by Nick Fishman

A new study just released by The Identity Theft Resource Center shows that data breaches are up 69% so far this year compared with the same time frame in 2007.  Nearly a third of the 342 reported breaches are attributed to businesses.  Breaches are also on the rise in banks and by health-care providers.

While it is important to understand that this increase could be attributed largely to the fact that these breaches are being self-reported, the importance of protecting personal data of your applicants and employees cannot be underscored.  Some advice as it relates to background checks: make sure that your results are only seen by those who need to know and that the information is stored in secured files if printed out.

Full Washington Post article housed in the link below:

Data Breaches Are Up 69% This Year, Nonprofit Says

by Jason Morris

President Bush has established a new council and two new positions to create governmentwide standards for checking the backgrounds of government employees and contractors.

An executive order issued June 30 established the Suitability and Security Clearance Performance Accountability Council. The council will review procedures for investigating and ruling on whether a person should be allowed access to sensitive information or federally controlled buildings. The goal is to standardize those procedures governmentwide, the order states.

The council will also establish requirements for an information technology infrastructure that can help agencies with background checks and will oversee development of that infrastructure, the order states.

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by Natalie Beck

Effective tomorrow, a new law will go into effect in the state of Florida called Florida’s Ethics in Education Act. This act calls for the re-screening of all Florida teachers to ensure there is nothing in their past that should have disqualified them from employment. Many are concerned that this law will lead to the dismissal of good employees who may have been convicted of criminal activity long ago (with a clean record since) and these dismissals could lead to a multitude of lawsuits.

While we fully support the re-screening of current employees to make sure they keep out of trouble, we also encourage the proper handling of the information one may find. This is a situation where both the state and the individual school districts really need to have all of their ducks in a row. Before any of these teachers are terminated, these employers must make sure that the offense(s) found on the background check can legally be used against the employee. If the case is too old, is a non-conviction, or activity that does not directly pertain to the employee’s job responsibility, it may not be something that can negatively impact the employment of these teachers. In some instances, what is found (depending on the search method) may not be something the employer is even legally allowed to know about.

So, a word of caution to those making the final determination regarding the future of some of these educators – know your employment laws and apply them correctly. Otherwise, you could be in for many years of litigation.

Click here to read “New law calls for retroactive criminal checks of teachers”

by Jason Morris

A care worker who was sacked after a criminal record check revealed an unfounded allegation of abuse is fighting a legal battle to clear his name.

John Pinnington, a father of two children, from Benson, Oxon, claims that the police were wrong to disclose the allegation to his new employer. He is now awaiting the outcome of a judicial review.

The dispute has become a major test case. His lawyers say that if he loses, thousands of carers will be prevented from working with children and vulnerable adults.

Mr Pinnington was fired from his post as deputy principal of Thomley Hall, a college for autistic children in Oxfordshire, when his employers requested an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check after he took the job in 2005.

The check revealed an unsubstantiated allegation of sexual abuse that was made against him by an autistic child he had cared for at another college in 2001. Police had investigated the allegation at the time and dismissed it.

Mr Pinnington, 59, is now challenging the right of Thames Valley Police to have disclosed the allegation to his new employer.

The case is a test of tough new vetting laws introduced after the murders of the Soham schoolgirls in 2002. The girls’ killer, Ian Huntley, had been able to get a job as a school caretaker despite having faced repeated allegations of sex offences involving underage girls.

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by Nick Fishman

Kudos to the U.S. Capitol Police for knowing the importance of conducting a thorough background checks when hiring new employees.  They know that performing a proper background check is but one way to ensure that they can protect themselves and the people they serve.  They know that an effective background check can help mitigate the possibility of embarrassing facts coming to light after the time of hire.  They probably also know how much it costs to hire and train a new employee.

Feel like you’ve been set up?  We all have!  There’s only one problem with their policy:  It evidently didn’t include paying attention to the results of the background check!

According to the Washington Post, 15 recruits in the most recent class of trainees had to be let go after it was found that they had information on their background checks that would have disqualified them from employment.  Even worse, this information was contained on the background checks that were conducted.  They were just ignored and never read.

NOW GIVE ME MY KUDOS BACK!!!

See the full details below:

Top Personnel Official Pressured to Resign

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; Page B04

Pressure is mounting on a top U.S. Capitol Police personnel official to resign in the wake of a scandal over the hiring of 15 recruits who had criminal records or other irregularities that should have disqualified them, officials said yesterday.

The Capitol Police human resources director, Jennifer McCarthy, was put on administrative leave several weeks ago in connection with the problem, according to police and congressional officials. She was told to resign by today or present strong evidence why she shouldn’t be fired, said congressional and police sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to comment on personnel matters.

McCarthy did not respond to a message left at her home phone number. She has denied any wrongdoing, according to one Capitol Police source.

The 15 police trainees, who make up about one-fourth of the latest group of recruits, were removed about halfway through a 12-week training course in Georgia and recalled to Washington over the weekend. They have been told they will be fired Friday if they haven’t resigned by then.

View the full story by clicking here

by Natalie Beck

A new report out of the U.K. questions whether parents are too protective of their children in this day and age. The U.K. thinktank, Civitas, reports that there is now exists a “culture of suspicion” which deters people from working with children due to the possible appearance of impropriety.

I absolutely agree with Civitas’ notion that there exists this culture which makes us question the motives of others. Why? Because there is cause for it. On any given day you can peruse the Internet and find a multitude of stories about sex offenders, coaches, volunteers, bus drivers, teachers, and others who have committed unspeakable acts of violence against children (or you can just read our blog). If there were no cause for this suspicion, companies like ours would not exist.

