Schneier on Security

Peter Maxwell • October 4, 2010 6:03 PM

@Watt R Wordsworth at October 4, 2010 9:54 AM

To a certain extent that has been and still is the situation in Scotland; perhaps not “intrusively” but employers here do hold a lot of sway. The Scottish economy is small enough that within a given field, most people either know each other or know of each other. Your future career prospects can potentially be irrevocably damaged by one manager. Although, the converse also applies: if enough people know you and you are decent/competent then anyone bad mouthing you stands out.

Back to the original post. If this “service” was created in the UK, I can imagine the employer and potentially the company supplying such service being open to legal action.

i) the report provided to the employer would be recoverable by a court in any proceedings – whether that be an Employment Tribunal, Sheriff Court, County Court, etc – and would likely be foundation for a defamation/damages due to loss of future earnings claim against the company providing the service;

ii) the data held would fall under the provisions of the Data Protection Act, and as such must be correct, so relying on third-party hearsay (facebook friends, etc) is going to land them in hot water;

iii) it is often trivial to create an online identity with someone else’s image, so if data is collected from fake profiles then (i) and (ii) are futhered;

iv) the mere act of using such a “predictive” service and then acting upon it would suggest the employer believes the prospective employee to be dangerous in some manner without any substantive proof of the same – again I’m sure a damages claim lies there;

v) some mental illnesses, which are classified as disabilities for the purposes of the Disability Discrimination Act, could potentially aggrivate alcohol/drug use or at least the expression of desires thereof – if it does not affect the ability of the employee to perform “core duties” then there may be a discrimination claim there as well.

I’m sure if this were thought about, there’d be at least five times this number of potential problems. And that’s before considering the ethical or moral rights and wrongs.

I also wonder how pleased the employer would be if a potential employee had the company directors assessed by a private investigator? After all, most of us want to work for companies that are respectable and ran by competent, law abiding, people.

Has trust really gone that out of fashion?

Peter Maxwell • October 5, 2010 5:01 PM

@paul at October 5, 2010 9:38 AM:

“There was a company in GB that advertised a service to find out whether a prospective employee had filed complaints against a previous employer or otherwise acted as a troublemaker.”

Until about five years ago it was fairly easy for anyone to do just that, as one could make an appointment and go into the Employment Tribunal offices to search their computer database for previous cases. They removed that facility to protect people from future employers discriminating by doing just that, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, it also works in reverse: you cannot search a potential employer to see if they leave a trail of unfair dismissals. Anything that hits an appellate court is still searchable though, either through the Employment Appeals Tribunal website, Bailii, etc.