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Flawed Online Dating Bill Being Pushed in New Jersey
Billosaur writes "According to a report on Ars Technica, a committee of the New Jersey Assembly is trying to push an on-line dating bill even though it contains significant flaws. The Internet Dating Safety Act would require dating web sites that interact with customers in New Jersey to indicate whether they do criminal background checks and if people who fail such checks are still allowed to register with the site. 'The backers of the New Jersey Internet Dating Safety Act undoubtedly feel that the law provides at least a measure of protection despite its flaws. In this case, however, users of such sites are probably better off assuming that their personal safety remains a personal responsibility, rather than placing faith in a background check that has little chance of uncovering any information on a person attempting to hide it.'"
I read a couple years back that True.com is pushing state legislatures to adopt such bills as a boost to their own business model (and a hindrance to their competitors). Anyone know if this is the case here?
A person goes to jail as punishment. Once out, that punishment should not continue, with society treating the person as a pariah. That leads to recidivism. Not all crimes make that person a danger to be avoided. There are some crimes, yes, that if the person committed them, might make you pause to trust them in that situation again. But, let us not treat the background check as a magic bullet.
Bearded Dragon
Criminal background checks are often wrong if the person has had his case dismissed or expunged. There are so many data brokers who collect this information that its hard to change it. They pick up the initial arrest but then neglect to pick up whether the person had his case thrown out or expunged. Thats especially the case for DUII where people go through diversion and then have their record expunged. But they are never able to escape that history of DUII.
The Virginia Legislature considered this a couple of years ago. The day that the bill was considered by the House Committeee on Science and Technology, a pair of lobbyists (from a pretty high-power firm, at that) spent the day taking the head of True.com around meeting legislators. During the day, they met with a pretty good chunk of the committee, and most of the Leadership from both parties.
In the end though, the bill was very quickly, and very literally, laughed out of committee. I kind of felt bad for the True.com guy, because even though he was treated very politely, it was pretty clear that the agenda item was all about getting the bill killed in as little time as possible.
The sad thing was that before the bill made it to Sci-Tech, it was approved by the "Courts of Justice" committee, which considers general laws. CoJ is made up exclusively by attorneys, Sci-Tech has a pretty good number of engineers and technology people in its membership. Go figure.