At the conclusion of this article, there is an opportunity to post your thoughts on this story. I ran across a comment made by a father about an incident that occurred with his young daughter. Here’s his story:

“I have been stopped in the street because I picked up my youngest daughter, who had decided to cause a scene in town, and carried her over my shoulder to the car. A passer by assumed that I must be some evil child abducter, and I had to patiently explain to them, and the well meaning security guard they’d drafted in, that I was nothing of the sort. What’s bizarre is that whilst part of me was overcome with indignation, the other couldn’t help being impressed that they’d bothered to check…”

So even though someone butting their nose into your affairs feels a bit intrusive, take a minute to think about the big picture. If that was your kid, loved one, or employee, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you NEED to know? Wouldn’t you be glad someone took the time to ask?

Click here to read “Are We Overprotective of our Kids?”

by Jason Morris

AUSTIN — A teacher’s group filed a lawsuit Monday in an effort to prevent the release to the media of personal information gleaned from teacher background checks.

The Association of Texas Professional Educators filed the lawsuit against the Austin school board and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

When the Austin American-Statesman requested the information, the school district tried to withhold it, citing exemptions in the Texas public information laws. But Abbott’s office ruled that part of the information was not exempt from the public information laws.

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by Jason Morris

Many Employers Use Credit History as a Tool in Their Pre-Employment Screening
By TORY JOHNSON

We all know that our personal credit history affects our ability to secure a home loan or open an account at a department store. But most Americans are unaware that bad credit could cost them a job.

Employers can refuse to hire applicants because of their credit history.

Many employers use credit history as a tool in their pre-employment screening as just one measure of judgment and character. If you can’t manage your financial obligations, they wonder if it’s a sign of irresponsibility. If your monthly debt payment is higher than your salary, some employers worry that it may distract from your performance.

Critics of this practice say it’s unfair for personal credit history to be used when judging professional qualifications. They say there’s no link between poor credit and job performance. Many of these people have hit rough patches, and now they’re caught in a vicious cycle: To pay down their debt, they need a job, but they can’t get hired because of their debt.

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by Nick Fishman

FCRA guru Pam Devata, Labor and Employment Attorney for Seyfarth Shaw, was kind enough to draft an exclusive article for employeescreen University about the new FACT Act regulations aimed at curbing the affects of identity theft. While many of the regulations are aimed at the Big Three Credit Bureaus, Experian, Trans Union and Equifax, there are some compliance issues that will affect employers and other financial institutions. See excerpt from the article below:

Users of Consumer Reports Have New Responsibilities As of November 1, 2008 Under the Federal Trade Commission’s Identity Theft Red Flag Regulations

It is no secret that identity theft has become a problem for consumers in recent years, costing millions of dollars in fraudulent purchases, credit fixes and litigation. As a result, the legislature and many government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission have taken measures to curb this rising trend. Indeed, recent regulations issued by the FTC and mandated by The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA) have specific directives for users of consumer information that are aimed at uncovering and preventing incidents of identity theft. These new regulations go into effect on November 1, 2008 and require the creation of a number of new policies and procedures for specified entities. Some of the regulations apply to all users of consumer reports, where others are specific to financial institutions and creditors.

The Law
FACTA or the FACT Act as it is sometimes referred to went into effect in December 2003 and amended the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) in a number of ways. As it relates to identity theft prevention, FACTA instituted a procedure to help users of consumer reports combat identity theft by creating a notion of “red flags” when identity theft was suspected. In FACTA, a “Red Flag” is defined as a pattern, practice, or specific activity that indicates the possible existence of identity theft. A “user” of a consumer report includes entities such as employers who obtain consumer reports for the purpose of making employment (hiring, promotion, firing, etc.) decisions, as well as financial institutions, and granters of credit who use the information contained in consumer reports to issue credit cards, loans or mortgages, and other such activities.

FACTA’s identity theft prevention sections require various federal agencies to implement regulations describing exactly what users must do to comply with the law. Two sections of the Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1681m (FACTA section 114), and 15 U.S.C. 1681c (FACTA section 315), refer specifically to the creation of such regulations. FACTA section 114, which addresses procedures users must implement in the case of an address discrepancy between themselves and a consumer reporting agency (CRA), applies to all users. FACTA section 315, which requires the implementation of an Identity Theft program pursuant to the Red Flags rule, is applicable only to financial institutions and creditors, as described below.

Because the law itself does not provide a lot of guidance on exactly what users need to do to be in compliance with the identity theft red flags, employers and other users should be aware of their responsibilities under these new regulations.

Click here to view the full article

by Jason Morris

Virginia law recognizes a claim for the negligent hiring of an employee or an independent contractor. With respect to independent contractors, the Virginia Supreme Court recognized a rule of liability for negligent hiring of an incompetent independent contractor, adopting the principles set forth in the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411 which recognizes a defendant’s “liability for physical harm to third persons caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care to employ a competent and careful contractor…to do work which will involve a risk of physical harm unless it is skillfully and carefully done.”

A U.S. District Judge in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia recently applied this principle in the context of the selection of a tractor trailer truck carrier by a freight broker or third party logistics company. In Jones v. C.H. Robinson Worldwide, Inc., a tractor trailer truck crashhttp://www.valawyersweekly.com/usdc-va-western-opinions/2008/06/12/008-3-216-jones-v-ch-robinson-worldwide-inc/ occurred when an inexperienced tractor trailer truck driver crossed the median and struck another tractor trailer truck head-on. The plaintiff driver sued the broker that hired the negligent driver’s carrier under a theory that the broker was negligent in the hiring of the negligent driver’s carrier. The court initially found that the operation of a tractor-trailer involves such a risk of physical harm contemplated in the Restatement, and, thus, that the plaintiff’s claim for negligent hiring of an independent contractor was viable under the facts of the case.

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