Misguided, misjudged, misinterpreted

The FBI has for some years been tasked with security clearing, amongst others, port authority employees around the US. Since new legislation and statutes was put in place, the port authorities and other “sensitive operations” must security clear their people by requesting arrest records and other reports into the person’s life.

Some of the problems that arise with this is that according to the USAG, up to 50% of the FBI-generated reports are out of date, lacking, inaccurate in other ways or just plain wrong. Information about an arrest might be present, but information to say that charges were dropped or never brought in the first place might not be, thereby barring the innocent person from employment.

Other countries have practices similar to that of the port authority, with a much higher rate of success and low rates of error, and this is in those cases a very effective method of sifting both current employees and prospects coming in through the recruitment process. The difference between the FBI and the national police forces tha undertake these processes in other countries is the level of integration between the central registry and the “field offices” of both police and other investigative branches of the government. In most countries, central police registries will contain all information about a person, and everything will be visible with just the input of a national identification number (NIDN) or another SSN equivalent. This safeguards agains false positives of various types, and also makes sure that the information is only released to the proper instances.

Integration, information and assurance. Maybe a new and better goal for the feds to strive for.

More here.