Just when you think government can't get any dumber, the Bozeman, Montana city government proves you wrong:
Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected.
That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate.
The requirement is included on a waiver statement applicants must sign, giving the City permission to conduct an investigation into the person's "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records."
"Please list any and all, current personal or business websites, 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.," the City form states. There are then three lines where applicants can list the Web sites, their user names and log-in information and their passwords.
That's right, folks. The city of Bozeman wants prospective employees to provide user names and passwords for any and all Internet activity so they can, "make sure the people that we hire have the highest moral character and are a good fit for the City" (their words, not mine). Ordinarily, I'd be inclined to believe that the government deserves the sort of employees they'd end up with - after all, any employee stupid enough to provide this information would be precisely the sort of person we don't want working in the private sector. However, sooner or later, the employees will self-select, choosing more employees with absolutely no concept of personal rights or privacy, until the entire city apparatus would be filled with nosy busybodies intent on preserving the city's "moral character", whatever the heck that might be at any given point in time. Thankfully, we don't live in Montana. However, it's stories like this that should remind all of us that we need to remain vigilant and pay attention to local politics. It's easy to fixate on all the harm and damage that the federal government is doing, but it's certainly not the only level of government with the capacity to do harm.