Horrifyingly, Bozeman MT has taken an unfortunate step further in the decay of the privacy of individuals by adding a few new lines to their job applications.

These lines are to be filled in with the names of whatever social networking sites you might be on, including your username and password there.

It's one thing to pull explicitly public (but restricted) information like credit records and background checks to screen potential employees, but inquiring about private affiliations is rather questionable. Asking for explicitly private login information which the users of said sites are by contract bound to not reveal has got to be legally actionable by someone--especially since it amounts to an outright invasion of privacy and violation of law.

For those who haven't had it sink in yet, should Bozeman, MT actually use anyone's username and password to invade their prospective new employee's facebook account, it would be a violation of law.

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.nullnullnullnullnullnullnullnull