Of course it's all over now, it was a long time ago. but Steve's blog today pointed to it.
If a municipality in the UK (or, I believe, anywhere in the European Union) tried that it seems very probable that they would quickly have a nasty headache with government lawyers; it's probably in violation of the our Declaration of Human Rights and probably in conflict with our data protection directive and the legislation stemming from that.
Besides, it would be fun to publicise (with appropriate emphasis) the fact that this employer was not prepared to employ anyone insufficiently dishonest to want to break the terms and conditions they had undertaken to be bound by - clearly, one should trust no-one employed by these bozos.
Gus,
What they've replaced it with is nearly as intrusive, and only marginally less stupid.
what did they replace it with?
Tom