False Positives Would Cripple Electronic Employment Verification
from the your-papers-please dept
My Cato colleague Jim Harper has a new paper looking at proposals to implement a nationwide electronic "employment eligibility verification" program. This was one of the key elements of last year's immigration proposals. Under the EEV program, every employer in the United States would have had to submit the names and Social Security numbers of new hires to a centralized government database. The system would match the submitted information against various databases, and return an answer to the employer about whether the employee could be hired. Employees who received a negative answer would be required to go hat in hand to a federal bureaucracy, seeking to prove their "eligibility" for employement.
While Jim doesn't quite put it this way, the fundamental problem with a system like this is that it would inevitably face a difficult trade-off between false-positive and false-negative errors. Strictly enforcing the rules will deprive many eligible workers -- including American citizens -- of the ability to make a living. A single mis-typed digit during data entry could cause an American citizen weeks of grief the next time he tried to change jobs. On the other hand, if the system errs on the side of caution and allows workers to continue working while their paperwork is straightened out, many illegal immigrants would slip through the filters. My guess is that as soon as a significant number of American citizens started being deprived of their right to work -- or required to spend days arguing with federal bureaucrats to clear their names -- the DHS would face intense political pressure to loosen the rules. But if the rules aren't going to be strictly enforced, what's the point of having the system in the first place?
Jim also points out that electronic verification would greatly increase incentives for identity fraud. If getting a job required presenting the name and social security number of a legal worker, this would create a lucrative new revenue source for information gleaned from the data breaches that have become a fact of modern life. (And it doesn't help that the Real ID Act itself creates additional vulnerabilities to privacy breaches) American citizens -- especially those with Hispanic surnames -- would begin discovering that illegal immigrants were applying for jobs with their names and Social Security numbers. And because the DHS wouldn't have any easy way of determining whose identification was real and whose was fraudulent, these legal workers would be fired unless they could prove their identity to the satisfaction of federal bureaucrats within a few days of starting work. Thankfully, this debacle was avoided when Congress failed to pass immigration legislaton last year. But the issue will inevitably come up again, and when it does, it would be good to give more scrutiny to proposals to put a federal bureaucracy in charge of deciding who is "eligible" to earn a living.
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Filed Under: employment verification
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so??!!!
I am not trying to defend such a proposal, but there is no fool proof system, so I don't think that a project can or should be decided on solely because of those issues.
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Not only that but...
A system like that, although their heart is in the right place, isn't practical at all and is bound to fail.
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Already exists
http://www.ice.gov/partners/opaimage/index.htm
As for Hispanic names being flagged, it all depends on where you live. Where I was, it was Brazilian, Russian, and Bulgarian.
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Wont you be my neighbor
Is this an issue with jobs? Aren't there more jobs being outsourced than being taken by "illegals"?
How is this a problem that requires federal interference in business employment decisions?
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A parallel
I work at an anti-virus company. I've seen false positives cripple productivity for a user.
This actually happened
AV/AS software flags some font packages and quarantines them and associated regKeys.
Web developer can't change fonts in his design software.
And this...
AV software breaks M$ Word
And this...
AV software breaks many P2P apps...
And this...
and games...
And this...
Realife parallels would include long lines for body cavity searches for "suspected terrorist" and maybe a few "I'm sorry Mr. Jabaar, we're looking for someone with less experience".
;)
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Actually
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Re:
lp.org
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False Positives / Negatives
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Who is going to pay...
Poor people have a hard enough time getting IDs as it is, without adding this rigamorole onto it. Yay, taxpayers! You get to pay for this foolish system, and then pay more for the people on welare who can't get jobs! This totally makes sense, y'all.
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Why not...?
A clearance is a more important issue, which requires greater scrutiny, which translates into weeks or months of investigations. But this could be set up once, takes less time (much less), and would be available ever after. Driver/ID cards could start it off. One required trip in person and then ever after you're good to go.
I despise the leaks as much as the next guy or gal. But I believe the problem is too much focus on the back-end (the data itself), and too little on the front-end (permissions based on role based on need to see). Put the focus on the front, less of a problem. I'd rather have all the data in one place because it's easier to input the data once, and share after only what is appropriate. The reason data gets leaked is because access is the prime motivator, when security should be. Change that in the equation and it is no, or little, problem at all.
Also, making the entry twice, preferably by two separate people, and having to have both entries equal each other would seem a good solution. When they don't match, a third person reviews and corrects so the entries match.
Just my tuppence,
Woadan
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Big Government
> is that it would inevitably face a difficult
> trade-off between false-positive and false-negative
> errors.
It's kind of frightening in and of itself that you've identified the fundamental problem with this proposal as a technical issue and not the fact that it requires every citizen to ask permission from the government to do something as basic and fundamental as work for a living.
The idea that I would need the government's permission before I could hire someone or work for someone is chilling.
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Wasted Tax Money
I think many people have jumped to the conclusion that any false positive means you automatically get dumped into the Federal system to sort out the mess. I would think any savvy business would want to review returned submissions for entry errors before turning a potential employee away. That's just good business.
Many are also missing a potential benefit. If your identity was stolen then this process could help you tremendously. You would be able to quickly lock down your credit, clear falsely attributed arrest and conviction records, clean up your employment history, and seize control of your personal data.
Will there be false positives? Undoubtedly. But it is an unreasonable to conclude that because a proposed process has potential potential points of failure then only alternative is the status quo.
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Cite your sources or don't state facts at all.
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employment verification
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criminal background
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E Verify
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