The concussive effects of a single blast from one of the roadside bombs common in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars isnike air jordans enough to cause the same brain injury linked to a recent rash of suicides in professional and amateur football players, according to a new study.

Investigators from Boston University and the Department of Veterans Affairs found chronic traumatic encephalopathynike air jordans 13 , or CTE, a serious brain injury associated with the repeated blows to the head sustained by football players, boxers, and hockey players, in four deceased veterans exposed to such blasts.

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Ann McKee, director of neuropathology service for the VA New England Healthcare System, says the brain nike air jordans 23 damage sustained from blast exposure in those four soldiers was “virtually indistinguishable” from that in athletes who sustained multiple concussions.

The researchers were then able to prove in mice tests that just a single exposure was enough to cause the nike air jordans cheap brain damage, which can only be diagnosed postmortem.

Improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, have been estimated to have caused about two thirds of the more than 6,000 soldier deaths in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and to have injured a significant number of niek air jordans for kids the more than 45,000 wounded. The Boston University report suggests that soldiers who weren’t niek air jordans for sale immediately wounded from an IED may still have suffered brain damage.

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According to Lee Goldstein, lead researcher and author of the study, an IED fashioned from a 120mm artillery round creates blast winds of up to 330 mph, nearly 100 mph faster than the highest natural wind niek air jordans retro speed ever recorded. Goldstein believes these winds reverberate and cause a whiplash “bobblehead effect” on soldiers.

“The head is being whipped about very quickly over a short period of time—it’s not exactly equivalent, but you could say it’s like having multiple hits occurring in a short period of time,” Goldstein says.niek air jordans shoes One happens on the ballfield, one happens on the battlefield, but the physics are strikingly similar.”

Unless new equipment can keep soldiers’ heads stable while experiencing these blast winds, there’s littleniek air jordans wholesale that can be done to prevent the whiplash effect, and most, if not all, soldiers would be equally vulnerable.

Most strikingly, all of the mice who were exposed to lab blasts seemed to experience the same brain damage, which means all soldiers who have been exposed to a blast may be at risk of developing the disease, which causes irritability, memory and attention-span problems, and can lead, in later stages, to dementia and suicidal thoughts.

“There’s nothing special about a mouse here. This is physics in action,” he says. “The pathology was robustly uniform, strikingly so.”

Like many soldiers exposed to IEDs, all of the mice survived the blast winds, but within a month, they were experiencing neurological deficiencies.

“None of the animals perished. They survived, they gained weight, they looked fine,” Goldstein says. “But they were quite impaired. They had deficits that correspond to some of the deficits we see in humans.”

McKee says that besides blast winds, soldiers are exposed to a host of other possible head injuries, not to mention any previous head injuries they have sustained prior to war.

“Often, soldiers are thrown against a wall or out of a vehicle. It’s hard to dissect what’s a pure blast-injury,” she says.

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Researchers have long known that many soldiers experience head injuries and multiple concussions in battle—some believe as many at 20 percent of soldiers may have had a traumatic brain injury, which causes dizziness, lightheadedness, mood changes, and, in severe cases, convulsions, seizures, and nausea.

Now what?

As Facebook turns to Wall Street in the biggest public offering ever by an Internet company, it faces a nike air jordans new, unenviable test: how to keep growing and enriching its hungry new shareholders.

The answer lies in what Facebook will be able to do — and how quickly — with its crown jewel: its status as nike air jordans 11 an online directory for a good chunk of the human race, with the names, photos, tastes and desires of nearly a billion people.

Facebook’s shares are expected to begin trading as early as this week. Already, lots of investors are scrambling to buy those shares, with giddy hopes that it will become a big moneymaker like Googlenike air jordans 13 . Because of that high demand, Facebook is expected to increase its offering price from its initial range, giving the company a valuation possibly as high as $104 billion.

In the eight years since it sprang out of a Harvard dorm room, Facebook has signed up users at breakneck speed,nike air jordans 23 kept them glued to the site for longer stretches of time and turned a profit by using their personal information to customize the ads they see.

Whether it can spin that nike air jordans cheap data into enough gold to justify a valuation of as much as $104 billion remains unclear.

“We know Facebook has an awful lot of data, but what they have not worked out yet is the most effective means of using that data for advertising,” said Catherine Tucker, a professor of marketingniek air jordans for kids at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “They are going to have to experiment a lot more.”

