While it's true that records can be sealed or expunged when someone turns 18, it's often too late in Washington.

Companies have contractual agreements with the state to be able to gather felony records in a mass download. Those companies then make the information available on the Internet. Landlords, employers and educational institutions can do a simple search and find the information.

"About 27,500 records a year are sold and we only make $19,000 as a state in revenue off of it, so we're talking about 69 cents per name for a kid's future," [Barry Stober, executive assistant of the Washington State Commission on African American Affairs] says.

When "checking out" a potential employee, tenant, student, the effort stops dead at the word "felon," if not at the fact that the person has a criminal record at all. There are too many young people looking for jobs, apartments, seats in college to spend too much time with the bad seeds. Nobody is going to make the effort to investigate the underlying offense, the circumstances, the person behind the crime. If there's a crime, there is another kid waiting behind him without a record.

This gives rise to a permanent underclass that will have constant problems getting an education, a job, a home, all for some dumb move made as a kid. Maybe even for something that should never have resulted in a conviction at all, but for lack of parental love and assistance, an assembly-line system and even judges looking to make their own buck off them. But once it's sold to some vulture business, it follows them forever. All for about 69¢ per child.

In April 2010, Washington State’s Legislature changed the definition of its software royalty tax and effectively granted amnesty to Microsoft, helping the company lock up $1.51 billion in savings from its thirteen-year Nevada tax dodge - and more than $100 million annually each year into the future.

It works like this: If the state believes that you give your patrons the opportunity to dance, then you pay the tax even when people don’t dance. That’s according to Mike Gowrylow, with the Department of Revenue. Gowrylow: “You could have somebody go into a nightclub, or a bar, or tavern, and they pay cover charges. Unless you followed every person around, you wouldn’t know if they actually danced or not, so the only simple way we could have of defining this is if you give them the opportunity to dance, then the tax applies.”

Gowrylow says auditors search the Internet to find out whether people dance at specific clubs. One clubowner reports an auditor told him: “You have the opportunity to dance, and we verified it by 8 or 10 different references on Yelp.”

“My auditor… came in with an obituary of a girl who committed suicide,” says another club owner. “When I argued that we aren’t primarily a dance club—we have ‘No Dancing’ signs up everywhere—she flashed this obit that said the girl liked to dance at [our club]. The auditor said, ‘I know this is ridiculous, but I have to do this.’”

The amendment says that an employer conducting an investigation may require or demand access to a personal account if an employee or prospective employee has allegations of work-place misconduct or giving away an employer’s proprietary information. The amendment would require an investigation to ensure compliance with applicable laws or regulatory requirements.

Under the amendment, employees would be present when their social network profiles are searched and whatever information found is kept confidential, unless it is relevant to a criminal investigation.

This amendment "says they have a right to enter your digital home," [Dave] Maass said. "It's astounding that they would try to codify this and that all employers could do this… the national trend is to move away from this. It's shocking that the amendment is going in the right opposite direction."

"Accordingly, there is nothing risked, which is the essence of both the common law and statutory definition of 'gambling.'"