Bozeman backtracks on privacy matters

In case you haven’t yet heard, the City of Bozeman has rescinded the part of its back­ground check form that asked for appli­cants’ pass­words for social net­work­ing and other Web sites.

“The extent of our request for a candidate’s pass­word, user name, or other Internet infor­ma­tion appears to have exceeded that which is accept­able to our com­mu­nity,” City Manager Chris Kukulski said in a state­ment released Friday afternoon.

As of noon on June 19, the city has stopped ask­ing job can­di­dates for their user­names and pass­words, and until fur­ther notice, the city has sus­pended its prac­tice of peek­ing at appli­cants’ pass­word pro­tected Web infor­ma­tion “until the City con­ducts a more com­pre­hen­sive eval­u­a­tion of the prac­tice.” In essence, they won’t snoop using the pass­words they have already col­lected until they talk about it some more.

The city com­mis­sion will dis­cuss the mat­ter at its meet­ing Monday night at 6 in the com­mis­sion room at city hall, 121 N. Rouse Ave. The agenda is scant on details as to just what the com­mis­sion will dis­cuss, but at least they’re talk­ing about it now.

Related posts:

1. Last word on Bozeman pri­vacy fiasco
2. Aggregated media cov­er­age of Bozeman pri­vacy fiasco
3. Late after­noon Bozeman fiasco update
4. E-mails to City of Bozeman about pri­vacy fiasco not yet avail­able to the public
5. A let­ter to the Bozeman city attorney