[MR] safety..

[Anne]

>From my initial reading of the post.. correct me if I misread...someone
proposed doing "background checks" on *everyone* who is a registered SCA
member, no?

Assuming this is the premise.  One would do well to remember that the 4th
amendment applies here.
You cannot just blanket assume that everyone has a right to know private
information in a group. Nor will members just simply give up their "rights"
to be a member of the SCA,Inc.  The 4th amendment applies to everyone, not
just an individual when they want it to.  You need probable cause to commit
a blanket "check" of an entire group.  OR.... to make it know from X date
this will happen...

 It makes me wonder who is out there paying $29.95 to "background check"
their neighbors and everyone they come in contact with.  Doing such things,
first is a 4th amendment violation without a person's express consentand
provable probably cause.  It also can be problematic as, depending on what
company used, you can get everything from nothing to more than you ever
wanted to know and in between.  To assume that everyone is a criminal is a
little farfetched and a lot into paranoia. It is a by product of our
information age where we have FB and we just give everything we do in tweets
and status updates and I do mean everything..  We have, in this country a
fundamental right to privacy.

The Policia are taught to guilt trip people into giving up their rights with
the phrase, "what have you got to hide".  Well nothing actually, but I do
have a 4th amendment right to privacy.  However, IF we, as the SCA Inc make
a condition of membership or attending events a background check.. I cna see
a significant drop in membership almost immediately.

My current job requires me to be checked q 6 mos and less if I get so much
as a parking ticket.

I worked, last yr as a staffing coordinator at a nursing agency... we
switched several times the companies we used to do our checks.. each one had
a different file on me and about half of it was either erroneous or did not
tell the whole story.  One in particular tried to sell me a package deal
where they corrected the erroneous info for me.. I corrected it myself with
a lawyer's letter to them threatening litigation if they did not correct
what they knew and had already been proved as wrong.  Background checks have
become big business folks, please remember that.

While this is a social organization, it is based in a country where the law
of the land fundamentally protects all individuals, as loathsome as some and
thier illegal behavior may be.

I was talking to my mom today about this issue. She pointed out that when I
was growing up in the 1950-60's, that neighbors tended to know each other
very well.  While child abuse, sex abuse, domestic violence all existed just
as much then as now.. it is the "information" age that has made X the cause
of the week and all this information is pushed and pushed to the point we
are obsessed.  MY mom would have never allowed me in the house of the guy
down the block. She reminded me today that she and every other mom knew him
to be a perve and repeatedly told us to never respond to him.  The dad's
made it abundantly clear to him he was known and watched. It never made it
to the cops. Nor would my mom, nor me allow me or my children to be left
with a total stranger while they wandered an event or partied... How many
times have we complained in the SCA about this very issue??  I never left
my young pr of heathens with anyone because I was well aware of thier IQ and
how anyone they came in contact with was subject to be manipulated into ice
cream. I make a joke out of it, but it was truly because my job as a parent
was to keep my kids safe and to save the world from them.  See I make a joke
about safety but it is no joke and no job to be foisted on strangers at
events.  My dtr also never allows her two to be out of her site for long
unless she knows the other parent well.

OTOH... I have run into some adults who prey on other adults that simply
should be locked up or at the least be completely avoided at events..
YMMV..

-- 
Love never claims, it ever gives; love never suffers, never resents, never
revenges itself. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to
destruction. ~ Mahatma Gandhi ~