As a parent, I have no problem with the concept of a check to ensure that those with whom I am entrusting my children are worthy and deserving of that trust. In concept, this should give me a higher degree of confidence that my child will be safe while out of my immediate care. In concept, my 14-year-old will be better protected as a result of such a check.
But then the concept collides with reality.
For all the reasons that Bill Beatty and others have previously articulated, I do not believe that this system will provide a net positive effect. To the contrary, I believe that the long term effects will be detrimental to the overall program. Rather than re-voice what they have already said, I will just urge everyone to re-read all the associated threads, and think carefully about how this may affect you and your team.
I will throw in two pragmatic points about the particular implementation of this process.
Identity theft and credit fraud are real, serious problems. To discourage and help prevent them, and other abuses of your Social Security Number (including resale of your SSN to other organizations), everyone is urged to take precautions against distribution of their SSN. Furthermore, the SSN is used way-too-frequently to gather information and intrude into the legitimate privacy of U.S. citizens. I have absolutely no intention to divulge my SSN to anyone that does not have a statutory requirement for access to that information.
While it is legal for anyone, including a background-check organization, to request your Social Security Number, you are under no legal obligation to provide it. Under Federal law, you are only required to provide your SSN to employers (for wage and tax purposes), specific local/state/federal government organizations from which you receive benefits, support or employment, and for court/legal actions. No private organizations are specifically authorized to require or use your SSN (for more on this, see
Testimony Of Deputy Commissioner Lockhart before the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security and the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims, on Preserving the Integrity of Social Security Numbers and Preventing Their Misuse by Terrorists and Identity Thieves, September 19, 2002). If someone wants to run a check on me, and they do not employ me, they are going to have to do it without my SSN.
While brings me to my second issue. A significant percentage of the engineers and mentors on the teams are performing those functions at least in part in an official capacity and as representatives of their organizations. If the company is lending support (through funding of the employee’s time, provision of materials and/or facilities, direct financial contributions in concert with the employee’s participation on the team, authorizing use of leave to participate in team events, etc.) then there is a direct connection between the participation of the company and the participation of the engineer/mentor. In other words, they are acting as employees, and not purely as private citizens just volunteering their time. As such, the employer has a say in any third party trying to gather data on their employees. In my case, my employer - the Federal government - does not always look favorably upon efforts to create directories of government employee information (including SSNs). In some cases organizational policy can explicitly prohibit the employee from providing such information. In other cases,(military, law enforcement, national security, etc. organizations – all of which are represented by mentors with existing FIRST teams) it can actually be illegal to try to gather information on them.
I, and virtually every other NASA employee associated with our participation in the FIRST program, am acting at least in part in an official capacity. As such, it is "Dave Lavery - NASA employee", not "Dave Lavery - private citizen," that is being asked to submit to a background check. My organization has not authorized this, nor authorized any of us to share any personnel-related information (including about ourselves) with any third party organization. And without explicit directions to the contrary from the NASA General Council, I do not see how I will ever provide such information.
So, mentors, how do your companies feel about this?
-dave
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27 days to go !!!!!!