Analysts, investors and company executives can rattle off any number of challenges facing the company. As it works to better match ads to people, it has to avoid violating its users’ perceivedniek air jordans for sale sense of privacy or inviting regulatory scrutiny. It needs to find other ways to generate revenue, like allowing people to buy more goods and services with Facebook Credits, a kind of virtual currency. Most niek air jordans retro urgently it has to make money on mobile devices, the window to Facebook for more and more people.

All the while, its ability to innovate with new features and approaches — to “break things,” in the words niek air jordans shoes of Mr. Zuckerberg — may be markedly constrained once it has investors to answer to.

“They are going to have to think about whether they can continue with the motto ‘Done is better than perfect,’ ” said Susan Etlinger, an industry analyst at the Altimeter Group. “When you’re niek air jordans wholesale operating as a public company, life is very different. We haven’t seen that play out yet. It’s going to take a few quarters to figure out what a public Facebook is going to look like.”

Skeptics point out that the company’s revenue growth showed signs of slowing in the first quarter of 2012. And a Bloomberg survey of 1,253 investors, analysts and traders found that a substantial majority were dubious about the eye-popping valuation Facebook was seeking. “It’s a risky asset. No doubt about that,” said Brian Wieser, of Pivotal Research Group. “Google was less risky.” No matter. Mr. Wieser says he thinks that Facebook is worth $83 billion and that its revenue will grow by at least 30 percent for the next five years.

The comparisons to Google are inevitable. When that company went public in 2004, there were so many doubters that the company lowered its offering price to $85 a share. It closed at just over $100 on the first day of trading, and now sells for more than $600. Facebook is farther along than Google was in terms of revenue, having brought in nearly $4 billion last year, or $5.11 a user, compared with Google’s $2 billion in 2003.

One Facebook investor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of market regulations as the offering draws near, noted that when Google went public it already had a clear business strategy. By contrast, he described Facebook this way: “They have built an incredibly valuable asset — as opposed to a business they have executed well.”

In the years leading up to JPMorgan Chase’s $2 billion trading loss, risk managers and some senior investmentnike air jordans bankers raised concerns that the bank was making increasingly large investments involving complex trades that were hard nike air jordans 11 to understand. But even as the size of the bets climbed steadily, these former employees say, their concerns about the dangers were ignored or dismissed.

An increased appetite for such trades had the approval of the upper echelons of the bank, including Jamie Dimonnike air jordans 13 , the chief executive, current and former employees said.

Initially, this led to sharplnike air jordans 23 higher investing profits, but they said it also contributed to the bank’s lowering its guard.

“There was a lopsided situation, between really risky positions and relatively weaker risk managers,” said a former trader with the chief investment office, the JPMorgan unit that suffered the recent loss.nike air jordans cheap The trader and other former employees spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the investigations into the trading losses.

Instead, the bank maintains that the losses were largely the fault of the chief investment office. Overall tolerance for risky trading did not increase, current executives said, just the scale of the office’sniek air jordans for kids activities because of the bank’s acquisition of Washington Mutual in 2008 and its more risky credit portfolio.

Despite Mr. Dimon’s recent apologies about the losses — which will most likely be repeated on Tuesday as JPMorganniek air jordans for sale shareholders gather for the company’s annual meeting in Tampa, Fla. — regulators will scrutinize risk management at the chief investment office.

Top investment bank executives raised concerns about the growing size and complexity of the bets held by the bank’s chief investment office as early as 2007, according to interviews with half a dozenniek air jordans retro current and former bank officials. Within the investment office, led by Ina Drew, who resigned on Monday, the bets were directed by the head of the Europe trading desk in London, Achilles Macris.

Mr. Macris, who is also expected to resign, failed to heed concerns as early as 2009 from the unit’s own internalniek air jordans shoes risk officer, said current and former members of the chief investment office. Mr. Macris and Ms. Drew were not available for comment.

Under Mr. Dimon’s stewardship, JPMorgan Chase has long had a reputation for its strong risk-management abilities — indeed, it came through the 2008 financial crisis largely unscathed, unlike many niek air jordans wholesale big banks. For their part, senior bank officials on Monday disputed the assertions that the company weakened risk management in recent years while seeking higher trading profits.

Risk managers were largely sidelined by Mr. Macris, who had wide latitude and also had Ms. Drew’s support, with only modest interference from her. At one point, after concerns were raised about positions assembled by Bruno Iksil, now known as the London Whale, Mr. Macris brought in a risk officer with whom he had worked closely in the past.

