[jacquesm]

Criminals can not erase their conviction. At best they will be able to wipe out your ability to find out about that conviction. If you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check and not everybody gets to do background checks on everybody else for no particular reason. And that's a good thing.

[philipkglass]

According to what gressquel posted, they were doing a background check for a particular reason. If you meant "if you want to know stuff like that you'll have to do a background check that costs money," then the "no particular reason" threshold for running a check depends strongly on the checker's financial resources.

Whatever balance between right to privacy and right to knowledge is struck, it should have uniform effects. The law shouldn't make it harder for a potential tenant to check the background of an apartment complex owner than for the owner to check the background of a potential tenant, even though in most cases the owner will have more money.

[jacquesm]

A google search is not a background check.

[lotu]

Obviously not, the point is if you are poor and want to know if someone has a history of scamming people do you want to not eat this week and be a formal background check, or run a quick google search and not worry about where to find food. They are diffrent products but they are used for the same purpose many times.