When You Work For The City Of Bozeman, The City Of Bozeman Owns You
MayorBob.
Posted to Legal on Sun Jun 21, 2009 at 10:06:34 AM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Remember back to a week after last year's election? Remember when people were wondering how to land a job with the new administration? Easiest thing ever. Just fill out this seven page application and you too could end up filling some executive post in the federal government. People got exercised over this because, in addition to expected information, you were asked to document and explain any emails or internet postings you might have made over the past couple of years. But there were limits to what you were asked for. For instance, applicants weren't required to surrender up all their social networking handles and passwords. While you might not need to divulge that level of detail for a job say guarding nuclear secrets or rescuing banks, apparently if you want to be as much as a dog catcher for a Montana town all your secrets belong to the city.
When one job seeker applied for a job with the city of Bozeman he discovered a disclosure form (pdf doc) authorizing the city to conduct a background check on him. It's all the standard stuff you might expect an employer to want to verify: employment history; education; credit history; criminal records and character references and the like. But he noticed something just a bit more than you find on any other job app; he saw that the city wanted him to list any internet social networking sites he frequented. Not only that, he was asked for all his user names and passwords for his accounts.
Amy Cannata of the ACLU's Montana chapter says the city has crossed over the line. According to city attorney Greg Sullivan, the city would never look at any information the federal constitution says is off limits. But, according to Sullivan:"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."
Besides, according to Sullivan the information is strictly voluntary, nobody who has ever applied has questioned the policy, and refusal to provide that information would not necessarily prevent an applicant from being considered. However, information on Bozeman's web site indicates that applicants who don't provide requested information or "can't follow instructions ... will NOT be considered." State Representative Brady Wiseman (D - Bozeman) agrees that the city has overstepped its bounds. He says that "asking for passwords is over the line" and that this issue "opens up a whole new line of debate on privacy." Sullivan said the city may rethink their policy but still believes it has an interest in knowing what its employees are doing online on their own time. He suggested one possible solution might be having employees list the city as a "friend" on the sites, allowing city agents to monitor activities.
Update: Following a city staff meeting, the city dropped the password requirement and apologized for any negative impact it had, but "The City will continue using the Internet as part of background checks to judge the character of applicants. Although the City will stop asking for passwords, Kukulski said the passwords already given by previous applicants will remain the confidential property of the City."
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