Risk officers are empowered to halt trades deemed too dangerous, so the coziness of the arrangement generated talk in New York as well, according to the former trader within the chief investment office.

Several bankers said that risk controls were not sufficiently strengthened by Doug Braunstein, who took over as chief financial officer in 2010, another reason the bolder trades continued.

The bank disputes that Mr. Braunstein tolerated additional risk in any way, said Joe Evangelisti, a spokesman for the bank.

David Olson, who headed up credit trading for the chief investment office until December, said that in his trading “the management was very involved and the risk controls were very strong.”

Part of the breakdown in supervision, current executives said, was a fundamental disconnect between the chief investment office in London and the rest of the bank. Even within the chief investment office there were heightening concerns that the bets being made in London were incredibly complex and not fully understood by management in New York.

Despite these concerns, the scope of the chief investment’s offices trades widened sharply following the acquisition of Washington Mutual at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. Not only did the bank bring with it hundreds of billions more in assets, it also owned riskier securities that needed to be hedged against. As a result, the business’s investment securities portfolio rapidly grew, more than quadrupling to $356 billion in 2011, from $76.5 billion in 2007, company filing show.

Ms. Drew made presentations to the board about twice a year, one former executive recalled, “but it was just not talked about a lot,” he said.

What is more, said another senior former executive, Mr. Dimon had other fires to put out, and the chief investment office wasn’t a “problem child” for either top managers or the board of directors, despite its rapid expansion. Gigantic losses were piling up from bad mortgages, and new regulations were threatening the profitability of traditional banking, among other pressing matters.

All of these factors may explain why Mr. Dimon, an executive known for his ability to sense risk who also was familiar with the minutiae of his business, failed to heed the first alarm bells that were sounded in early April.

Sirens had gone off after a series of erratic trading sessions in late March resulted in big gains one day, followed by even bigger losses the next on the London trading desk of the bank’s chief investment office. Mr. Dimon was convinced by Ms. Drew and her team that the turbulence was “manageable,” executives said. Nor did anyone on the operating committee, of which Ms. Drew is a member, question her conclusion — in fact the full operating committee wasn’t told of the scope of the problem till early last week, just days before Mr. Dimon went public.

The alarm bells were silenced in early April, but days after first-quarter earnings were reported on April 13, the erratic trading pattern continued, except this time there were few gains to offset the losses, and the red ink was flowing faster by the day.

Mr. Dimon convened a second round of checks, which soon concluded there was a ticking time bomb, but by then it was too late, a situation made worse as traders actually increased their bets instead of shrinking them, resulting in a loss that now totals more than $2 billion and threatens a management team that until now could seemingly do no wrong.

The company has indicated publicly that the losses could eventually double, depending on market conditions.

On Monday, the bank replaced Ms. Drew with Matthew E. Zames and appointed a former chief financial officer, Mike Cavanagh, to head up the task of fixing what went wrong. One of the most respected senior executives at the bank, Mr. Cavanagh has been a loyal lieutenant of Mr. Dimon since before he took over JPMorgan Chase and has been discussed as a possible successor.

Racketeering charges were brought against the Columbia Lil Cycos, who extorted vendors in MacArthur Park. Annike air jordans infant was killed in 2007 by gunfire targeting a defiant vendor.
In 2005, leaders of a gang that sold crack and other drugs near MacArthur Park decided to add a new businesnike air jordans 11 s venture: extorting the vendors who crowd the streets each evening, selling clothes, pirated DVDs and electronics to supplement a hardscrabble existence.

The new effort led to a bloody consequence in September 2007, when an 18-year-old tasked with gunning down a defiant vendor accidentally shot to death a 3-week-old infant. The baby’snike air jordans 13 death triggered a large-scale crackdown on the clique that culminated with a two-month trial that began in March.

Federal prosecutors brought sweeping criminal charges against the Columbia Lil Cycos, a group they described as one of the most ruthless and lucrative cliques of the 18th Street gang. For the vendors nike air jordans 23 to refuse payment — first $10 or $20, later climbing to $50 — meant to invite the ire of the clique’s enforcers, they alleged.

On Friday, a Los Angeles jury convicted four of the clique’s members on federal racketeering charges for participating in the gang’s business, which prosecutors said was an operation spanning a nike air jordans cheap decade of extortion, intimidation, money laundering, drug dealing and murder, terrorizing and poisoning a neighborhood.

