Gestapoville, USA

If you want a city job in Bozeman, Montana, you have to first hand over your username and password to your personal e-mail account as well as usernames and passwords to every other account that you might have online. City officials say that it’s to make sure that you’re a “reputable” and “honest” person.

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Over the last few days I’ve read two stories that made me rather concerned with respect to what—if any—privacy we have left today. The first story details a court ruling in England in which their High Court ruled that bloggers have no right to keeping their identities secret. The ruling pertained to a case in which a detective constable, who ultimately won the Orwell Prize for his writing, blogged about cases using aliases and changed certain details of the stories. He offered social and political commentary in the stories and often criticized politicians and police officers.

In the case, the judge said that the detective constable should not have had any “reasonable expectation” to remain anonymous because “blogging is essentially a public rather than a private activity.”

A few days later it was reported that the Las Vegas Review-Journal was served a subpoena to hand over the “identities and personal information about people who posted comments” on a story which reported on a federal tax fraud case. While the comments were violent in nature and written anonymously, the push to reveal names of the anonymous was set in motion.

This morning I came across a story from Montana that is just as—if not more—frightening. The story is entitled “City Requires Facebook Passwords from Job Applicants,” and reads as follows:

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.

[...]

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.

As with many fascist tactics, this one has its share of support. I quickly noticed a comment left on the story that supports the measure and states: “If an applicant supposedly has nothing to hide, they should have no problem complying.” Isn’t that what we heard throughout the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush?

A few points on this story:

• First, the very idea of this is horrific. Having to hand over your username and password to any and all things that you do online just to get a city job is absolutely frightening. A Google and Yahoo! username and password can give them access to your e-mail account, and that’s what they want. They want to make sure that you’re saying everything that they want you to say. They no doubt also want to read your personal e-mails that have nothing to do with the job.

• Second, I have no problem with employers—public or private—holding employees accountable if they publicly bring negative attention to their job due to blatant public displays of questionable actions. I’m in that position at the moment, given that I’m a public sector employee. I don’t tell people who I am, which city I live in, and I don’t post photos of myself whatsoever. If a person does choose to make questionable information and photos public, they have to live with the repercussions of that information and those photos.

This requirement by the city of Bozeman is so far removed from such a concept that it’s nauseating. Instead of saying, “Don’t post questionable stuff online,” they’ve said, “We want to know what you’re doing and saying at all times.”

• Third, in a world where identity theft is a prevalent as it is, how on Earth can anyone justify adding dozens of usernames and passwords to a database that could ostensibly become a smorgasbord to identity thieves? Moreover, now they’d have even more personal information given the easier access to personal e-mail accounts.

There’s no doubt that many Bozeman residents as well as other Americans will support such a concept. Their idea of “doing what’s right” is, in reality, “doing what the government wants you to do.” I’m guessing that it was the voters who put this fascist regime in power in the city of Bozeman, and sadly this might be what they want.

I’m just hoping that Bozeman City Manager Chris Kukulski makes his usernames and passwords public so that we can sniff around to see what he’s been up to lately.

UPDATE—June 23, 2009
After public outcry and threatened legal opposition, the Bozeman City Commission has rescinded the requirement to hand over personal usernames and passwords for city job applications.

Commissioner Eric Bryson said, “We’re not suspending this requirement—we’re completely eliminating it.”

Apparently the commissioners didn’t even know that the requirement had been added to the job applications. The update, as reported by Amanda Ricker, states:

The commission also took authority over any future changes to the city’s hiring policies and planned a meeting within the next 30 days to get caught up on the current procedures. Hiring procedures are generally handled by administration.

ReferencesGibb, Frances. “Ruling on NightJack Author Richard Horton Kills Blogger Anonymity.” Times Online. 17 June 2009.

Ricker, Amanda. “City Requires Facebook Passwords from Job Applicants.” Bozeman Daily Chronicle. 18 June 2009.

“Vegas Paper Gets Subpoena to ID Online Commenters.” Associated Press / Washington Post. 16 June 2009.

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