Jun 19


That’s extortion

by Terry 19 June 2009


Who says they’re unenlightened rednecks in Montana?

If you want a job with the city of Bozeman,  be prepared to hand over the addresses of any websites you participate in, any forums you use, and any chat rooms you visit, as well as your Facebook, Goggle, MySpace, YouTube and other accounts, along with your usernames and passwords.

What about your right to privacy?  Tough.

From Montana’s News Station:

The City takes privacy rights very seriously, but this request balances those rights with the City’s need to ensure employees will protect the public trust, according to city attorney Greg Sullivan.

“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,” Sullivan said.

Sounds like voyeurism to me. On Facebook, this gives them the ability to see not only what you’ve been up to and what pictures you’ve posted, but to see the record of all your friends, as well.

Why usernames and passwords?  Why not just google you and see what turns up?

What this does in actuality is give the city the opportunity to impersonate you.  How else can they inspect your moral character if not by presenting themselves as you to your friends?

Want to torpedo a rival for love or money?  Take that information, log into the other guy’s IRC channel, and start passing out porn under his nickname.  Upload copyrighted material to YouTube.  Disclose industry gossip on the stocks and bonds message boards at Yahoo.  Log into his blog and talk about the drunken orgy you and your dog hosted last weekend.  And do it all under his identity.

But you have no choice but to trust them not to do any of that.  Not if you need a job.

That’s more than a privacy violation.  In this economy, that’s extortion.  And I hope to hell someone sues city hall out from underneath them for it.

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3 Comments

3 Responses to “That’s extortion”

  1. Ahistoricality on June 19th, 2009 10:02 pm

    Two thoughts: it’s about embarassment — yours now, to avoid theirs later — and that’s not a valid employment issue as long as we have private lives. Second, it’s a hangover from the McCarthy era, like the loyalty oaths I’ve had to sign every time I’ve worked for a state institution, because traditional background checks no longer actually cover some of our most important social associations.  (Quote)

  2. Terry on June 20th, 2009 6:49 pm

    They’ve backed down.

    I didn’t know those loyalty oaths were still around. Have they ever been challenged in court?  (Quote)

  3. Ahistoricality on June 21st, 2009 3:37 pm

    I’m sure they have, both when they were first introduced and recently (I remember a case where the person objected to one aspect of the oath due to religious pacifism), and they’ve been consistently upheld. If you want to work for the state, they have the right, apparently, to insist on your loyalty.  (Quote)

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