One defendant, Javier Perez, was also convicted of conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to kidnap. He lured the gang member who shot the baby to Mexico and attempted to strangleniek air jordans for kids him. Authorities said he was trying to deflect the heat on the clique following the baby’s killing. The three others, Eduardo Hernandez and twins Vladimir and Leonidas Iraheta, were also convicted of drug trafficking charges.

Among the witnesses who testified at trial were the vendor, who survived despite four gunshot wounds, and his niek air jordans for sale shooter, who survived after Perez and others allegedly took him to Mexico, slung a rope around his neck and threw him off the side of a road.

“It was a group that rose to power through the willingness of its members to act ruthlessly for the gang,” Assistantniek air jordans retro U.S. Atty. Kevin Lally told jurors in closing arguments. “This is a case about a criminal enterprise, the CLCS, and those that did its bidding.”

The panel deadlocked on charges surrounding an older murder that prosecutors attributed to the gang, the 2001niek air jordans shoes slaying of college student Jose Barajas Jr., whom gang members allegedly mistook for a rival gangster. Jurors voted 8 to 4 in favor of acquittal, attorneys said.

Prosecutors had alleged Hernandez and the Iraheta brothers shot Barajas, who was home from college for a family wedding, while looking for rivals to kill in the Rockwood gang’s territory.

“They took what is now a 10-year-old cold case and put it on with no eyewitnesses, no scientific evidence,niek air jordans wholesale nothing,” said Anthony Solis, Leonidas Iraheta’s attorney.

With Friday’s verdicts, 38 of the 44 people initially indicted as part of the crackdown have been convicted on charges relating to the gang, prosecutors said. Most entered guilty pleas and cooperated with the government, including the clique’s shot-caller at the time of the indictment, Sergio “Tricky” Pantoja.

In his testimony, Pantoja described rising up through the ranks and coming to run the clique’s drug-dealing, extortion and intimidation operations, collecting profits to be funneled up to a Mexican Mafia member at a supermax prison in Colorado.

“If you want to be a big-time shot caller, or a member of the Mexican Mafia, you go with the program,” he testified.

Between 2000 and 2007, the gang sold an estimated 184 kilograms—more than 400 pounds—of crack cocaine, prosecutors said.

“It was a corner-by-corner, block-by-block battle for domination,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Nili Moghaddam told jurors at trial.

Defense attorneys attacked prosecutors’ reliance on the numerous cooperating witnesses, including Pantoja, who testified in exchange for lighter sentences and other benefits.

“Cooperating defendants are inherently unreliable, they have huge incentives to lie,” Richard Novak, Vladimir Iraheta’s attorney, said following the verdict. While conceding that his client was a gang member, Novak said that does not make him a participant in a racketeering enterprise.

All four defendants face up to life terms in prison when they are sentenced in September, prosecutors said.

President Obama and Mitt Romney’s campaigns released Mother’s Day videos Sunday, saluting each candidate’snike air jordans wife or mother and also injecting some political jabs into the holiday festivities.

Obama’s video first highlights the work his mother put in raising him, drawing a clear link between her parenting nike air jordans 11 and some of the rhetoric found in his campaign speeches.

“She was somebody who recognized that those of us who have some talents, who have been given opportunities,nike air jordans 13 that we gotta give something back, and I’ll always be indebted to her for that,” he said in narration.

“That model of strong, responsible women, but also incredibly loving women, has been a great gift for my girls, because they can see every day the contributions women are making in their ownnike air jordans 23 family,” Obama continued after highlighting both his grandmother and the work of his wife, Michelle.

The closing montage features Obama emphasizing the importance of his legislation focusing on women,nike air jordans cheap including healthcare reform and the Lilly Ledbetter Act.

“When we do that,niek air jordans for kids ” he said, that’s not just good for women, that’s good for our country, and that’s good for families everywhere.”

For the Obama campaign’s full video, click below.

Romney’s video begins by highlighting the work of his wife, Ann, with his sons Ben, Matt, Craig, Josh and Tagg niek air jordans for sale recounting a series of moments from their childhood, mostly detailing their troublemaking.

“She eventually decided, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.’ She would play along with our games and help us makeniek air jordans retro forts, and she’d get down there and wrestle with us and play catch with us,” Tagg said.

The series of old family videos continues, with the family at myriad ages and settings, and the sons praise their niek air jordans shoes mom’s capacity for listening, her personal struggles through multiple sclerosis and cancer, compassion and eagerness to aid those in need.

