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What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form
- noonespecial 16y agoI'm more interested in these so called "provocative things" one can write that expedite the process.
- Alex3917 16y agoThere was another one of these stories saying that it looks suspicious if you've never been convicted of a crime or done anything illegal, so if that's the case just say you tried weed once.
- ErrantX 16y agoNo, no. No no no. Extremely bad idea. Cue cautionary tale; a friend of mine (here in the UK) wrote something similar on his form (that he'd been ticked off for smoking weed). They didn't refuse him but he has consistently had random drugs tests for the last 3 years (at a rate of about one every 2 months). The fact of it is if you tick "yes" to any of those questions you're setting yourself up for a fall. The review officer is extremely happy if you ticked no - because he can just run the default checks and not have to interview you :)
- yan 16y agoumm don't know if I'd call that "extremely bad." I was applying for TS in the US and I had a very different experience to admitting experimenting. They understood and it didn't influence me while cleared. YMMV.
- ErrantX 16y agoYeh probably, but it doesn't seem worth the risk. I know people who have not been cleared for similar "additions" (this is for mundane stuff btw, nothing exciting).
- aquateen 16y agoBetter to admit to it than get caught lying. Also any financial/credit problems in history will probably ruin your chances (more susceptible to blackmail I was told). I was an ordinary programmer in the Air Force, however I obtained a top secret clearance. Basically ticked "no" to all the boxes, however one of my friends and probably a few of my past teachers were interviewed. Someone once told me his interviewer knew he had thrown a dead squirrel at a girl in kindergarten.
- ErrantX 16y ago> Better to admit to it than get caught lying Sorry; it was a lie, I was replying to the poster above who said it might be suspicious to admit to nothing, even if it is true.
- MicahWedemeyer 16y agoMy understanding is that credit problems are the #1 reason for denying clearance. In fact, as long as you check all the 'No' boxes and aren't on anything top secret, credit issues are about the only thing that will sink you.
- pyre 16y ago> Also any financial/credit problems in history will probably ruin your chances (more susceptible to blackmail I was told). I don't get that. Why blackmail? I would assume that they feel people with financial issues are more susceptible to bribes to make their financial woes go away. Blackmail is just odd though. I wouldn't necessarily broadcast my financial woes to the world, but "Steal some Top Secret documents or we'll tell the world that you're in massive debt" wouldn't have any leverage with me (and I assume this is the same for most people). The world knowing that you're in debt is probably too small of a carrot to have someone take the risk of leaking documents/information.
- demallien 16y agoYou just answered your own question. Someone that has had money problems is more susceptible to taking bribes, and once they've taken a bribe, they are now more susceptible to blackmail. As a question along the lines of "have you ever taken a bribe?" is unlikely to get answered honestly, debt problems are used as a proxy.
- bonzoesc 16y agoI suspect the punchline of the story is a neat little provocative thing. Expediting the process can mean a quick rejection.
- ericlavigne 16y agoAn example of a "provocative thing" expediting the security process is given in another of Les's stories (copied from Sukotto's comment). http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html "The lesson was clear: if you want a clearance in a hurry, put something on your history form that will make the investigators suspicious but that is not damning. They get so many dull backgrounds to check that they relish the possibility of actually nailing someone. By being a bit provocative, you draw priority attention and quicker service."
- ck2 16y agoIt's amazing how many people today don't know we once had concentration camps in the USA and what we put innocent families through. We almost went there again with arabic Americans after 9/11 via census data.
- tomjen3 16y agoI heard some people talk about the 9/11 thing, but I have not been able to find a good article that describes the hole thing, so I only know bits and pieces. Does anybody know where I can learn more?
- kilps 16y agoI had no idea about this before this article (I'm not American...) - incredible. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
- jrockway 16y agoI'm always a little surprised when Japanese people get so excited about America. We nuked them twice, and before that we rounded up anyone that looked Japanese and put them in prison camps. When the US kidnaps and murders thousands, it's no big deal. When North Korea kidnapped 12 Japanese, it comes up in the news once a week for decades. I don't understand it. I guess when North Korea starts buying their bonds...
