As a parent, it is hard to send your child off to school for the first time. They have been by your side for so long, it may be hard to part with them because you know it is the first steps of growing up. Some of you may feel it is really easy to send your kids off to school but I deep down somewhere inside of you, you feel some kind of discomfort letting go of your child’s hand on the first day of school.

So should you worry about whose care your putting your child into? Who is watching them now that you are not around? You might have met the teacher but how much do you know about them? And what about other teachers or employees of the school that may come in contact with your child? Who are they exactly?

One question you should ask is “Does my child’s school do background checks?” Not just on teachers but cafeteria workers, custodians and maintenance men. And if they don’t, why not? If the school does not know the history of its employees, how can you stay at home and feel comfortable knowing your child is with a stranger?

As a mother, father, or guardian, married, single, or divorced, it should not matter. You are trusting someone with the care of your child, physically and mentally. If the school doesn’t run background checks, the parent should. You may not run into anyone bad with a background check and that is the best news you can have. But it is important to make sure. It’s easy to do. A few simple clicks and a couple minutes of time and the information you need to put your mind at peace is in front of you. Click here and make sure you child is in good hands.

The most common scenario is where the imposter will give the victim’s identity to an officer-of-the-law say during a traffic citation, or misdemeanor arrest, often in the form of a phony or stolen ID, or “borrow” the victim’s name an alias, then skip town, failing to pay the fine or make his required court appearance. Occasionally, serious offenses such as DUI and even felonies were committed in the victim’s name. Nearly always, the imposter is known to the victim, usually a friend or relative. Often, the two will be close in age and physical appearance.

You might be out driving on road one night, then find yourself being tailed then pulled over by a cop “Woooop!!! wooooop!!!” then getting arrested for outstanding warrants, booked at the county jail, strip searched, fingerprinted, and maybe spent the weekend in the slammer. When go before the judge, you’re told you’re free to go, all charges dropped because it turns out you’re not the person they were looking for.

Unfortunately, the criminal justice system does not yet have a decent contingency plan in place to clear an innocent person’s name. The burdon of clearing one’s name lies mostly with the accused, sometimes with steep attorney’s fees.

Procedures to clear your name from criminal databases varies according to state, or even individual counties. Some states already have special procedures in place for victims of criminal identity theft. Ask your state Attorney General’s office.

If wrongful criminal offenses are linked to your name, first contact the original arresting police/sheriff’s department who originally arrested the impostor, or else the court who issued the arrest warrant and file an impersonation report with them, and confirm your identity. Ask the police department to take your fingerprints, photograph you, and make official copies of your photo IDs, I.e.: driver’s license, passport, etc.. To claim your innocence, ask the police to compare your fingerprints and photos with the imposter’s.

Maintain a detailed log of all your phone conversions, paperwork, email messages, contacts, etc.. Keep a detailed record of all your expenses incurred. When writing the authorities you should always use certified mail with return receipt. Email is generally not considered secure for sending confidential private information, so it’s not recommended if you can avoid it. The rule is never send out something via email that would not want to share with the public. Changing your social security number is rarely recommended as that usually causes more problems than it solves.

If the arrest warrant is from another state or county, ask your local police dept. to forward your impersonation report to the agency of the jurisdiction where the arrest warrant, traffic citation, or criminal conviction originated.

The police/sheriff’s dept should recall any arrest warrants and issue you a clearance letter or certificate of release in the event you were arrested and booked. It’s essential to keep this document with you at all times in case you might be falsely arrested again. Have official copies made at the courthouse, in case it gets lost. Ask the agency to file the record of the follow-up investigation establishing your innocence at the D.A’s office and/or the court in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. This will result in an amended complaint. Unfortunately once your name ends up in a criminal database, it’s difficult to get it completely removed. Ask that the key name or primary name be changed from yours to the imposter’s name, or else to “John Doe” if the imposter’s true identity is unknown, with your name noted as an alias.

You will also want to clear your name within the court records. Determine which state law(s) will help you with this and how. If your state has no formal procedure for clearing your record, contact the D.A.’s office in the county where the case was originally prosecuted. Ask the D.A.’s office for the appropriate court records needed to clear your name. Unfortunately in some situations, you may have no choice but to hire an attorney to help you clear your good name. You may want to ask your state DMV if your driver’s license was used by the imposter. Ask them to flag your files for possible fraud.

Your best defense is to pick your friends carefully and safeguard your drivers license, other licenses, passport and of course any other personal information that would be attractive to an identity thief.

Question: I have been looking for computer programming work for over the past year, but nobody’s hiring. At first I blamed in on “the Bush recession,” age discrimination, and outsourcing to India, but now I think it’s my wife’s felony conviction that’s could be the problem. I have an impressive resume and and NO criminal record, although my wife has one. So what’s the problem?

What’s the nature of your wife’s conviction?

“Mailing foot powder (fake anthrax powder) to the local water dept., (a 2nd degree Felony in the State of Florida). John Ellis “FIB” Bush put this G**damn law in place. She’s now a convicted ‘terrorist.’”

Answer: That can most definitely be your problem right there. Unfortunately, in the software engineering / programming field, employers are requiring security clearances and so are not just running security checks, and criminal background checks on you, the job seeker, but on your wife as well. Private companies in the software computer programming field today are very concerned about security because of growing concern about “cyber terrorism” and identify theft. Much of the work of programmers and software engineers intails working with encryption technology, and security.

