this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2023
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Asklemmy
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I don't have anything very interesting. I've been under NDA for various game betas at various times. One of them I'm still technically not allowed to even say there was a beta for me to have been a part of. Namely, the Age of Empires 2 expansion "Return to Rome" which brought Age of Empires 1 gameplay and civs into a separate game mode of AoE2, which had a secret closed beta around January this year.
It's not quite an NDA, but as a temporary worker for the AEC and ECQ (my state and federal electoral commissions), I've been prohibited from expressing a political opinion in public. Exactly how that's supposed to work I'm not sure. I've usually just taken it to mean I can't comment political stuff on Facebook between the date I accept the role and the date after the election (Lemmy and previously Reddit being pseudonymous, I've never cared much about following the political neutrality requirements here). People who know my IRL know my politics, so if it comes up during that time I usually just say "I'm not actually allowed to talk about that" with a wink.
That doesn't sound enforceable unless you're an official representative of the company.
The AEC and ECQ are government bodies here in Australia, that regulate elections (AEC is the Australia Electoral Commission - the federal body - and the ECQ is the Electoral Commission of Queensland - the state body for Queensland's elections).
When you sign up to assist as a temporary worker (eg. election scrutineer, etc), you're bound by very specific terms as an employee of the government.
I once signed up to help out with our national census, which made me a temporary employee of the Australian Bureau of Statistics - the ABS. The terms in that agreement were similar to the above commenter's experience, I reckon, as we were also required to be politically impartial in public (among other things).
Eh, when you're literally performing the job of runnkng the election—giving people ballots and counting the results after—I think it's pretty reasonable to have a requirement of maintaining an appearance of political neutrality.
It depends on how you read it. It's probably a Hatch act mirror or the Hatch Act itself. If so, it only applies when he is representing his employer or giving the appearance of using his position to influence. It all gets Grey and muddy real quick, especially in a position like that.
I had to Google it, but it looks like the Hatch Act is American law? So unless there's a similarly-named law here that does the same thing, I don't think it's relevant.