An error in a national criminal record database cost Eschol Amelia Studnitz her job.

The 59 year old Carroll County, Md., resident was working as a senior accountant for Corporate Mailing Services of Arbutus last summer when the Social Security Administration, which had just awarded it a contract to handle mail, told the company that she was “unsuitable” to obtain a required level 1 security clearance to work on the contract. SSA never explained why.

As a result, CMS immediately fired Studnitz, giving her just a few minutes to collect her personal effects.

Just days later, SSA sent a second notice to the company saying that Studnitz had been pre-screen approved. No mention was made of the previous letter. But by that time it was too late.

It turns out that the original error came from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center database, which SSA uses as part of its security clearance screening. But it took intervention on the part of Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) to discover the error.

TheBaltimore Sun reported the horrifying story of what such an error in a government database can do.

“This is a horrible injustice to her,” said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. But Coney said she was not surprised the error involved the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.

“There have been several well-publicized incidents involving inaccuracies in the NCIC database,” she said, some dating back 20 years. According to online Maryland court records, a nursing home won an $11,676 civil judgment against Studnitz in 2005, but she says that actually involved her late father’s estate. She has no criminal record.

Still, Studnitz appears to have limited legal options, said Marley Weiss, a University of Maryland law professor. CMS has no obligation to rehire her. Nonunion, private-sector workers can be fired for “any reason or no reason,” except for a prohibited basis such as race or age.

A lawsuit against the government would be difficult, she predicted, because public agencies may argue they have immunity from such claims. “Of course,” Weiss said, “there is an extreme sense of unfairness to this.” — Baltimore Sun

To add insult to injury, an FBI spokesman told theSun that it does not track errors in the NCIC database. NCIC relies on data submitted to it by state and local governments, much of which is erroneous before the FBI even receives it.

A 2005Wired News investigation into inaccuracies in private databases managed by companies such as ChoicePoint found that in Texas, for instance, “the Texas DPS was notorious for having incomplete, out-of-date and missing criminal records.” These are the records purchased by companies like ChoicePoint as well as forwarded on to the NCIC database.

Many companies are now performing background checks using such databases to screen prospective employees and sometimes even current employees. People who have lost their jobs or job offers due to database errors like these have generally been able to get the databases corrected, but aren’t generally successful at getting their jobs back — or getting hired. And in the meantime they’re unemployed, living on unemployment checks, savings, or worse.

Experts recommend you check your credit report regularly for errors or unusual activity that could indicate identity theft. Maybe you should also check your own criminal background and find out which state you’re a registered sex offender in, which state has a warrant out for your arrest, and how many years you supposedly spent in prison for some crime you never had anything to do with.

Even with Rep. Bartlett working on Studnitz’s case, it seems unlikely she’ll get her job back. CMS’s president dithered in a statement to theSun, saying only that, “We’re still working through this process. It’s unresolved.” But in an October 21 letter, the company now says she was fired for poor performance, an allegation she disputes.

There are several lessons I hope you’ll take away from this. First, relying on government to do anything right — even something it supposedly should do like maintaining a criminal database — is risky; government is made up of people, and people make mistakes. Government just provides a structure where people within it can make more mistakes than normal and not have to suffer consequences for them. (This is known as sovereign immunity.) Second, I’ve noticed over the years that people have this unwarranted trust of anything they see on a computer screen. Computers are only as accurate as the data they’re given, and that’s done by people — who, as we all know, make mistakes. Third, correcting a mistake in a computer database is easy; far easier, in fact, than the bureaucracy required to convince the people in charge of the database to fix the mistake, and far easier even than navigating the corporate bureaucracy required to get one’s job back, if that can be done at all.

(Hat tip: Threat Level)