Blurred Boundaries: Social Media Privacy and the Twenty-First-Century Employee

摘要

In his dissent in O'Connor v. Ortega, Justice Blackmun argued that denning privacy by physical space is illusory, in that "the tidy distinctions . . . between the workplace and professional affairs, on the one hand, and personal possessions and private activities, on the other, do not exist in reality."~(252)Indeed, this is especially the case whenever digital social fora meet the workplace—contexts collapse, intermingling relationships and information unrestricted by time and space. As with other historical breakdowns in public/private boundaries, the incursion of social media in the workplace calls for an evaluation of burgeoning societal expectations and an assessment of the compatibility of these expectations with existing law and business practices.