Bozeman, MT Drops Password Info Requirement 163
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!"
We are the Law (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
Because the FBI has maintained that obtaining a person's passwords without their consent is a crime.
Re:We are the Law (Score:4, Interesting)
Your analysis of the checks and balances system is a good one.
Few companies are willing to stand up to abusive governments, especially when it's expensive to do so (lawyer fees, etc). Also, there are ways around the no-password thing (electronic surveillance is already here), and in general, passwords are not required when you play your trump card (we'll send the suits if you don't comply).
Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The purpose of central government is regulation; because that is where power can be utilized in a non-biased fashion.
Some would say that "bias is human" and such, but anyone can contrive an excuse to do something or not to do something. Placing the actions of the government (in this case, the hiring process) just to filter out applicants who say... have a fetish of any sort would have a hard time knowing whether or not their rejection was for that reason.
It's not "wrong" for Bozeman to do what it's doing, but is it doing so with the appropriate regulations? Are things truly non-biased there, or does the system there need further tweaking? Those things should be brought to light, because a broken system only benefits a select few. Any executive decision needs the balance of proper legality.
Re:Myths and History (Score:3, Interesting)
It's completely unenforceable. People can just claim they have no Slashdot account (for example) and therefore not have to give their passwords away. Why anybody would be stupid enough to randomly give every potential employer their passwords is beyond reason. I could understand setting up temporary proxy accounts that would be used to, for example, say good things about the company in anticipation of a job interview.
The people who thought up this scheme are obviously stupid. How do people get into Management?
Re:Fascinating... (Score:5, Interesting)
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".
Not surprising (Score:3, Interesting)
In most of the places I have worked, Human Resources is stocked via lateral transfer from other areas. They're the deadwood that can't be easily be fired, but must be moved out for the good of the department. I'm entirely unsurprised that some HR drone came up with this idea. Unfortunately, they're still the first people job applicants usually encounter.
True, yet good HR should be a priority (Score:3, Interesting)
The whole password part... (Score:4, Interesting)
It would have been one thing had they just requested applicants list all of their social networking sites. And even listed their usernames with each site so that they would know who they were on those sites since most people don't use their real names as their logins. Clearly my real name is not yoshi_mon.
It still would have been a very invasive and ethically dubious practice but not too surprising for a 'red state'.
But to then ask for peoples passwords? That is where the whole thing gets surreal. Why the hell do you need access to the accounts? I've yet to see any real explanation for that part of this nonsense. Not that there really could be a good explanation for it but I'd really like to see what kind of twisted rational was given.
Re:It is illegal (Lori Drew) (Score:1, Interesting)
According to the Lori Drew precedent, violating the ToS of a site is no different than hacking into that site. That makes it a conspiracy to violate the federal anti-hacking laws. Facebook and the other sites involved would be well within their rights not only to sue the city, but to have whoever came up with that policy arrested on federal hacking charges.
ignorant often dishonest: remember Tuttle, OK? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm giving up mod points to voice my agreement with you. Anyone else remember Tuttle, Oklahoma [wikipedia.org]? I don't expect managers, even IT managers, to know everything [tuttletimes.com], but it would be nice if they admitted they made mistakes [theregister.co.uk] rather than acting like jerks [centos.org].