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Slightly different, but in a past life working in a field the company had extreme access to people's homes, we definitely weeded out some people who should not be given access to a strangers home using background checks.

Again, they're not ideal, and there's a large social concern of a permanent record like that, but you have a duty of care if your customers are trusting you.

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You are arguing that background checks should be a requirement in order to have access to certain protected resources. While this is a fair argument, the counterargument is that most people in this particular software business shouldn't have access to user data/protected branches anyway. If someone needs elevated access, they would likely already have a significant pedigree at the company, and a background check may not add much value. In reality, most companies don't do background checks for security purposes; they do it to screen out candidates who aren't agreeable people, which raises ethical questions. I don't have an opinion on whether this is fair or unethical, but if security was the sole purpose, it would make more sense to background-check employees as a precondition to privileged access, not candidates as a precondition to employment.

I think they're intrusive and mostly unuseful, but I can at least see the rationale behind it at the kinds of companies that hire people en masse, or the kinds of jobs that people get bonded to do.

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