LOL, employers are expected to trust the FBI’s database which is only 50% accurate. That’s like trusting Yelp ratings.
On a darker note. The Trump administration is going to be all over the Rap Back program. It won’t be hard to find everyone arrested (not convicted) at an Anti-Trump protest! pwned “freedom is slavery"
As suprgeek points out:
- Go to protest against Trump (or even to document it [1])
- Get arrested and charged with "Rioting", "Disturbing the Peace" or my most favorite "Resisting Arrest[2]"
- Get an Arrest Record
- Get fired immediately thanks to RAP BACK
- Charges get dropped
- Rinse and repeat *** If the gov't remembers to update their database!
Welcome Absolute Fascism.
The sad irony.
- The FBI can have a Rap Back system and NGI database but the FBI is prohibited by Republicans from keeping a Gun Registry database, Gun Violence database or performing Gun Violence Research.
- AND the Trump Administration will "no longer target groups such as white supremacists” Strange since White Supremacists account for most of the 'Homegrown Terrorism'. What’s the probability of Bannon and Sessions removing names from gov’t databases?
Let’s go to the end of the article to get straight to the scary facts.
Faulty Records
Outdated and incorrect criminal history information already leads to workers losing their jobs. Labor and privacy advocates fear that the national Rap Back program, which draws on a massive NGI database and depends on data sharing between several agencies, will only make these errors worse.
FBI and state databases are not known for their accuracy. As the National Employment Law Project reported in 2013, as many as 50 percent of the FBI’s arrest records fail to include information on the final disposition of a case — that is, whether a person was convicted, acquitted, or if charges against them were dropped. Because many people who are arrested are never charged or convicted, a high percentage of the FBI’s records incorrectly indicate a subject’s involvement with a crime.
The beginning!
THE FBI’S RAP BACK program is quietly transforming the way employers conduct background checks. While routine background checks provide employers with a one-time “snapshot” of their employee’s past criminal history, employers enrolled in federal and state Rap Back programs receive ongoing, real-time notifications and updates about their employees’ run-ins with law enforcement, including arrests at protests and charges that do not end up in convictions. (“Rap” is an acronym for Record of Arrest and Prosecution; ”Back” is short for background).
Testifying before Congress about the program in 2015, FBI Director James Comey explained some limits of regular background checks: “People are clean when they first go in, then they get in trouble five years down the road [and] never tell the daycare about this.”
“positions of trust” could be the janitor
Rap Back has been advertised by the FBI as an effort to target individuals in “positions of trust,” such as those who work with children, the elderly, and the disabled. According to a Rap Back spokesperson, however, there are no formal limits as to “which populations of individuals can be enrolled in the Rap Back Service.” Civil liberties advocates fear that under Trump’s administration the program will grow with serious consequences for employee privacy, accuracy of records, and fair employment practices.
A majority of states already have their own databases that they use for background checks and have accessed in-state Rap Back programs since at least 2007; states and agencies now partnering with the federal government will be entering their data into the FBI’s Next Generation Identification (NGI) database.
The NGI database, widely considered to be the world’s largest biometric database, allows federal and state agencies to search more than 70 million civil fingerprints submitted for background checks alongside over 50 million prints submitted for criminal purposes.
In July 2015, Utah became the first state to join the federal Rap Back program. Last April, aviation workers at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport and Boston Logan International Airport began participating in a federal Rap Back pilot program for aviation employees. Two weeks ago, Texas submitted its first request to the federal criminal Rap Back system.
The FBI has the license to retain all submitted fingerprints indefinitely — even after notice of death. Employers are even offered the option to purchase lifetime subscriptions to the program for the cost of $13 per person.
The agency is no stranger to mission creep. As documents obtained by EPIC show, the FBI’s use of facial recognition searches is increasing and the NGI database continues to expand.
Source: news.ycombinator.com
