08 Dec 2006
How has it come to this?

The title is a quote from Theoden, the King of Rohan in the Lord of the Rings, upon facing the betrayal of his friends and allies, and the massing of an enemy army to take his homeland and destroy his kingdom by force. And it has seemed like an utterly appropriate query for me of late, as I have completed my first foray into the job market in many years, and have encountered several demons of whose existence I was only barely aware.

I'm referring to the background checks, required documentation, drug tests and credit reports required to get a job these days with any large company in America.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, your humble blogger has been out of circulation in the industry for so long, and hitherto worked for such small firms that he'd never had to take a "whizz quiz" before this week. Nor had any of his previous employers checked his credit or done more than a cursory background check. I knew some of it was coming, but actually going through it has been a mind blowing experience, to say the least with a really inappropriate metaphor. And it deserves to be related.

I was formally offered (and accepted) my new employment last Tuesday, with a starting date of December 11th, or this coming Monday. One unique thing I noticed right off about the offer (which I picked up as opposed to having it mailed for speed purposes) was that it had the wrong address as my home. It was addressed to me at my father-in-laws address, where we lived while fixing up the farm in 2001-02.

I had not put this address on any document I gave to my new employer. I double checked, which I could do because I'm such a pack rat that I actually keep copies of such things. Nowhere to be found. That's curious, I thought, and when I queried the "human resources" folks about it, they seemed to have no idea either. In fact, the only place that ever had that as a valid address for me was my bank, required when getting construction loans for the farm all those years ago.

So I did a bit of checking, and sure enough, a "pre-employment credit history" had been run on my files at various credit reporting agencies. Why my credit rating has any bearing on my ability to write code is beyond me... but, well, OK, I suppose.

I was also aware that they had actually called all my references, and all my former employers. That's the first time that's happened. And I've gotta wonder why - do they believe I'd give them names and addresses of people who dislike me and would give me a bad reference? Do they suspect me of lying about reasons for leaving my past employment?

By this point I'm starting to get annoyed. And then I took the drug test.

Now, think about it - simply refusing to take a drug marks you as a drug user. You're essentially guilty until proven innocent. That seems to fly in the face of American (and British) legal tradition, but it gets worse. I think I was the only person who actually read the "Chain of Custody" document before signing it - at least the nurse assigned to watch me pee was impatient with my fussing. But I don't sign anything I've not read, so I made her wait.

Basically the fine print boiled down to an indemnification of the employer, the clinic, the lab and everyone involved. In other words, were I to be the victim of a false positive result, I would have no legal recourse whatsoever! And the only retesting that could be requested would be on the original sample, which if you stop and think about it, obviates any different result in the first place!

In short, I was completely at the mercy of a clinic I'd never heard of and a lab whose name I still don't know. I was fully expected to trust them - yet I was being treated as a potential liar (if I told them "I don't do drugs, no need for this test...") and implicitly mistrusted!

My mom used to have a saying that's totally applicable here: what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Why should I be expected to trust total strangers to the extent of placing my future employment in their hands when they were not willing to extend me the same courtesy?

I also made another "unusual" inquiry (at least according to the attending nurse): I asked how much the test cost. It was right around $100, but she wasn't sure if the company got a "bulk discount" or not, and had no way to find out. Nonetheless, it cost something. So why do companies do this?

The Drug Testing Workplace Act of 1988.

We have met the enemy, and they is us.

Now, I'm certain that if the test is performed accurately, I'll pass no problems. The grass I use these days comes in bales and is tossed to my livestock. But still, the notion that a company can demand to have it's agent watch me pee in a cup on demand is outrageous - and the tests do measure metabolites in the nanogram range (that's 1/1,000,000,000th of a gram. I know enough about measurement technology to know how accurate such assays must of necessity be. Which is to say, "Not very."

I know that the identification requirements are government mandated as well, and am pretty sure that if I looked long enough and hard enough I could probably find some Federal program or another that "encourages" Federal contractors to do extensive (and obscene) background and credit checking on potential employees. It'd be easy enough for me, as a libertarian, to place the blame for the situation squarely on the shoulders of the government. But it seems to me that there are more culprits to this than Big Brother - after all, as the fall of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern Europe proved, even Big Brother depends on the support of the people for his ultimate power.

Among the frontline culprits are the corporations: how long do you think think these intrusive Federal mandates would survive were Boeing, Lockheed, GE and IBM to simply tell the government "No, thank you. We want to treat our employees with respect, and not like common criminals. We don't want any of your Federal contracts, now go away and don't come back until this ridiculous and costly regulation is gone!"?

But the single most important link in this chain of tyranny is us: the people. A comment I ran across on a message board devoted to a product designed to circumvent drug tests summed it up best (it was from a UK address):

Land of the free and the home of the brave? Land of slaves and the home of the cowards more accurately. You let employers take your rights away like this? You submit to the indignity of allowing some stranger watch you urinate on a regular basis and then you call yourselves free? You are cattle.

