Every job-seeker has been told to tread carefully when it comes to social media: whatever you say or post online can come back to haunt you when potential employers start screening you.

But the practice seems to have been taken to a new level, reports the AP via WTOP, with more and more employers asking applicants to turn over their Facebook usernames and passwords as part of the screening process:

In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.

“It’s akin to requiring someone’s house keys,” said Orin Kerr, a George Washington University law professor and former federal prosecutor who calls it “an egregious privacy violation.”

The practice has particular local relevance. In February 2011, the Maryland Department of Corrections asked a potential applicant to turn over his log-in info, prompting the ACLU to send a sternly worded letter complaining that the policy amounted to a violation of privacy. The policy was subsequently suspended, but it was later changed to require applicants to log on to Facebook during interviews. This month, the ACLU of Maryland testified in support of legislation that would prohibit the practice altogether.

D.C. workers may not be too surprised by any of this, though. Being the government town that it is, many an employee have security clearances that require relatively intrusive checks on everything from foreign friends to drug use.

Maryland 2012 HB964 Introduced