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 wouldn’t work for that city. Talk about violations of privacy. I wonder if they want to know what radio/television programs their employees listen to as well.
Why would anyone say that they have a Facebook?
I have a Facebook account and a MySpace. MySpace is for family only (and Steven Crowder lol!) No one sees it.
There is zero link between my Internet activities and my RL name.
I think anyone with a Facebook account with RL info (much less those who use a RL FR name) are nuts.
However, there are reasons I don’t access FR from work, though I can do other conservative sites such as National Review (at lunch). I suspect it would cause me to get a close look from the Federal security folks.
Massive violation of privacy. It would be fun to apply and list a stunning amount of porn and just plain ole’ whacko websites with some really red flag names. Just plain fun. :-D. Could be the basis for a funny skit as well.
I suppose that “1%er” tat on the shoulder or “Juicy” tramp stamp is reason for disqualification, too?
>>I suspect it would cause me to get a close look from the Federal security folks.<<
Especially these days wirth the fascists we handed the office to.
LOL - you'd probably be offered a high-ranking position with very good pay.
Well within the town’s bailiwick.
If you don’t want to hand over the info, don’t apply.
Really no big deal; not much different than testing for alcohol, tobacco and various drugs.
And if you don’t have anything to hide, well, what’s the beef?
And yet our nation's president was not vetted. No birth certificate. No medical records. Did he ever release his taxes? No college papers. No passport travel records (what nationality did he travel into Pakistan under?).
Kind of seems like a no-brainer to me. I mean, I would NEVER list any of that on an application. How are they gonna find out? Unless you are stupid enough to be using the sites while at work on a work computer.
How many applicants' privacy concerns did he have to violate to come up with ONE instance to justify the whole program?
"I found ONE but I can't tell you about it..."
A**---e.
What keeps people from providing that info, and then changing their password?
Well you’re name is on the application, so they can search he site for people with that name, and usually the location and a picture show up in the hit list. So it’s pretty easy to tell if you have an account. I’d let them no I have the account but no way I’d give them my password, just on general principles.
Easy answer- N/A
I’m waiting for the first nutso guy to say he has an id on goat**.*x (actual letters removed so no one looks the site up)
don’t even try to look it up...wiki it instead
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goatse
You shouldn’t do that.
That is a real nasty.
In this case, ignorance is better.
No sh!#
“It’s like saying, ‘Let me look through your e-mails” Crichton said.
It's also like saying "Let me have all your passwords, so some sketchy person in my organization can use them post things things that will look like you posted them." The liability that Bozeman is assuming with this scheme is mind-bogglingly huge, and any court in the country would throw out the accompanying waiver like a used Kleenex.
Also, I suspect that at least some of these sites require people who register to "Accept" a terms of service agreement which includes agreeing to not knowingly give your password to anyone else. That would put Bozeman in the position of inducing people to breach their contracts with the website operators.
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