<sarcasm> Plus those employers shouldn't be getting their Facebook background checks for free. FB has to protect it's future revenue streams! </sarcasm>
When FB starts protecting user data from everybody, individuals, business and government, that'll be something. Might even be worth having to wade through your aunt's cats-in-clothing posts.
People shouldn't be getting roped in by the law because law enforcement has free reign to peruse profiles. As well, infiltrating profiles by 'social hacking' (aka asking to friend someone by having a profile with breasts on it) shouldn't be allowed by law enforcement doing fishing operations.
In other words, communications on Facebook should be considered as private communication. Monetization by anonymous advertising akin to Google's model should be the accepted quid pro quo for usage.
Assign a legal team to investigate all such orders, and proactively seek injunctions against those that overstep their authority.
Require that all government employees and contractors disclose their involvement (not publicly, obviously) and subject those individuals to enhanced scrutiny with regards to unwarranted data mining. Pursue aggressive legal action against the state for any individuals found in violation of this policy.
Of course, any of this would require Facebook or anyone else to treat its users as customers rather than products.
Does the "secret interpretation" of the Patriot Act we keep hearing about include unfettered access to social networks?
Collecting and retaining the least possible amount of information about users is good security; it's just bad commercial practice. It also protects your users in case you go out of business and end up sold (or pivoting) into a non-privacy-protecting business model, like what happened with Rapleaf.
It's pretty likely FB will quietly roll out a paid background check service (which will be hyper-secretive and kept whisper-quiet) at the same time they are publicly grandstanding about this issue. In the linked article, there is a link to a second article about a US Senator who is currently crusading on this issue. He comes right out and says there will be exceptions for law enforcement, government contractors, and jobs with security clearances. Look for them to extend those exceptions until social media spying is back to being a de-facto part of applying for a job, any job. They're going to legitimize this while pretending to be fighting it.
(sounds paranoid, yes ... until it happens)