I feel this is bad news. Some things should be forgotten. In my country your record gets soft wiped after 8 years. With this the employer could just look up your name.
I found my conviction for assault from a bar fight 23 years ago. Since then I quit drinking, went to college, raised a child who is now 20, and turned everything around. It's pretty disheartening to see it can be found by anyone 23 years later. Unfortunately, I'm not surprised in the least that we allow this in the US.
I'm looking into that right now again. It's a pretty tedious process where the Governor has to personally approve the request. Right now there is a Republican governor in that state so they're less likely to approve it. Since background checks can only go back 7 years, 10 in some states, I let it go and decided it wasn't worth it considering that. I thought it was behind me, but this definitely changes things. Thanks for mentioning it.
The general idea has various problems. For example, would newspapers or accounts of things/people, in various media, of objectively public information be required to be retroactively removed from any mention? Does it make sense to force and dictate what entities/individuals can do with basic information at the discretion of anyone who doesn't like it? Just a few thoughts. The records exist in the database because they are public information. If a record is removed from public view, that's done when requested because it's the right thing to do, although there is no strict legal obligation to do so.
