Oregon Criminal Records Search - Washington Criminal Records Search California Criminal Records Search National Criminal Background Check Records & State Background Checks National FBI Criminal Background Check & Instant Background Check Databases Faulty Oregon Court Search - Oregon Court Dockets - Oregon Court Cases - Oregon County Records - Oregon Criminal Court Records - Oregon Arrest Records - Oregon Divorce Records - Oregon Birth Records - Oregon Property Records - Oregon Criminal Record - Oregon Death Records - Oregon Marriage Records - Oregon Death Records - Oregon Criminal Background Check "Snelling Private Investigators helped us at a crucial time. Among other things, they uncovered relevant background information that had been unknown to us." Douglas Bomarito, Attorney at Law, Portland, Oregon Criminal background checks incomplete How convicted felons can slip through safety net by Bob Sullivan Technology correspondent msnbc.com 4/12/2005 2:06:26 PM Is there a felon in the next cubicle? What about in your child's afterschool athletic league? Employers and volunteer organizations are increasingly turning to national commercial database searches provided by private firms to ferret out potential convicts from their ranks. The searches are quick, inexpensive, and promise nationwide coverage -- in theory, preventing convicted felons from moving away from a checkered past. But experts say the nationwide tallies are often full of holes, and contain as few as 70 percent of all felony conviction records, leading in turn to a false sense of security. Spotty participation by the nation's 3,100 county courts, along with a hodgepodge of data formats, make national crime databases vastly incomplete, said Rhonda Taylor, CEO of Intellisense Corp., a Bothell, Wash.-based boutique background check firm. "We've done tests, and the national databases have a 41 percent error rate," she said. "(There is) a glaring issue related to a false sense of security if that information is relied upon with no other investigative tools." Such national repositories of private information took center stage earlier this year when ChoicePoint Inc. announced in February that thieves had stolen personal dossiers on 145,000 U.S. citizens. A string of high-profile data thefts followed -- including the announcement this week that thieves took personal information belonging to 310,000 people from LexisNexis -- and so did a series of public outcries and congressional inquiries. Those inquires continue this week, with Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., hosting a Senate Judiciary hearing Wednesday on "Securing Electronic Personal Data: Striking a Balance Between Privacy and Commercial and Governmental Use."