Privacy probe
The German government is mulling whether to boost personal data protection with a new law that would make it tougher for employers to check out new employees using social networking sites.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the German cabinet has endorsed the new law, which makes it illegal for firms to film employees and bans them from using private social networks to vet future employees, but it has yet to pass through parliament.
Germany's interior minister, Thomas de Maiziére reportedly said: "Private social networks are private social networks and not gateways to gaining information on job applicants."
While the draft legislation would stop employers pretending to be ‘friends' on a social network, or gain access to a private network, they would still be allowed to trawl any profiles and information about job candidates in the public domain, with career networking sites such as LinkedIn also considered fair game.
The legislation is reportedly designed to put a stop to recent scandals involving German companies spying on workers and make laws more suitable in dealing with problems of the internet age.
The country's privacy laws have been particularly in the spotlight after Google announced its Street View cars will be photographing Germany's 20 largest cities. Although the new law is not designed to tackle the Google controversy, Germany's government has previously vowed to investigate such services.
However, some experts have apparently refuted the change in laws, which centre on banning the use of personal information without an individual's say so, warning it could lead to extra confusion as the new law could contain a handful of exceptions.
For example, if the new law was passed, companies could still tap phones if they feared corruption or fraud and firms could still look at a worker's internet traffic as long as they do so randomly. Experts fear the law could prove tricky to enforce as a job candidate could suspect a company of snooping round social networks, but it would be hard to prove.
Sebastian Edathy who is the legal expert for the German Social Democratic Party reportedly branded the draft bill "inadequate" and pressured the government to work on a more defined and comprehensive law that could actually threaten employers with "compensation and criminal consequences".
Under the draft law, employers caught snooping unnecessarily on their workers could reportedly face up to two years behind bars or hefty fines.
