional service center for education in Michigan, even wrote her a letter when she refused to give them her password for the third time. Part of the letter read: "... in the absence of you voluntarily granting Lewis Cass ISD administration access to you[r] Facebook page, we will assume the worst and act accordingly." Lewis Cass wanted to put Hester on a paid administrative leave before they fired her, but she chose to go on an unpaid leave because she believes she did nothing wrong. She plans to use the letter she received to sue the school district.

An increasing number of companies and schools have started asking employees and students for their Facebook passwords. The practice has been growing at such an alarming rate, that Facebook released its official stance on the issue, telling its users that they have the right not to comply with their employers' request. Several politicians including Michigan's own State Representatives Aric Nesbitt and Matt Lori have been pushing for bills that will make the breach of privacy an illegal practice. Unfortunately, it hasn't been going very well for them — the House of Representatives recently rejected a legislation that would protect your passwords from employers' prying eyes.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/grade-school-teacher-aide-fired-refusing-hand-over-172305406.html

[Angry Dragon]

1. Elected officials are employees

Do we have the right to demand facebook passwords from our elected officials??

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Oh the fun that could be had with THOSE passwords!

[madinmaryland]

4. We all saw what happened to Anthony Weiner!

[roguevalley]

22. They would have to fire me too, fascists.

[NYC_SKP]

2. This will be a nice case to take before the SCOTUS

Not that the current membership there are that friendly to the US Constitution, but that's the way this will have to be done.

Me, I would have been reluctant to provide it and would make the biggest stink you could possibly imagine.

[BeHereNow]

5. LOL! I just posted the same thing-

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002508448

Unbelievable, isn't it?

I hope she sues with the help of FB.

BHN

[proud2BlibKansan]

8. Oops. Sorry bout that.

And yes, it is unbelievable. I hope she sues and wins a gazillion dollars.

[BeHereNow]

10. Not a problem! Great minds and all that...

What matters is not WHO posts it- what matters
is that people know about it!

BHN

[WillowTree]

24. She has no suit. Michigan is an "employment at will" state.

They can fire her for any non-discriminatory reason.

[whistler162]

12. She is probably more worried about

being sued by the person she photographed!

[Marrah_G]

6. I highly suggest people keep their pages private.

In fact if you are job hunting or in jobs where facebook might be an issue I suggest not using your real name. If the boss checks to see if you have a facebook they will come up empty.

[Ex Lurker]

31. This. The only people who can see my profile are actual friends and family

actual people I have a relationship with IRL. I deliberately do not accept friend requests from coworkers, bosses, or other people I'm only casually acquainted with.

[YvonneCa]

42. And if your boss asked for your password...

...to see that profile, what would you do? What if your boss said 'Let me check your FB page or you're fired?"

[drm604]

7. Lewis Cass Interrmediate School District just violated Facebook's terms of service.

That school district has a FB account.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lewis-Cass-Intermediate-School-District/110435859018641

That means that they've agreed to FB's terms of service.

https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms

Safety

We do our best to keep Facebook safe, but we cannot guarantee it. We need your help to do that, which includes the following commitments:

You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.
You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our permission.
You will not engage in unlawful multi-level marketing, such as a pyramid scheme, on Facebook.
You will not upload viruses or other malicious code.
You will not solicit login information or access an account belonging to someone else.
You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.
You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.
You will not develop or operate a third-party application containing alcohol-related or other mature content (including advertisements) without appropriate age-based restrictions.
You will follow our Promotions Guidelines and all applicable laws if you publicize or offer any contest, giveaway, or sweepstakes (“promotion”) on Facebook.
You will not use Facebook to do anything unlawful, misleading, malicious, or discriminatory.
You will not do anything that could disable, overburden, or impair the proper working of Facebook, such as a denial of service attack.
You will not facilitate or encourage any violations of this Statement.

Facebook has recently warned employers not to do this and has said that they may consider legal action against employers who do this.

[former9thward]

39. What would FB's legal action be?

They could ban the employer from FB if they wanted to but that is about it.

[drm604]

40. As far as I know that's about it.

It's conceivable that coercing someone (with the threat of job loss, for example) in order to gain access to their account might fall under anti-hacking laws (unauthorized access to a computer), but that would have to be decided in court. Of course, I'm not a lawyer so I could be mistaken about that.

