WTF?

[Parts]

Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected.

That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate.

The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records."

"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, web pages or memberships on any Internet-based chat rooms, social clubs or forums, to include, but not limited to: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, YouTube.com, MySpace, etc.," the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.

The requirement raises questions concerning applicants' privacy rights.

Article 2, Section 10 of the Montana Constitution reads "the right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest."

The City takes privacy rights very seriously, but this request balances those rights with the City's need to ensure employees will protect the public trust, according to city attorney Greg Sullivan.

"So, we have positions ranging from fire and police, which require people of high integrity for those positions, all the way down to the lifeguards and the folks that work in city hall here. So we do those types of investigations to make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the City," Sullivan said.

Another concern the applicant raised was that by providing the City with a Facebook user name and password the City not only has access to the applicant's page but also to the pages belonging to all of the applicant's Facebook "friends."

"You know, I can understand that concern. One thing that's important for folks to understand about what we look for is none of the things that the federal constitution lists as protected things, we don't use those. We're not putting out this broad brush stroke of trying to find out all kinds of information about the person that we're not able to use or shouldn't use in the hiring process," Sullivan said.

When asked about creating a separate Bozeman Facebook page, then asking applicants to add the City as "friend," thus allowing the City to view the applicant's profile, Sullivan said officials could explore the option. This would limit the city to only view the page of the applicant.   

No one has ever removed his or her name from consideration for a job due to the request, Sullivan added.

Huh WTF is this.  I find seriously disturbing and the fact that they try to justify it even more so.  I really don't think this would be legal.  So do we all start having to use things like tor now all the time.   

[Pyraxis]

 

Fuck that. I will not be moving to the City of Bozeman anytime soon.

[Christopher McCandless]

My facebook is hidden - they can ask all they like. They wont find it.

[Adam]

Woah that is fucking crazy

Passwords? 

[RageBeoulve]

Well fuck their shit.

[Parts]

Reminds me of living somewhere like this



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[RageBeoulve]

Reminds me of living somewhere like this

Yeah seriously.

['andersom']

WTF indeed.

Hate it when security is used to violate privacy.
And since 9/11 it happens more and more.
Scaring people and make them give up their freedom,
in the name of sucurity. BAH

And all those morally high standard employees are just good at lying or hiding their private lives.
Hypocrites.

BAH again. This is sordid stuff.

[RageBeoulve]

WTF indeed.

Hate it when security is used to violate privacy.
And since 9/11 it happens more and more.
Scaring people and make them give up their freedom,
in the name of sucurity. BAH

And all those morally high standard employees are just good at lying or hiding their private lives.
Hypocrites.

BAH again. This is sordid stuff.

Some really rich fuckers are benifiting from all this.

The sweet truth of it being, nothing lasts forever. Its gonna backfire on em, someday.

[Pyraxis]

How the fuck are they going to figure out whether a person's disclosed all their online connections anyway?

[Parts]

Also who will have access to the information.  Nobody ever running for an elected position will ever beat an incumbent if they ever worked for the city   

[Eclair]

Their approach to wanting the information would be that if you are an employee of the state (the public), they may want to make sure you don't have any publicly available information that may tarnish them.

As for passwords, that is the area of concern...and I would think that contravenes privacy as it clearly leaves you open to identity fraud.

I had to be checked by the Federal Government here once before I could work on a security project and yes, one aspect was I did have to disclose all my email account information. But not passwords. I would think anything to do with disclosing identity is only enforcable at a federal level to that degree. I mean fuck, they can't search your house without a warrant!

[Icequeen]

How the fuck are they going to figure out whether a person's disclosed all their online connections anyway?

Seriously.

Maybe they're going to use this as a future monitoring tool to keep tabs on the employees voted "most likely to go postal" as a result of job stress.

 

[RageBeoulve]

How the fuck are they going to figure out whether a person's disclosed all their online connections anyway?

Seriously.

Maybe they're going to use this as a future monitoring tool to keep tabs on the employees voted "most likely to go postal" as a result of job stress.

 

Its just another way to minimize privacy and rights.

[Pyraxis]

Dreamed up by bureaucrats who have little idea of internet culture and don't realize what a faux pas it is.