The expansion of web-based information tools has exacerbated this unease within Germany

According to foreign media reports, a spokesman for the German interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, said in Wednesday that the German government could impose new restrictions on employers using Facebook as part of a draft law governing workplace privacy Maiziere.

The proposed privacy bill allows companies to search the web for publicly available information about potential recruits and to check the personal information of these employees on business social networking sites such as LinkedIn or Xing, the spokesman said. But the new draft is a strict division of purely social networking sites like Facebook, banning companies from looking at their employees ' personal information on Facebook before recruiting. The Cabinet of German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced support for the draft in Wednesday, the spokesman said. The draft will be submitted to the German Federal Parliament for discussion, which is expected to be approved by the Federal Parliament as soon as this year.

The bill will also prohibit companies from videotaping employees, but companies can still set up cameras in specific locations. In addition, when employers suspect that their employees are engaged in unlawful conduct by the company, the employer may also conduct a covert investigation. The history of Nazi times in Germany has made this country extremely sensitive to personal privacy issues, and in recent years companies have been taking photos of employees and intercepting e-mails and bank data, making Germany's domestic attention to privacy issues a new level. The expansion of web-based information tools has exacerbated this unease in Germany.

Google announced earlier this month that it planned to launch a "Street View" service in 20 major cities in Germany this November, prompting a new round of privacy concerns among German citizens. According to the German government's request, the "Street View" camera car photographed the pedestrian's face and car license must be blocked. Moreover, German residents could ask Google to remove photos of their homes from Google's database. This May, Google admitted that the "Street View" camera has been wrongly collecting data on Wi-Fi networks with no password-protected payload since 2006, including the Network Service identifier (SSID) and the router's unique identification number (MAC), which has left the German public with a loss of trust in Google. In addition, the German government asked Apple to explain its iphone's data-phone policy.

Facebook, which has a total of 500 million users worldwide, currently has about 10 million users in Germany. Some observers have often attacked the company because of privacy flaws in Facebook. Earlier this year, Facebook was blamed for changing its default settings and disclosing more users ' personal information. The German government's current proposal for privacy law is directed at corporate employers.

But the German government's proposal is not a popular one. The German Retailers Association, H.D.E, points out that 4 billion euros (about $5 billion) are lost each year for theft, robbery and fraud. If laws are enacted to limit the use of cameras, which "does more harm than good" to the public, the government should reconsider this.

A spokesman for Maiziere said there was no explicit information on how companies use Facebook users. As social networks become increasingly pervasive in people's daily lives, this proposal means that, when unavoidable events occur, it can provide the courts with guidance on how to solve such problems. The spokesman added that companies would also benefit from a clear legal provision.