Last week saw the latest story about an Uber driver, for all the wrong reasons. The newest incident happened in Houston, when an Uber driver allegedly took a drunk female passenger to his home and raped her.

The driver, Duncan Eric Burton, 57, is an ex-con. He'd spent 14 years in federal prison on drug charges and was released in 2012, according to the Houston Chronicle. And he had cleared Uber's background check.

<snip>

"Not all background checks are created equal," said Lara Cottingham, deputy assistant director to the City of Houston's Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department. "It's easy to lie about your name, it's easy to lie about your Social Security number, it's easy to lie about where you've lived. Your fingerprints are tied to you."

Case in point: one applicant who cleared Uber's background checks had 24 alias names, five listed birth dates, 10 listed Social Security numbers and an active warrant for arrest, according to a report released last week by Houston's Administration and Regulatory Affairs Department.

<snip>