PROVIDENCE — Wearing stickers that read “RESPECT OUR PRIVACY,” dozens of unionized workers from Lincoln Park and Newport Grand packed into a hearing room at the state Department of Business Regulation yesterday to protest the state’s new license application for gaming employees.

The application — the subject of a Superior Court lawsuit — has gotten the attention of the American Civil Liberties Union, which yesterday brought in national privacy expert Robert Ellis Smith to testify at the public hearing about the risks of disclosing Social Security numbers and bank account information, as well as consenting to “warrantless searches” at work.

The department’s hearing officer, Joseph LoBianco, heard testimony from opponents of the new license applications, including gaming employees, union leaders and a representative from state Sen. Paul Fogarty’s office. Rhode Island State Police Lt. LeRoy Rose testified in favor of the application.

Several of those opposed to the new licensing rules said that gaming employees already are the subject of extensive monitoring via electronic cameras that record their every move. Many long-time employees said they found the new rules invasive and insulting.

Kenneth H. Knowles III said he has worked for Lincoln Park for 19 years. He said employees were told they had to fill out the application, or lose their jobs.

“When I saw the application,” Knowles testified, “I thought I wasn’t in the United States of America.”

(After the gaming employees’ unions filed a lawsuit challenging the new license applications last month, the Department of Business Regulation agreed to postpone using them until after the public hearings.)

Barry Levin, who said he is coming up on his 43rd year working at Lincoln Park, testified yesterday that he was “disgusted” by the nature of the information employees were being asked to disclose. “We are good people here. We have been very faithful to Lincoln Park,” Levin said. “It reminds me back of something in 1947” and Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Besides the usual questions about address, employment history and Social Security number, the new gaming license application forms require employees to disclose detail financial information — including their bank account numbers — and history of all criminal and civil actions against them, including arrests in cases where there were no charges. Employees are also asked to disclose whether they have been the subject of a grand jury investigation and, if so, the nature of the proceedings.

“This is a lifetime waiver of one’s Fourth Amendment rights in the workplace,” Smith, a lawyer, author and publisher of “Privacy Journal,” testified. “The whole tone of the proposal is to harass [employees] — to treat them both as children and as potential criminals.”

Patrick J. Quinn, director of the Rhode Island Service Employees International Union State Council, challenged the logic of requiring financial disclosures to root out potential crime. “There’s no connection between peoples’ credit problems,” Quinn said, “and employee theft.”

But LeRoy, of the state police, disagreed. “Often we do see people who are in debt or mortgaged to the hilt,” he said, “turn to criminal activity.”

“If you think one of us committed a crime,” said Cathy Raynor, president of the United Auto Workers Local 7770, “get a warrant!”

Raynor added, “I don’t want to work next to a criminal and neither do my coworkers.”

Fogarty’s director of constituent services, John Baxter, read from a letter signed by Fogarty in which the senator states that the new license form “crosses the line” on privacy.

Gina St.Angelo, a cashier at Lincoln Park, questioned what right an employer has to ask her about her ex-husband.

“If you’re gonna base my life on my former spouse,” she said, “I wouldn’t have a job anywhere.”

George Nee, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO, said the job application “runs the risk of putting an awful lot of hard-working people out of a job.” He asked the department to reconsider its license application.

It will likely be several weeks before the hearing officer renders a decision and state regulators meet to work out possible changes in the application before the final document is approved, said the department’s general counsel, Richard Bernstein.

larditi@projo.com