Neal Hall reports:
Information and Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham announced Friday that her office will examine the issue of employers using the PRIMEBC police database to perform background checks on job applicants.
Denham’s office said it has been looking into employment-related criminal-record checks for several months and now will investigate concerns voiced by the BC Civil Liberties Association about the Police Records Information Management Environment database, used to record interactions with police including those with people who report crimes.
The BCCLA said earlier this week it was disturbing that the names of as many as 85 per cent of adult residents in B.C. are included in the database.
Read more in the Vancouver Sun. It sounds like this is another one of those situations in which a database has been expanded over time and its use has also expanded in ways that create new problems with respect to impacting people who may not know what inaccurate information on them has become part of a file that is used for pre-employment checks and other purposes.