Answer: That’s pretty bad. There’s 2 strikes against you already. We’re not just talking about a felony conviction here, but one that’s terrorist-related on top of that. Not good! You may want to look into self-employment as an option.

The Army is relaxing it’s admissions standards, allowing new recruits previously unfit to join. First the Army raised it’s max recruiting age from 35 to 40, then to 42. The number of high school dropouts is up, as are potential recruits who scored low on the military’s aptitude test. The most disturbing trend is the growing number of moral waivers, issued to new recruits with criminal records. The number of waivers issued to convicted felons jumped by 30%.

9-11 has transformed the nation’s force of “rent-a-cops” into guardians of the homeland, but competition in the security industry for cheap bid contracts keeps wages low and proper training virtually nonexistent. Most security guards work for less than $11/hr and receive little training, and many are hired without any criminal background check. A Congressional investigation revealed that almost 90 guards working on military bases had criminal records.

According to a 2005 DHS report, 15% – 20% of US private security guards guard US Government critical infrastructure sites. Ie: nuclear power plants, military bases, Federal buildings, utility plants, chemical plants.

While a new employee may start work with a squeaky clean record, that does not necessarily mean he or she will remain that way permanently. A percentage of employees who commenced their employment with a clean record, go on to later commit crimes and were convicted outside the workplace without their employer’s knowledge.

A growing number of big companies are using outsourced contract employees, rather than in-house employees, so they must be especially aware of the importance of screening for those people. Outsourced employees who have unrestricted access to the company’s premises (particularly after normal work hours) can pose an even bigger security risk than in-house employees.

Post-employment checks are an effective risk management tool. Criminal records sometimes fail to show up in initial pre-employment screenings, as they are never 100% accurate, and existing workers may commit crimes years after commencing employment with a clean record. All too often, frauds have been committed by trusted long-term employees.

While pre-employment background checks minimizes the risk of bad hiring decisions, post-employment checks minimize exposure to risk over the long term.

This is raising much concern regarding the calibre and quality of private guards, both in the government and private sector. The question is, when is a job to important for the US military to outsource to civilians?

Concern about this issue has really escalated since the GAO released their report, revealing that some private security contractors hired convicted felons, and many also had either missing or incomplete personel records. In one documented case, there were fraudulent records of weapons & training. In 2 military bases, a staggering 89 working private security guards had criminal records!

Supporters of outsourcing of military base security argue that private security guards can be just as professional as Army guards. In light of the Dubai ports flap and concerns about terrorism, critics doubt this is sufficient, and believe only members of the US military should provide base security. Some of the contract guards may work for American subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies.

To many people including myself, the internet is one of Mankind’s greatest inventions! Afterall it has opened many exciting new opportunities that never previously existed, and it offers great convenience, but to others it’s downright dangerous. Many criminals have taken their criminal activity online.

Many people might assume simply because they don’t own a computer and aren’t on the internet, they’re information is safe and secure.

“We wanted to experiment by seeing how much personal information we could dig up on one co-worker, so for a $50 fee and the person’s name, we found a shocking amount of information!”

An unlisted phone number and address, and date of birth were easily found. You can even look up a satellite image of somebody’s home on Google Earth. Although you won’t see people, you can see details such as a rooftop solar panel, or a child’s swingset.

The first step to protect yourself is to try a Google search for your own name.

This has raised many concerns amongst critics that the Army is lowering their standards too far to meet their recruitment goals.

Most of us who served in the Army probably remember the old story of some judges giving troubled kids the choice “Join the Army or go to Jail.” This takes this idea one step further.

“We’re transforming our military. The things I look for are the following: morale, retention, and recruitment. And retention is high, recruitment is meeting goals, and people are feeling strong about the mission.”

George W. Bush

2005 records show 37 % of the Army’s waivers – 8000 soldiers were based on moral grounds. Waivers of all description are proliferating – 32% greater vs the year 2000. Convicted felons are the fastest growing source of waivers. As a result, odds are good that many soldiers fighting in Iraq entered the Army as ex-convicts.

Charles Moskos, a military sociologist NWU: “It shows you how the recruiting difficulties are getting worse,” “They’re dropping the standards. It increases the likelihood of problems in the unit, discipline problems.”

retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey: “By and large these are flawed recruits.”

“Those getting waivers won’t be the sergeants we want.”

I personally don’t have a problem with giving somebody who made a few mistakes in life a second chance, provided they only were only guilty of non-violent crimes, and were well behaved while in prison. Violent criminals have no business in the US military in my opinion.

Choicepoint is already a good example of the kind of slipshot handling of private data by information brokers. This isn’t the first time the company has been in trouble. In 2000, Pennsylvania quit giving them access to driving records and fined them close to $1.2 million, after the company sold some records to unauthorized buyers. Choicepoint blamed one of their customers for violating the rules. PA had no choice but to renew their contract the following year under tighter restrictions, because the insurance industry depends so heavily on the data. In Florida, Choicepoint was accused of selling DMV records to telemarkers and other unauthorized buyers, in violation of the Federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act. This law is intended to protect people from stalkers and burglars who would want to lookup addresses by license plate number.