Mitt Romney does notniek air jordans wholesale appear in the video, though his name is featured at the ending request for donations to the campaign.

For the Romney campaign’s full video, click below.

A new report says nike air jordans Occupy Los Angeles cost taxpayers at least $4.7 million, two-thirds of which was spent policing the protest.

The report by City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana says the Los Angeles Police Department spent $1.3nike air jordans 11 million monitoring protesters during the course of their two-month demonstration outside City Hall, and $1.3 million nike air jordans 13 evicting them. An additional half a million dollars was spent by city security officers, according to the report.

The tally of city costs is $2 million higher than an estimate reported in February. Officials say the higher figurenike air jordans 23 reflects newly reported costs to police the protest and the tab to restore the City Hall Park and several monuments damaged bynike air jordans cheap protesters. The city has received more than $400,000 in donations and rebates to restore the park, Santana said.

360° tour: Occupy L.A. encampment at Los Angeles City Hall

His report comes as the City Council deliberates Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s proposed budget, which calls forniek air jordans for kids hundreds of layoffs and job eliminations to help close a $220-million budget deficit.

City Councilman Mitchell Englander said the costs of the protest to the city should make city officials hesistate niek air jordans for sale before they endorse similar movements in the future.
When the occupiers niek air jordans retro first launched their demonstration last September as part of a nationwide protest against economic inequality, they were welcomed by city lawmakers. The City Council passed a resolution in support of the “peaceful and vibrant exercise in First Amendment Rights carried out by Occupy niek air jordans shoes Los Angeles.” And then-Council President Eric Garcetti told protesters, “Stay as long as you need, we’re here to support you.”

At the same time, police monitored the demonstration closely, setting up a command post inside City Hall and, in the final days of the demonstration, sending in undercover officers. After Villaraigosa ordered the park closed to allow repairs to the trampled lawn in late November, someniek air jordans wholesale 1,400 police officers swarmed downtown to clear protesters from the park in a dramatic show of force that led to hundreds of arrests.

Two students in the aviation program at Farmingdale State College were killed and another student injured in a nike air jordans Wednesday night planenike air jordans 23 crash inniek air jordans retro northeastern Pennsylvania, authorities said.

Two Long Island aviation students niek air jordans shoes from Farmingdale State College died in a plane crash at a northeast nike air jordans 11 Pennsylvania airport shortly afternike air jordans cheap takeoff, authorities said Thursday.

A third student, also nike air jordans 13 in the flight program, survived,niek air jordans for kids crawling out a window to safety from the backseat of the fixed-wing, niek air jordans wholesale single-engine Mooney M20J.

The plane was niek air jordans for sale leaving the Spring Hill Airport in Sterling, Pa.,…

President Obama hoped that announcing his change of heart in favor of same-sex marriage would put the issunike air jordans e to rest as a topic in his bid for re-election.

The immediate resultnike air jordans 11 , however, was that both sides seized upon it as an opportunity to energize their bases.

On the left, there was jubilation over Obama’s declaration that he now believes that “same-sex couples nike air jordans 13 should be able to get married.” There was also hope that his stance will energize liberals and young voters, whose flagging enthusiasm Obama will need to rekindle this fall.

From the right came a call to arms that could make it easier for Mitt Romney, the all-but-certain GOP nomineenike air jordans 23 , to rally conservatives who have been lukewarm to his candidacy.

But amid the initial furor, there was also a recognition — by both parties — that there is danger in inflaming nike air jordans cheap passions and raising expectations about one of the most volatile social and cultural issues of the day.

“No one knows how [the political implications of Obama’s announcement] will play out,” said Chad Griffin, a major Democratic fundraiser who is set to take over in June as head of Human Rights Campaign, niek air jordans for kids a leading organization lobbying for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. “I expect this issue to really die down, and we’ll be back to the issues of jobs and the economy.”

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) sounded a similar note.

“I’ve always believed that marriage was between a man and a woman,” Boehner told Fox Business Network. “The Republicans here on Capitol Hill are focused in on the economy. The American people areniek air jordans for sale still asking ‘Where are the jobs?’ and our focus is going to continue to be on the economy like it has been for the last year and a half.”

And while Romney reaffirmed his opposition to gay marriage at a campaign stop in Oklahoma, he did soniek air jordans retro cautiously, noting that it is “a very tender and sensitive topic, as are many social issues.”