[AsahinaKimi]

9. On IMVU.com they always tell you never give your password to anyone..

Last edited Mon Apr 2, 2012, 09:25 PM - Edit history (1)

What will they demand next? Passwords to their Email accounts? Maybe passwords to their paypal account? Sorry.. IF AN employer asked me for my password I would tell them its "URAA$$h01E".

[sakabatou]

14. Muwaahahah!

[freshwest]

17. That's the spirit! And sic one of the most ferocious anime characters on them!

at 'URAA$$h01E.'

[AsahinaKimi]

19. I have a few in mind...this for starters..

[freshwest]

23. Whoa! Powerful stuff. Thanks.

[leftyohiolib]

11. maybe abandoning facbook en-mass might have an effect. you know u could (god forbid)

pick up the phone and call people. hope she sues

[hughee99]

15. Yes, but it doesn't address the issue of privacy or even affect those causing the problem. n/t

[XemaSab]

26. And then employers would ask for your phone records

and e-mail password.

It's not Facebook's fault that we have no right to privacy in this country anymore.

[leftyohiolib]

43. well then lets just except the enevitable

no it's not fb's fault but we keep accepting this with out reaction then phone records will be next
if asking for fb passwords eventually drives fb under ceo's of similar companies might push to stop this practice but if we just say "ok here's my password" then those will probably be next. reminds me of a line from a rush song "there's no bread let em eat cake, there's no end to what they'll take" 60 hour work week, no vacation, no sick pay,no overtime, no raises no pa/maternity leave now ok here's my password. dna swabs will be next and every will line up.
we have no right to privacy in this country anymore. because we take and live with every abuse

[Honeycombe8]

13. Well, in this instance, this was related to an incident. Someone reported something specific...

which seems like that was in and of itself reason for termination. So the ball was in the aide's park to SHOW that that was the only incriminating thing about her co-workers or the school. When she refused to give them access, their response was, well, okay, you refuse to put up a defense, so our original finding stands: your social network page is harmful to your co-workers and is inappropriate for an employee here. Or something like that.

Note that they weren't requesting passwords for the other employees. Only her, because she has posted something inappropriate. And it does sound inappropriate, I must say. She's an adult, now, and works at a school (which are very conservative places to work). Off color pictures of co-workers is totally inappropriate and cause for suspension or maybe termination, I would say. I mean...she took a secretive pic of her co-worker in the bathroom? Yikes.

[drm604]

16. They were asking her to violate FB's terms of service.

If she gave them her password, she would be violating the privacy of her FB friends, some of whom may post things that they only want other friends to see. She has no right to give her employer access to other people's personal information. She might even be opening herself to legal liability by doing so.

[IDemo]

18. They would be open to legal action as well for enticing her to do so

[meow2u3]

20. Enticing?

They were forcing her to hand over her password. This was an act of blackmail and invasion of privacy IMO.

This is enforced social engineering as far as I'm concerned. If hackers can be prosecuted for demanding your login information, why can't employers? What are they? Above the law?

What next? Forcing employees to hand over the keys to their house so the boss can snoop in your bedroom?

[IDemo]

27. That was the term I saw in researching this, along with "inducement"

That it's done so under the threat of job loss would place it squarely in the "forcing" category.

"Tortious interference" is one legal term for interfering with a contract in such a manner.

[Honeycombe8]

29. I see. But that's her problem, isn't it? She has posted an offensive pic of one of her co-workers.

They were going to suspend or terminate her because of it. So they were just giving her a chance to show that that one pic was not the norm. She could've struck a compromise, maybe, by printing off pages of her FB, removing comments posted by others.

My point being, this was related to a specific incident, and not just an employer requiring FB passwords of all employees.

Life lesson #42: When you work at a conservative place that cares for children, don't post pics of your co-workers with their clothing partially off in the bathroom, if you don't want your FB page to become an issue in your employment.

[IDemo]

30. If they asked her to break the terms of her user agreement (which is a legal contract),

then it's now their problem. It's called tortious interference, and grounds for legal action by her and/or Facebook.

[Honeycombe8]

34. FB has no legal standing to demand she enter a contract with third parties. Her contract is with FB.

FB can only contract for things within its own interest. I doubt that FB's contract requires that a FB user cannot ever give his password to someone else. That would be unconstitutional.