- btilly 16y agoWell we had some provocation for those bad things that we did. And then when the war ended, we put a lot of energy out to rebuild Japan and make life there massively better than it had ever been before. The last bit is kind of important.
- hga 16y agoThey weren't "prison camps". They had schools on site, sports facilities, etc. Wikipedia notes "Nearly a quarter of the internees left the camps to live and work elsewhere in the United States, outside the exclusion zone." (the zone was the West coast.) Wikipedia says 20,000 served in the military, mostly in the European Theater for obvious reasons, and I hope you all know of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_%28United_States%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/442nd_Infantry_Regiment_%28Unit...) which earned a serious reputation and was the subject of a very favorable movie in 1951 (i.e. before the US was particularly enlightened). 7 Presidential Unit Citations (fine in one month, probably for the Vosges mountains rescue operation, that whole campaign was very tough and fought in terrain that has favored defenders for millennia (http://www.amazon.com/When-Odds-Were-Even-1944-January/dp/0345476115/) http://www.amazon.com/When-Odds-Were-Even-1944-January/dp/03...), 21 Medals of Honor, 41 net DCS, 560 Silver Stars all the way down to 9,486 Purple Hearts for a unit of 3,000 men.... Anyway, the point of all of the above is that this was complicated. The simplistic trope of "we threw them in concentration camps like Nazis" just doesn't hold up to even casual examination.
- bkrausz 16y agoThe question of what to reveal on official documents comes up fairly often. On the on hand, telling the truth can cause unnecessary trouble, on the other hand, lying is technically illegal. I'm amazed at how often people are strongly incentivized to choose the latter.
- jws 16y agoI have lied on the security it forms, but with approval of the agent. As I recall the question read something like: Have you ever used or abused <<giant list of drugs, chemicals, and substances that goes on for a good 2 inch tall paragraph in small type>>, or glue? Right there at the end… glue. I had to confess that I not only used glue on a regular basis, but I had just showed my preschool daughter how to use glue and we had a grand time using glue together. In a decision to pain logicians everywhere the agent deemed that my "use of glue" was not "use of glue".
- chr15 16y agoI would not lie on security clearance applications. Being honest and truthful is a big factor is the security clearance process. It's OK if you have incidences like this in the past, as long as there are mitigating factors such as passage of time and circumstances in which the incident occurred. The investigators just want to make sure you cannot be blackmailed in exchange for secret information. For example, say John has a drug addiction, but he failed to disclose this on his application. He is eventually granted the clearance, but now he has to keep this secret for the rest of his life. Someone could easily blackmail him for secret government information. If he is caught lying, his clearance will be revoked and he will lose his job, and more than likely he will never be hired for a position that requires a clearance ever again (many US gov't jobs require a clearance). Honesty is a sign of your loyalty to the U.S. Depending on the type of clearance, you are sometimes required to take multiple polygraph tests, and you will more than likely be caught lying. Author did the right thing by being truthful. See http://www.rjhresearch.com/ADR/index.htm http://www.rjhresearch.com/ADR/index.htm for more information.
- jugtfghjkuhyg 16y agoSo at the airport to the 'have you left your bags unattended, has anyone given you anything to carry on' Do you answer, yes - the bags have been unattended in the cupboard for most of the year, and on the incoming flight and my company gave me this laptop to carry on? Incidentally if you fly El-Al they do ask you if you were given a new laptop for this trip and even if it has been out for repair since you knew you were taking this trip.
- jrockway 16y agoWhy do people deal with security clearances and government jobs? The pay is better in the private sector, and fucking up won't land you in prison. The market is clearly not efficient.
