Under the new law, which will take effect when signed by the President, employers will not have direct access to the FBI information but will go through state identification agencies that will intercede with the FBI and report back to the employer. Employee rights are protected in that the employer must obtain written approval from the employee to conduct the check, and must share the information received with the employee. There are criminal penalties for misuse of the information.
While the public focus of the heavily debated 9/11 Implementation Bill has been on improvement of the nation's intelligence functions, private security professionals believe that the smaller and less heralded section permitting background checks is of nearly equal importance in protecting against terrorism.
The security industry had lobbied Congress vigorously for this legislation, the earliest versions of which date back more than a decade. Legislation languished in committee until Senators Carl Levin (D-MI), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN) successfully moved it to Senate passage late in 2003. The legislation was originally aimed at contract security personnel and had been pushed hard by the National Association of Security Companies (NASCO), a trade association of guard companies. ASIS lobbied to have the measure expanded to include "proprietary," or in-house, security personnel and then worked with NASCO and its members to achieve passage.
Former ASIS President Don Walker, CPP, a NASCO board member and chairman of Securitas Security Services USA, Inc. (formerly Pinkerton's), testified last March before the House Committee of the Judiciary in support of the bill. He said that 79,000 persons are hired every month for contract security positions in the U.S., and cited a California finding stating that 13 percent of individuals applying for security officer positions in that state were found to have criminal records or to have been hiding past convictions when checked against the FBI database.
