Could you be fired for "future" behavior that hasn't happened yet?

A colleague of mine recently sent me this article and I must admit that I'm a little disturbed.  Do you recall the movie Minority Report where futuristic cops arrest people for crimes they will commit in the future?  Well, that concept might be coming to an HR department near you.  Should you be concerned?  Yes.  You should be very very concerned.  You can read the full article here:  'Pre-crime' Comes to the HR Department .

There is apparently a new company who claims to scour all social networking sites and the internet in order to come up with a 'profile' report of the type of person you are.  They also claim to be able to use this data in order to determine whether or not you will act against company policy sometime in the future.  Companies are supposed to use this data in order NOT to hire you, or worse, FIRE YOU (since they are also monitoring current employees).  If you are a current employee, and something is uncovered about you from any number of publicly available sources on the internet (think FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.), your manager gets an immediate text/email/notification so that he or she can act on it.  Sound insane?  It is!!!

Someone will eventually sue their company for wrongful termination and I'm hoping they win in order to make this type of invasion of privacy illegal.  I'm a firm believer in the freedom of keeping your personal life separate from your work life.  If you show up to work and do a good job, it shouldn't be of any interest to your company that you got drunk a few years ago, took your clothes off, jumped in a pool and someone snapped a photo of it on their phone and posted it to your FaceBook account (and tagged you).  Should you really be fired for a momentary lapse of judgment among friends?  I don't think so.  However, the reality remains that we need to think twice, no, make that four times before posting anything online (or accepting friends who will post photos/comments which could be interpreted by corporate types as less than positive).

Read the article!!  It's enough to frighten anyone into being more aware of what they make publicly available in the world of the internet.  If you have teenage children, nieces, nephews, WARN THEM.  They seem to be the most vulnerable to this type of discrimination (since they are not really thinking about their employed life yet).