I saw today on Ars Technica that Bozeman, Montana is adding a new requirement when you apply for a city job. Apparently just looking for your publicly available online posts isn’t enough. The report says that they actually want your log in name and passwords for all your social sites and websites!

Not only do I consider this to be way too intrusive, but risky. How many people have poor security policies and use just a few passwords for many uses? I’m sure they’re going to get some passwords submitted for social sites that are also used for online banking passwords or ATM pins. To me, having this information could open up great liability issues for the city. If they have a password that I use for my online banking and someone cracks my online banking account, whether or not that criminal has anything to do with Bozeman, I would have to suspect the leak came from them.

I don’t want to know someone else’s passwords. If something happens to them, and I don’t have it, then I’m safer.

Will the next employer want to see checking and credit card statements to see if I have any ‘unacceptable’ interests or have been receiving any specialized medical treatments?