Congress blocks proposed ban on requests for employee social media passwords

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA. CISPA provides for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

However, the majority vote was not without a speed bump, according to this report from Josh Wolford at WebProNews:

Colorado Democrat Ed Perlmutter attempted to tack on a provision to CISPA that would make it illegal for employers to require prospective employees to hand over their social media passwords as a condition of acquiring or keeping a job.

Perlmutter’s amendment was voted down 224-189.

Sara Gates of The Huffington Post reports here that CISPA sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers called Perlmutter’s proposal an attempt to kill the bill, and suggested that Perlmutter propose the amendment as standalone legislation.

Currently pending in the House is the Social Networking Online Protection Act (SNOPA). SNOPA would effectively accomplish what Perlmutter attempted to do by amending CISPA. Although six states have passed laws banning employer requests for social media passwords of job applicants, and several others have legislation pending, Congress has done little to push SNOPA along. Indeed, the same version of SNOPA was introduced in 2012, but sat dormant.

(h/t @MarkJChumley)