When the question has been put to the voters over the past decade — more than 30 times in state referendums since 1988 — they have come down against gay marriage every time. In 2004,niek air jordans shoes there were questions defining marriage on 11 state ballots, which helped the reelection effort of President George W. Bush by boosting evangelical-voter turnout.

Three-quarters of the states now ban gay marriage in some fashion. Just a day before Obama’s announcement, North Carolina voters approved by an overwhelming margin adding a ban to their state constitution.

But attitudes are shifting, and there is a growing acceptance of same-sex unions. In the past year, almost every major poll has shown that a slim majority now supports them as a right. In March, for niek air jordans wholesale instance, a Washington Post-ABC News survey found that 52 percent said gay marriage should be legal, while 43 percent said it should be illegal.

That overall support, however, masked a deep partisan divide. Democrats overwhelmingly supported gay marriage, by 64 to 32 percent, and independents by a narrower 54 to 42 percent. Republicans opposed it, by 57 to 39 percent.

California is one step closer to becoming one of the first states to ban companies from asking job seekers nike air jordans and workers for their user names and passwords on Facebook and other social networking websites.

The state Assembly on Thursday passed a bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Nora Campos (D-San Jose) that would make anything workers designate as private on social networks off limits to employers.nike air jordans 11 The bill, which passed the Assembly without a dissenting vote, now goes to the California Senate.

Assembly Bill 1844 would not prevent employers from checking social networking websites for information that’s publicly available. Employers frequently use social media to screen job applicants, but tonike air jordans 13 avoid exposing themselves to liability, they stop short of asking to see private information, employment lawyers say.

Campos acknowledges that the practice of asking for such passwords is not widespread and that her bill is more of a preventative measure. It’s unclear if it’s even legal to ask private-sector employees for access to their social networking accounts in California, where privacy is written nike air jordans 23 into the state Constitution. The bill does not apply to the public sector. Law enforcement and security agencies nike air jordans cheap are the ones that most frequently snoop on employees’ private digital lives.

“As our culture niek air jordans for kids changes around social media, our laws need to reflect those changes, and we must make sure we protect employees’ privacy,” Campos said.

The issue captured the national spotlight when a Maryland state correctional officer returning from a niek air jordans for sale leave of absence was asked for his Facebook user name and password. He filed a complaint with the ACLU.

State Sen. Leland Yee niek air jordans retro (D-San Francisco) has sponsored another such bill, and eight other states have introduced similar legislation.

House and Senate Democrats have also unveiled a pair of bills that also would forbid employers from requiring job seekers or workers to hand over their social networking passwords as a condition niek air jordans shoes of employment. The bills would allow state and federal agencies to ask for such passwords if the person in question works with classified information.

“We feel very strongly about this issue,” Yee said. “What’s private and personal should remain private and niek air jordans wholesale personal. Nobody should have to give up any of that information to get a job or to get admitted to a university.”

Facebook has not taken a position on the California bills, but it welcomed similar legislation in Maryland.

“As a user, you shouldn’t be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job,” Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, wrote in a blog post. “And as the friend of a user, you shouldn’t have to worry that your private information or communications will be revealed to someone you don’t know and didn’t intend to share with just because that user is looking for a job.”

Johnny Veloz, a 24-year-old freelance photographer from Sacramento, said he was asked for his Facebook password during a phone interview for a full-time security job for a government contractor in New York. He declined to give it and was not offered the job.

“Why would I want to work in that kind of environment?” Veloz said.

California privacy advocate Beth Givens says the two bills send a strong message.

“Requiring access to an applicant’s social media account is no different than reading an individual’s personal diary or emails or viewing personal home videos. Granted, in days gone by, diaries were very private. But we live in a different time, and people reveal a considerable amount of personal information on their social media pages,” Givens said. “That doesn’t mean that employers should access these accounts for the purpose of making hiring decisions. As we know, technological developments outpace the law regarding consumer protection. The Yee and Campos bills attempt to bring the two into harmony for a technology that the vast majority of individuals use today: social media.”

Michael Kalt, a San Diego lawyer who is the governmental affairs director for the California State Counsel for the Society for Human Resource Management, said no one in the business community opposes the legislation.

“This is cure for a disease that doesn’t really exist,” Kalt said.

Julie Totten, an employment lawyer for Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe who represents employers, says she’s not aware of a single private employer in California who asks for social media passwords.

“It’s a boon for the legislators who get to pound their chests and say, ‘Look at what we did,’” Totten said. “This is not going to change anyone’s policies and procedures.”