State of Illinois and Feds fight over Worker Verification Program
The blurb is a little scanty, but while out and about this evening I caught a news clip on NPR about a fight between the Federal government and the State of Illinois over a worker verification program created by the Department of Homeland [Pseudo-]Security.
The jist of the program, called “E-Verify,” is that employers can run quick checks on the social security numbers of potential employees to verify citizenship and authenticity of the social security number. However, the State of Illinois recently passed a law banning use of the “E-Verify” program in the State of Illinois, citing the high inaccuracy rate of the database and the havoc that these inaccuracies can wreck on the lives of citizens that get mislabeled, often for seemingly small problems like misspellings and typos.
The news clip was interesting for three reasons. The first was the quote by an official of the Department of Homeland [Pseudo-]Security defending the accuracy of the database, saying that while nothing is perfect, they do have over 90% accuracy and any errors can usually be corrected in days.
90% accuracy for a database that will instantly label you a criminal and drop you from the potential employment pool, most likely without any feedback as to the source of your miseries? Innocent until proven guilty is now being replaced by “guilty until name is spelled accurately and typed correctly by an entry level bureaucrat”.
I can’t think of any commercial offering outside of commercial mailing lists that would even think of operating with such an incredibly low reliability rate. This is compounded by the recent government fetish for relying on such databases to catch “terrorists” from flying to see Grandma Jones or, now, to get a job at the local poultry factory (the missing link of the September 11th bombers???). If 90% accuracy is typical across all of these databases (and, given various media accounts about the no-fly lists, it does not seem unlikely), by the time you get 5 or 6 of these databases going, life becomes hell for about 1 in 2 Americans. Even 1 in a 1000 innocent victims is unacceptable.
The other issue, though, that this brings to mind is the sure insanity of the whole concept and just about every program that DHS has launched since its inception. In the aftermath of September 11th, the reoccurring theme in the media analysis was that the various security agencies of the Federal Government HAD all the information needed to predict and thwart the attack. However, due to what can best be described as a “high signal to noise ratio”, the warning signs were (understandably) overlooked as “noise”.
Given that the failure of the security agencies to prevent September 11th was their inability to hear the warning signs over all the noise, it is absolutely ridiculous to me that the governments answer is to implement various databases and spying programs to gather in MORE information. This is roughly analogous to, upon having difficulty making out the other end of a cell-phone conversation in a coffee shop, walking down the road to a rock concert.
It is understandable, inevitable, and, to some degree even admirable that the government is trying to apply technology in order to better perform its various roles and functions. Nevertheless, many of these steps are at best misguided, some are destructive, and a few are downright Orwellian, and a lot miss the target all together. Kudos for Illinois for at least standing up and demanding that the Federal government not implement [pseudo-]security measures that put the burden of auditing on innocent citizens that get chewed up by the process. Given the power that these all encompasing databases end up wielding in our lives (credit score is a notable example), this is something that we need to watch very carefully. Technology is NOT the magic bullet here, especially when the bullet misses and hits you instead.
For those of you who just flat out disagree with most of these programs, objecting on “accuracy” reasons may have a lot more efficacy in the end than objecting on merit. This is akin to lawyers fighting court battles on procedural grounds–it may not be for the right reason, but, in the end, it works.
I think clarification on your post is needed because many of your points are simply not accurate. In particular, the comment, “..90% accuracy for a database that will instantly label you a criminal and drop you from the potential employment pool, most likely without any feedback as to the source of your miseries?” is problematic and very misleading. As someone who works closely with E-Verify, I can attest that the program does not “instantly label you a criminal..” First,
there are many reasons as to why an employee’s information would cannot be confirmed immediately, including becomming a citizen and neglecting to update your information with the Social Security Administration, getting married and neglecting to update your information, etc. etc. In no way does the program make the assumption that the employee is not authorized to work in the U.S. or label the employee a ‘criminal.’ In fact, in most cases the initial non confirmation occurred because the employee neglected to update his or her own records.
Secondly, if the initial query does not result in a message stating the employee is work authorized, the employee has ample time to resolve the issue with either Social Security Administration or Dept of Homeland Security. In the majority of cases, the case is resolved within 24 hours. Since the employer is required to allow the employee to continue working during this timeframe, employees are not adversely affected whatsoever, other than being inconvenienced with going to the local Social Security office to update their records (which they are required to do regardless of whether their employer uses E-Verify).
Third, the employee does indeed receive ‘feedback’ on why E-Verify could not confirm his or her status – within seconds of the query, the program transmits a message stating either ‘work authorized’ or ‘tentative non-confirmation, SSA unable to confirm’ or ‘tentative non-confirmatin, DHS unable to confirm,’ and instructs the employee on how to resolve it. Thus, the employer instantly knows which agency was not able to verify employment authorization and provides the employee with this information so the employee can resolve the issue. I realize that many are not familiar with E-Verify, and as a result misconceptions abound, but I believe that one should know the facts before casting criticism, or he or she risks the unfortunate circumstance of making false claims.