Somebody's Watching Me

Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, famously said that "Only the Paranoid Survive". No better place to adopt that position than on social media.

Thanks to Chris Syme for the heads-up last week on the recent articles in this area, one in particular in The Sport Journal from U.S. Sports Academy written by Frank Butts of West Georgia. It's a nice lit review and primer of prior cases and situations, but in the realm of things like the growing trend against monitoring under the aegis of "First Amendment Rights" there is nothing new.

Let me give you one of my phrases now: It was a voluntary organization until you joined it.

The mounting jihad against monitoring, epicentered in Maryland, is, to use a cute new meme, bogative.

Anyone -- ANYONE -- who says university athletic departments are cramping the style or expression rights of students by watching for violations of the established team rules or other conduct codes that, by the way, the student-athletes signed off as terms of participation is doing a far greater disservice to these young people than not.

Why? Education is critical, and they need to understand the world into which they will move for jobs and job interviews.

Let me bring in today's note from the Wall Street Journal. The latest from corporate America's desire to fit the right worker for the right job -- scraping info off your Facebook posts to create a personality profile.

Northern Illinois, Evansville and Auburn combined to create the academic study that essentially provides proof of concept.

After spending roughly 10 minutes perusing each profile, including photos, wall posts, comments, education and hobbies, the raters answered a series of personality-related questions, such as "Is this person dependable?" and "How emotionally stable is this person?"

And the conclusion? The assessment made was pretty accurate when matched against job performance reviews of the college-age workers surveilled.

The WSJ blog notes that the legality of such a move is "murky." Good luck getting private firms to admit to the practice.