On the old Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder, sometime back in the '70's, Hitchcock revealed that his greatest fear was being arrested by mistake. That was an interesting revelation, coming as it did from the 20th century's master of paranoia and shock.
I know how he feels. When I was working in my last parish, the Canon to the Ordinary for the Diocese of Connecticut called me in some discomfort. Her voice quivering and hesitant, she informed me that her secretary had done a routine background check on me [I had just started working in the diocese and this was and is standard practice] and discovered that I had a criminal record. In fact, she told me that they discovered that I had served time in Virginia for...well, let's just say a heinous crime. This was news to me and I told her so.
Here's where I first discovered how I was regarded in the corridors of power in Connecticut. She paused and was silent for a long enough time that I thought our phones had been disconnected. She then said, "You should come to Hartford and we can discuss what needs to be done next."
I think my response surprised her, as I said, "No."
I wasn't interested in driving from Lakeville to Hartford and back again only to explain to the powers-that-be that they had the wrong guy. I doubt they would have believed me, anyway. Diocesan clergy tend to be nervous around me because I'm not a woman, like to build things using tools, am physically large, and am of a personality type that doesn't automatically defer to superficial and transient authority. In other words, I don't really belong to the diocesan club.
"Why don't you re-enter the information and use my middle name, too? I think you'll get the correct result, then."
I had the advantage in the conversation because I had been through this ten years before when the Great Barrington police department had run a check when I applied for a Massachusetts I.D. There is an unfortunate fellow who bears not only my first and last name, but also the same day, month, and year of my birth. The only difference is in our middle names. Well, and he's 6 inches shorter than I am and of a different race.
The canon did so, returned to the phone in a much more relaxed state, informed me that I wasn't a criminal, and suggested that I do something about this. Right, it's my responsibility when the diocese runs background checks with incomplete information and doesn't bother to read physical descriptions.
Besides, in a highly bureaucratized society, there is no way to truly "take care of this", as the opportunities for human error increase dramatically with the complexity of information.
Consider, for example, this:
What's in a name? For the wrong Cody Williams, 35 days in jail