Red Cross background checks
Ever considered volunteering or working for the American Red Cross? If you do, you will need to undergo a criminal background check. I think this is acceptable. Afterall, the Red Cross involves working with lots of people that at times in their lives are very vulnerable. Such work may also involve dealing with lots of donations, including cash. Making sure volunteers and staff are thoroughly checked is a good idea.
The problem with this is how they have chosen to implement this check. Generally, when a company does a background check, they go to a company that provides this kind of service and that company finds the information and provides a report. In this case, the Red Cross has chosen to go through a third party that you, the volunteer, goes through directly. It absolves the Red Cross of any issues with this process. But it can also mean you may be handing over information, or an authorization to obtain information, that goes beyond what is needed to just do a criminal background check. This information comes from the American Radio Relay League, the primary organization for amateur radio operators in the United States (I am a licensed amateur radio operator and a member of the ARRL).
The web site that handles these background checks worries me a lot. the biggest issue I have is that their web programming is not using web standards, and requires only one browser that not everyone can even use. The site only works with Microsoft Internet Explorer. It does not work on other web browsers like Firefox, Opera, or Safari. If the site had been well programmed, I might not worry about the fact that the server runs on Microsoft Windows. Despite the fact that Windows is notoriously insecure, good administrators and programmers do know how to make it secure and keep it that way. But with this bad web programming, I'm worried that these good administrators and programmers might not be there.
posted by Phil Howard @ 11:44 PM
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