In a surprising criterion laid down for jobs in the City of Bozeman, Montana, the prospective job-seekers - along with furnishing details like "background, references, character, past employment, education, credit history, criminal or police records" - need also to submit information pertaining to usernames and passwords for every account that the applicant may have set up with "social networking" websites.

Going by a report on the Web site of KZBK - a CBS affiliate in Bozeman -, the waiver form, via which the City can probe the applicant's personal details, reads thus: "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."

Defending the City's employment-application policy, its attorney Greg Sullivan said that though Bozeman takes privacy seriously, still the investigations are crucial for the safeguard of the workers' integrity. Sullivan added that it was essential to ensure high standards of uprightness and high moral character of the applicants.

However, there has been criticism galore of the City's application policy from privacy rights groups and Twitter tweeters, who term the practice as a 'violation of privacy rights'. Critics say that access to a profile on a social networking site would inadvertently give officials the access to the applicant's contacts too!