I had a FB account for a short while. I didn't see any such contract. It must be in the "terms" that no one reads. In any case, I think you are mistaken about the "contract." It cannot legally require a user to do or not do something with what the user owns: his account and password. Unless the action by the user is illegal....site owners frequently put in its contract the provision that they can disconnect the account if the user abuses it or uses it for something illegal.

But you are missing the point. This is not an instance where an employer required FB passwords of its employees. This employee brought FB into the classroom and made it an issue. Her fault. She has learned a valuable lesson that I hope she takes with her to her next job.

[IDemo]

36. I'm afraid it is you who is missing the point.

There's no contract with a third party involved. The "tortious interference" here refers to the act by a third party (an employer, for example) to induce a signee of a contract to break the terms of her user agreement, a legal contract. And the Facebook user agreement does include an injunction against surrendering passwords: You will not share your password, (or in the case of developers, your secret key), let anyone else access your account, or do anything else that might jeopardize the security of your account.

If they had simply demanded of her to make an accounting of material they had viewed on her FB page, that's one thing. The password demand is out of bounds, regardless of whether she "made it an issue".

The courts have already found "clickwrap agreements" such as Facebook terms of service or online purchase agreements to constitute legally enforceable contracts.

Click-wrap Agreement Held Enforceable - http://www.internetlibrary.com/publications/cwahe_art.cfm

What is Wrongful or Tortious Interference with Contracts? - http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/wrongful-or-tortious-interference-with-contracts.html

[drm604]

32. No, it's not just her problem.

She may have friends that have posted personal things that they only want their friends (or maybe just her) to see. The school is asking her to violate the privacy of those friends.

Her actions, however bad, shouldn't mean that her friends lose their privacy. If they want to fire her for posting that picture, that's one thing, but they're pressuring her to essentially give up her friends, who we have no reason to believe have done anything wrong.

[Honeycombe8]

35. Yes, you are pointing out, really, that it is precisely HER problem. Her friends...

her posts, her content, her friends' content. Her problem. Not the school's problem. Not the problem of her co-workers.

She made her FB an issue in her workplace. They were giving her a chance to prove that her inappropriate posts were not rampant. She refused. Fine. She's fired. Fine. She was fired for the inappropriate pic, not for not giving her FB password.

She posted a pic of one of her co-workers partially undressed in the bathroom? Seriously? She was fired for the pic.

This is much ado about nothing, regarding the FB password. SHE made it an issue, when she posted the pic.

[drm604]

38. And you truly believe that her friends and family should lose their privacy,

without being asked, without any right to appeal, because of her actions? If there was a valid warrant because of a police investigation, it would be one thing, but that's not what this is.

They knew about the picture, so if they want to fire her they can fire her. If they wanted to see the picture, to judge for themselves, they could have asked her to show it to them. They could have asked her to sign into her account for them and show them just the material in question. But they wanted her password, giving them the ability to browse at leisure, and even impersonate her if they so chose (I don't think they would, but they could).

What if other teachers at the school were FB friends with her? What if one of them in the recent past had posted a less than flattering remark about the school administration,trusting that her friend wouldn't talk about it? What if she had discussed some embarrassing secret about a family member in a discussion limited to family only? Anyone with her password could access that.

I'd hate to live in your world.

[Cerridwen]

21. Hester? Seriously?

Was she given a red letter?

Yeah, I know. First name versus last. But, really?

Hester?

[Pisces]

25. Maybe if people didn't friend every Tom, Dick and Harry they would not have a problem. Or don't have

a Facebook page at all.

[Beaverhausen]

28. I purposely have not friended anyone I work with

I also have an extremely common name so good luck finding me.

[Darth_Kitten]

33. She should sue.....

turning over her own private password? No way!

[HappyMe]

37. Both she and her employer

are wrong.

She should have a whole lot more sense than that. Why the hell would you even chance a post like that if you are a teachers aide?
It's silly to assume privacy on the internet.

The school has no need to have her password. No employer does.

[cbdo2007]

41. I'm going to side with the school district here....

People these days are stupid. You honestly don't need to be friends with people you work with just because you "know" them. She has plenty of ability to hide her page so nobody but true friends/family see it, and she has the ability to not make questionable jokes.

I have a very strict list of people who I am friends with and I STILL filter literally everything I say because some on my friends list wouldn't appreciate my humor and that isn't what I use it for, I use it as a way to show off my kids and read about what my friends and family are up to without having to actaully interact with them every day.