Bozeman, MT Drops Password Info Requirement

mcmoodle writes "Bozeman, Montana has decided that they don't want applicant personal information after all, citing a worldwide backlash on the issue: '"Effective at noon today the city of Bozeman permanently ceased the practice of requesting that candidates selected for positions under a provisional job offer to provide their usernames or passwords for candidates' internet sites," said Chris Kukulski, Bozeman City Manager. ... Kukulski says after a 90 minute staff meeting held earlier today, officials decided asking applicants to provide their passwords to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, "exceeded that which is acceptable to our community." Kukulski apologized for the negative impact the issue has generated from news organizations and blogs around the world.' I didn't have any doubt this would be immediately squashed. Now I'm just curious as to how many personal accounts they actually went through!"

Comments

We are the Law

[BadAnalogyGuy]

In a system like ours, each branch of government has a specific role to play. The legislature crafts and passes laws. The judiciary determines whether the laws are valid. And the executive branch takes actions prescribed by the laws.

But only the executive branch has the power to actually do anything about the laws. It is almost a travesty how much power this puts into one single branch of government. Where we expect checks and balances, there is only unbalance in favor of the executive branch.

FTFA:
The city will continue using the internet as part of background checks to judge the character of applicants, and although the city will stop asking for passwords Kukulski says the passwords already given by previous applicants will remain the confidential property of the city.

It doesn't matter if searching online is legal or not. In fact, it may be illegal to consider anonymous online sources as actionable information. As long as the executive branch says it is going to do something, there are no laws that can truly restrict it.

Re:Myths and History

[JordanL]

Are you implying that a person's passwords to their personal accounts on websites are subject to public information requirements?

Because the FBI has maintained that obtaining a person's passwords without their consent is a crime.

Re:Fascinating...

[EdIII]

shows that the city still doesn't "get it." They likely just know that a lot of people got very upset, and figured they'd back away from something they just don't grasp...

Kukulski says after a 90 minute staff meeting held earlier today, officials decided asking applicants to provide their passwords to sites such as Facebook or MySpace, "exceeded that which is acceptable to our community." Kukulski apologized for the negative impact the issue has generated from news organizations and blogs around the world.' I didn't have any doubt this would be immediately squashed. Now I'm just curious as to how many personal accounts they actually went through!"

Yeah, I would say they don't fucking get it. It took them 90 minutes to decide it was a bad idea apparently and that the backlash was not worth it. 90 minutes. 1 1/2 HOURS. If they understood it at all, the implications of what they were doing, the violations of people's privacy and freedoms, it would *not* have taken anywhere near 90 minutes. I can imagine it was mostly about how they could spin it a different way and still get the information.

You can see it was just marketing PR with their half-assed insincere apology about it being unacceptable to the community.

Now their curious about how many accounts they actually got. Translation: "We had to stop doing it because of the whiners, but at least we got to find out how many people would put up with our shit".