Bozeman Drops Requirement For Social Networking Passwords

from the wonder-what-made-that-happen? dept

Last week, we were among a bunch of blogs and news organizations who questioned the fact that the city of Bozeman, Montana was making job applicants hand over not just info on their social networking activities, but usernames and passwords to all accounts. This certainly got a lot of attention, and, not surprisingly it's caused the city to drop the requirement and to say that it had made a mistake (found via Slashdot). Still, it makes you wonder why it took a press onslaught for the city to recognize the potential problems with such a privacy violation.

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City Requires Job Applicants To Hand Over All Online Usernames And Passwords

from the privacy,-much? dept

Slashdot points us to the incredible story that the city of Bozeman, Montana, as part of its hiring screening process requires applicants to not just list out what social networks and online sites they are "members" of, but to provide full login info, including passwords to all of those sites. What's even more incredible, is how the city defends it:

"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,"

Apparently, having "the highest moral character" doesn't include knowing better than to violate prospective employees' privacy -- and the privacy of people they communicate with via social networks. When the newspaper reporter writing the story asked why the city didn't just create, say, a page on Facebook and ask applicants to "friend" it in order to see their profile, the city attorney seemed surprised that this was even possible, noting that he would explore that option.

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