If we really want to make a change, we can. All we have to do is follow Nancy Reagan's good advice and "Just Say No!", but with a distinctly un-Reaganly twist. No, you shan't have a urine sample. No, you can't run a credit check. No, you can't interview my kindergarten teacher as a character reference. No, I won't indemnify you if you make an error that costs me my livelihood. No, I won't sign on the dotted line giving you permission to snoop though my life as though it were your private playground.

If enough of us care enough about our freedom and our future to do this, we would soon find the companies standing with us, as they would be unable to get the folks they need to make money for their stakeholders - it would hit them directly in the wallet. With such "people power" it would not take long before the regulations went away, probably to be replaced by "guidelines" as a political face saving measure, but away they'd go away nonetheless.

Of course, I recently said "Yes" to all of the above - I figured it was de rigueur, and was completely unaware of many of the more odious aspects of the whole process. No more. I'm no longer playing ostrich - every journey starts with a single step, and every avalanche with a single pebble. And with this post I'm hitting the road with my tiny rock.

The Yuletide is almost upon us, and among Heathens it's traditionally a season for oaths (which is, incidentally, the origin of the New Years Resolution). So here, in the most public forum I have access to, I make the following oath:

I swear I will never willingly allow any entity, public or private, to administer a drug test, background check or credit report on me or my immediate family for any purpose relating to employment. Nor, with the exception of credit reporting for the purposes of financial transactions, will I willingly allow any invasions of my privacy or my personal life without the warrant or order of a Court of competent jurisdiction, as provided by the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. By Freyr and Njord and by the bristles of the boar I swear this oath.

This may cost me - big time. I realize that I could potentially lose everything. But there are some things in life to which money must necessarily take second place. And freedom is foremost among them. And I, for one, intend to live

Semper Liberi

16:01 /Home | 3 comments | permanent link

Evidence, Schmevidence, Says the Ralph Nader of the Tobacco Industry

Sometimes people say the most amazing things. When a doctor pointed out the difficulties of such suits, John Banzhaf, president of Action on Smoking and Health, responded:

To survive the initial motion to dismiss – where the defendant asks the court to throw out the law suit so that defendant (and his insurance company) will not be put to the burden of defending it – the judge must assumes all allegations in the legal complaint are true unless they are clearly impossible on their face. Thus a judge would refuse to dismiss any law suit which alleged that the plaintiff would have quit if the physician had warned him to do so, even if such a proposition were clearly against the great weight of evidence. This refusal to grant the motion opens the door to pre-trial discovery – including depositions, demands for the physician’s time, documents, and records, etc. – places a blot on his record, and perhaps interferes with his ability to obtain malpractice coverage at favorable rates. That threat alone may motivate many physicians (and their medical organizations and insurance companies) to settle or – better yet – to follow the guidelines next time.

I wonder if this clown realizes what he just said: he is clearly and publicly advocating lawsuits as instruments of extortion. And expounding on a legal way to get away with it. But I suppose that if the end justifies the means, that's perfectly OK.

Gag me.

An article in the journal Tobacco Control suggests suing doctors for failing to nag patients who smoke about quitting. Noting that the U.S. Public Health Service has issued "Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence Clinical Practice Guidelines" that recommend informing patients about the health risks of smoking and steering them toward "effective and inexpensive treatments for nicotine addiction," the authors argue that doctors who don't comply with these guidelines could successfully be sued for malpractice.

(link) [Reason Magazine: Hit & Run]

via Overlawyered

14:10 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Major labels to offer unrestricted MP3s

Whoa, Nellie! A sign of sanity returning to the "content industry"? Be still my quaking heart! Hopefully they'll see the light after the cash starts rolling in, but I'm not holding my breath.

AP - After years of selling online music digitally wrapped with copy and playback restrictions designed to hinder piracy, major music labels are beginning to make some songs available in the unrestricted MP3 file format.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

14:01 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

RFID Personal Firewall

Now this is an interesting and useful device, which means you can expect government and industry to lining up to prohibit it as soon as production models hit the streets.

Prof. Andrew Tanenbaum and his student Melanie Rieback (who published the RFID virus paper in March) and 3 coauthors have now published a paper on a personal RFID firewall called the RFID Guardian. This device protects its owner from hostile RFID tags and scans in his or her vicinity, while letting friendly ones through. Their work has won the Best Paper award at the USENIX LISA Conference.

(link) [Slashdot]

14:00 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

The Last of a Dying Breed

A fine commentary, although I'm not sure that technology alone is responsible for this trend.

What is being lost as technology kills off the Renaissance man? Our souls, perhaps? Commentary by Tony Long.

(link) [Wired News: Top Stories]

13:56 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link