Posted on 06/19/2009 10:25:18 AM PDT by FromLori
If you’re planning to apply for a job with the city of Bozeman, prepare to clean up your Facebook page.
As part of routine background checks, the city asks job applicants to provide their usernames and passwords for their social-networking sites. And it has been doing it for years, city officials said.
“Please list any and all, current personal or business Web sites, 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.,” states a city waiver form applicants are asked to sign. Three lines are provided for applicants to list log-in information for each site.
City officials maintain the policy is necessary to ensure employees’ integrity and protect the public’s trust, but the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana says they may be crossing the line.
“I would guess that they’re on some shaky legal ground with this and we would certainly welcome (the opportunity) to look at something specific from somebody who’s impacted,” Executive Director Scott Crichton said Thursday.
Advertisement He said Bozeman’s policy is unprecedented as far as he knows. ACLU’s legal counsel in Washington, D.C., had never heard of another city asking for log-in information for social networking sites as part of a job application.
“It’s like saying, ‘Let me look through your e-mails,’” Crichton said.
“The city certainly has access to publicly accessible information, but it gets pretty questionable when they start asking for password-protected things that are created to create privacy for communications between your friends and family,” he said. “That seems to be going too far.”
City Manager Chris Kukulski said the city checks the sites in order to ensure that employees who might be handling taxpayer money, working with children in recreation programs or entering residents’ homes as an emergency services worker are reputable and honest.
“It’s just one of the tools, like all the other tools, that we’ve used to do a thorough background check,” Kukulski said.
The city also checks credit reports, criminal history, references and past employment, among other things.
“We have to do some due diligence,” Kukulski said.
News of the city’s policy went ‘round the world via the Internet Thursday, triggering outrage and prompting comments by media outlets and bloggers. Celebrity gossip columnist Perez Hilton even weighed in on the news.
“Big Brother much?” he wrote. “We’ve heard of employers looking up potential employees on Facebook, but this seems a bit extreme.”
The Guardian, a major daily newspaper in London, named the city of Bozeman its “civil liberties villain of the week” on its Web site.
City Attorney Greg Sullivan said in light of concerns being expressed by the public, officials are looking at ways to alter the policy so that they might view an applicant’s online information without asking for log-in codes.
“We’ve already begun that discussion,” Sullivan said Thursday afternoon.
For example, city officials said they could ask applicants to log into their Facebook page and show it to a city official during the application process, or add the city as a “friend” so the officials could view the applicant’s page.
Bozeman has checked job applicants’ social networking sites for about three years, said Human Resources Director Pattie Berg. HR staff or supervisors in the department in which the job is sought are charged with reviewing the sites.
However, Bozeman’s city commissioners are exempt from the policy because elected officials aren’t subjected to the same background check as city employees, said Chuck Winn, assistant city manager.
City administrators first enacted the policy for police and fire department job applicants, said Mark Lachapelle, deputy chief of investigations for the Bozeman Police Department. The policy wasn’t presented to the Bozeman City Commission because the commission typically isn’t charged with setting personnel policies.
Winn said that in his former position as fire chief, he was sometimes responsible for looking at potential firefighters’ social-networking sites. He said he primarily looked for illegal activity.
“It’s not about taste or anything,” Winn said.
In at least one instance, an applicant’s social-networking site figured into disqualifying the person for a job, Winn and Lachapelle said. Lachapelle said information from the site was one of several components that contributed to the decision. He declined to discuss the case more specifically, citing privacy concerns.
I’m trying to find the article I saw that alleged that no one under the age of forty years has applied for any of the jobs currently posted in the Bozeman city government.
Now I know why...
I'll have to assume you left off the /s.
Asking for personal passwords is NOT within the town's baliwick, in no way, shape, or form.
I'm an HR manager, I run background checks, drug screens (for illegal drugs - not alcohol or tobacco which are still legal the last time I checked), etc. I have NEVER asked for a password to social networking group.
Granted I have looked them up on the internet to see if there is anything there, but never asked for their personal password to a site.
Sarc is correct.
My point is, once the precedent of intrusion into an individual’s life is well established, it is extremely hard to deny further intrusions.
Today this seems outlandish.
A year or two from now, it’ll be SOP.
There was a case in MA, where a company fired someone for smoking (cigs) at home, citing the contravening of it’s zero tolerance tobacco policy.
They won.
Once you’ve handed over your passwords, your account will never be secure again. The can control your account, change the underlying info, anything they want to do.
It is absolutely unacceptable for them to require the ability to take control of your accounts. The google account also includes your gmail account. That means that the city will be able to read every e-mail message on your account and get the e-mail addresses of everyone you have communicated with.
Is that bad enough for you?
The principle of intrusions into an individual’s life for a variety of reasons has already been well established.
Now, human nature and bureaucracy combine to go even further.
Many people have supported various intrusions for their own reasons - illegal drug testing, DUI roadblocks.
Once they run out of the “bad” things to test for, guess what they go after next.
This is a logical culmination of the policies implemented over the past two decades.
And no, it’s not bad enough for me. I’m simply enjoying it.
As they used to say, if you don’t have anything to hide, what’re you scared of.
Yeah, that’s what I thought you were thinking.
Heck, give them enough time and they will have us all chipped with it sending back live time data on what we’ve done with our bodies that day.
(sigh)
It’s scary.
That sounds like employement extortion and an illegal practice.
“If you don’t want to hand over the info, don’t apply.”
Actually not. The people of that city pay the taxes and have every right to be employed by the city without someone else in the city adding unreasonable and illegal demands.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for them to require the ability to take control of your accounts.”
That is the illegal part. They are demanding property of yours in return for employment.
Asking for account names is one thing. Letting them have your password to change your account is an entirely different matter.
There is no legitimate basis for this. My private emails are between me, the other party, and the NSA.
Yep, me too. I didn't register on FR while I was still a fed for that very reason. Lurked for years before, but only from my home address, never from work, and I didn't actually register on FR for some time after my retirement date.
That’s hilarious.
We are truly entering what Churchill predicted — “A new dark ages; made all the more terrible and prolonged by the sinister powers of science.”
I'm sorry I had kids.
Contact Your City Commissioners:
Mayor Kaaren Jacobson 587-5968 kjacobson@bozeman.net
Deputy Mayor/ Commissioner Jeff Krauss 582-2341 jkrauss@bozeman.net
Commissioner Jeff Rupp 586-1380 jrupp@bozeman.net
Commissioner Sean Becker 581-7571 sbecker@bozeman.net
Commissioner Eric Bryson 582-2347 ebryson@bozeman.net
“And if you don’t have anything to hide, well, what’s the beef?”
Did you forget the sarcasm tag?
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