- hga 16y agoOne very simple reason that one of my friends has been enjoying for some time: it allows you to continue your programming career past age 35-40. This part of the market, where they care if you already have a clearance and can do the job, but not your age, is much more efficient than the civilian US market. And I'd be surprised if the pay is much better in the private sector for equivalent IT jobs; I've never heard any programmer with a clearance being upset with pay or not being able to live the lifestyle he liked (well, as long as it was average American suburban). "Fucking up" is pretty easy to avoid; you can talk about the technology you're using (e.g. Suns/UNIX, .NET, Java (the CIA was a 100% Java shop in the middle of the last decade), just not about the domain. Which is often true in the civilian market, it's just that the penalties are higher.
- eob 16y ago> He then got out a blank form and handed it to me, saying ``Here, fill it out again and don't mention that. If you do, I'll make sure that you never get a security clearance.'' That sentence perfectly sums up my experience with the security clearance process and demonstrates clearly how broken it is.
- hga 16y agoIn all fairness this was a particularly special case. And from a long time ago, way past the time anyone would be worried if he really had been a spy for Imperial Japan.
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- eob 16y agoThat's a fair point, hga. The larger problem with this process, I think though, is that it isn't one governed by a clear set of rules. They tell you "list everything" but they don't actually want to know everything, so they end up making you erase some things from the form. Why do you have to erase them? Because you can't get cleared if you list them, but as long as you've verbally come clean they make a run-time decision not to care. I think this is a bad way to go about the process because it introduces the whims of your investigator as a factor in the process. If the system has bad rules on the books, we should fix the rules rather than instructing security investigators to make run-time decisions to bypass them.
- rdtsc 16y agoThis happened in the 50s probably so it was after the war. Also the fact that he was 12 at the time obviously meant it was just a ridiculous coincidence. If he really was suspected of being a spy, the security officer wouldn't have torn up form and would have actually made him never be able to get a clearance again. What has happened is that the security officer simply knows how the system is set up. It cannot handle 'ridiculous' spy stories. It can handle 'no spy stories' or it can handle 'real spy stories' -- ridiculous coincidences don't fit it. So he basically had forced his guy to lie because his story fit better into 'no spy story' bin.
- avar 16y agoIt sounds like the security officer was just some low-level grunt who didn't want to go to the trouble of filing extra paperwork. Rather than someone with the power to "make sure that you never get a security clearance".
- Sukotto 16y agoLes Earnest's anecdotes have been a real inspiration for me over the years. His Japanese Spy story is pretty good. But if you want a real laugh, read his Mongrel Race stories: http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html http://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html
- hga 16y agoNOT the best way to vouch for someone: "'Yes, we just celebrated Guy Fawkes Day together.'" Note also the author is an example of "oh, that's easy" WRT to the programming required to fix the real problem. I can well believe it was worth their while trying to get him to change his official race instead of trying to modify a program when no one on their IT staff was familiar with it and he was the only exception (so far). Note WRT to Linus Pauling, a) he was indeed an inspiring chemist (his books are still very useful) and is considered to be the best of the 20th century. b) He was also willing Communist/Soviet tool.
- trop 16y agoAlso well worth reading is his "My analog to digital conversion" (http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/digital.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/digital.pdf), which despite its title is actually a bildungsroman about some terrifying engineering errors in 1950s military technology.
- wglb 16y agoThis is a bit along the lines of Patrick's marvelous post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472
- raintrees 16y agoWhat happened to the letter S? Isn't it after T in frequency?
- bluedanieru 16y agoIt's amazing how much American law enforcement has changed in the last 70 years. It's the most interesting part of this article IMO. When something like this happens today they serve a no-knock warrant and shoot the kid's dog (well, after shooting the neighbor's dog because they got the wrong house). Zero-tolerance and all.
- ars 16y agoYou've been reading reddit too much. In the real world that doesn't much happen.
- daten 16y agohttp://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476 http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476 "These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects. "
- ars 16y agoAnd their own http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ shows 333 over the last 25 years. That 40,000 number is just SWAT deployments, it doesn't care if they didn't do anything, or if in fact the deployment was correct. The map only counts cases where the deployment caused a problem or was incorrect (innocent or wrong party).