The proposed law would allow managers to search for publicly accessible information about prospective employees on the Web and to view their pages on job-networking sites, like LinkedIn or Xing, but would draw the line at purely social-networking sites like Facebook, said Philipp Spauschus, a spokesman for the Interior Minister, Thomas de Maizière.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet gave its backing to the proposed law Wednesday. The bill will now go to Parliament for discussion, and could be passed as early as this year, Mr. Spauschus said.
The law also would prohibit companies from secretly videotaping employees, though companies could still videotape in certain areas as long as they advertised the fact. It would also allow employers to conduct secret investigations when they suspected a crime had been committed.
Germany’s Nazi-era history has made the country extremely sensitive to matters of individual privacy, and concerns have been heightened in recent years by scandals involving companies’ secret videotaping of employees, as well as intercepting their e-mails and bank data.
The explosion of Web-based information tools has added to the unease.
The German authorities are investigating Google for having collected private Internet information while doing research for its Street View mapping service, and they have asked Apple to explain its data-collection policies for the iPhone.
Facebook, which claims to have more than 500 million users worldwide, with about 10 million in Germany, has come under fire for what some observers consider privacy shortcomings; there was an uproar when the site changed its default settings to reveal more of individuals’ personal data. The German proposal, however, is aimed squarely at employers.
Peter Schaar, the German commissioner for data protection and freedom of information, told The Associated Press that the proposal was "a substantial improvement on the status quo in dealing with employees’ data."
But the retailers’ association H.D.E., concerned about what it said was ¤4 billion, or $5 billion, in annual losses from theft, robbery and fraud, said the law governing videotaping "would do more harm than good" and should be revisited.
There are currently no rules governing how companies use Facebook users’ data, Mr. Spauschus said. The proposal is meant to create guidelines for the courts to handle the cases that will inevitably arise as social networking penetrates further into the fabric of everyday life, he said, and companies would also benefit from clear rules.
Mr. Spauschus said he knew of no specific cases where Facebook data had been abused by employers.
One incident of Facebook profiles influencing employers’ decisions arose last year when a teacher in Barrow County, Georgia, named Ashley Payne claimed she was pressured to resign over Facebook photos that showed her drinking wine and beer and using an expletive. She is suing the school district.
Sarah Roy, a spokeswoman in Paris for Facebook, said the company generally did not comment on legislation as a matter of policy. But she noted that the Web site’s privacy settings allowed users to share information as broadly as they liked, with their entire networks or with a limited number of intimates.
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