By Gordon Hoekstra, Vancouver SunAugust 10, 2012
The province’s privacy watchdog has expanded its
examination of criminal record checks done by prospective employers to
include those in the private sector. Privacy
commissioner Elizabeth Denham recently completed an investigation that
found B.C. government criminal checks into its workers was too broad. “I
actually have a greater concern in the fact that some private sector
employers are requiring what’s called police information checks which
are distinct from criminal records checks,” said Denham this week. Denham
is concerned about PRIME BC (Police Records Management System), a
common database shared by all police agencies in the province that
started as a pilot project in 2001 and expanded to include the
province’s 13 independent police forces and 110 RCMP detachments by
April 2008. Unlike a criminal record check,
which only indicates whether a person was charged with a crime or
convicted, a police check using PRIME BC will also indicate whether a
person has had “negative contact” with police. The
database of 5.4 million names draws that information from reports of
stolen cars and break-ins, as well as details of phone calls from the
public to report suspicious activities and low-level encounters with
police, such as in a neighbourhood dispute. A “negative” flag is added
by police if they feel it is needed. “It’s
subjective, it’s information entered into the system by a police officer
and hasn’t been subject to judicial confirmation or scrutiny,” argues
Denham. “My point is that [PRIME BC] is
legitimate and appropriate for a law enforcement purpose, but I don’t
think it’s reasonable to access or require access to that kind of
information in the employment realm. I view that as function creep — the
creation of a database for one purpose and the use of that database for
a different, unrelated purpose,” she added.
PRIME BC is a powerful tool, say police in B.C.
The intention when it was set up was to break down barriers between
police forces so information could be shared instantly to help catch
crooks. Officers can enter and access reports on laptops in their cars,
technology not available decades ago when similar reports were stored on
paper index cards. In it’s 2009-10 annual
report, PRIMECorp., the Crown corporation that manages the database,
noted the Vancouver police nabbed a 2009 murder suspect in a few days
using reports available on the database. Although two witnesses only
knew the first name of the suspect, a query on PRIME BC found a report
of the murder victim as a witness to a missing person with the same
first name as the suspect. The murder suspect was then identified in a
photo lineup, and later arrested and traces of the victim’s blood found
on clothes.
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PRIMECorp 2009-10 Annual Report www.pssg.gov.bc.ca/.../primecorp-2009-10-annual-report.pdf
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