6 ms·
It's amazing how some people will risk their job, their clearance, and potentially their freedom, just to impress some random dudes online for a few minutes. I
by tornato7 5y ago
It's amazing how some people will risk their job, their clearance, and potentially their freedom, just to impress some random dudes online for a few minutes.
I tell people this whenever I'm asked about something I'm not supposed to reveal. "You want me to risk my _ just so you can satisfy your curiosity?"
- ethbr0 5y agoIt begs the inclusion of "How much time do you spend online? And how much do you value the opinions of online communities?" as security clearance questions. Are they, now? Historically, they'd be very interested in what you'd say to your friends, family, etc. But the allure of internet fame would seem to have a more pursuasive effect.
- eganist 5y ago> Are they, now? They're not included in Standard Form 86, latest revision November 2016: https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf https://www.opm.gov/forms/pdf_fill/sf86.pdf That's not to say it's excluded from polygraph questions; I can imagine a world where online associations are very relevant to an agency in need of a CI or full scope poly for compartment access.
- Waterluvian 5y agoWait. Some people still get put through a complete nonsense pseudoscience polygraph test for clearance?
- evilduck 5y agoIt’s a standard practice for a tier of Top Secret security clearance.
- User23 5y agoIt’s like the FAANG interview process. Everyone knows it’s suboptimal, but nobody knows how to do better at that scale.
- atatatat 5y agoClose. It's similar because there are lots of false negatives, but few false positives.
- Spooky23 5y agoIt’s a polite way of saying that you’ll be randomly interrogated.
- alksjdalkj 5y agoMy understanding is that it's used as an "interrogation" technique and that they don't really care what the machine tells them.
- belkinpower 5y agoThey do, I had a clearance rejected because the examiner was convinced I had previous involvement in drug manufacturing. I don’t. I’ve never even used them. Hell, I barely drink. I ended up getting a much better non-clearance job offer elsewhere so it didn’t ultimately negatively affect my career, but it’s still irritating.
- smabie 5y agoIs this a rhetorical question?
- jdavis703 5y agoSF-86 doesn’t ask any questions like this. They’ll send out agents to collect more in-depth questions that may probe situations like this. They’ll also ask friends, neighbors, family etc about all sorts of things. This isn’t really the kind of question a self-reported form can answer (except for the most obvious questions like debt problems). It takes a human who can synthesize various statements to get pictures like “this person could be blackmailed” or “this person can’t keep a secret.”
- wdb 5y agoAnd of course your family gets checked too like for the anti-bribery check. E.g. how likely is it that your siblings can cause you to get bribed. Had a few of those as a sibling
- SkittyDog 5y agoIf you read some historical accounts of spies, I think you'll notice there is already a massive ego/excitement boost to be had, without involving Internet fame... It's not ay l clear whether online activity would move the needle, in terms of predicting leakers. But more importantly... Participating in online communities, and caring about one's online presence, is statistically normal behavior for working-age people in first world countries with Internet access... Moreso the younger you get. But the point is, it's massively normal behavior. So if you tried to use your questions to predict potential leakers, you're just playing the "Most serial killers eat bread" game. In order for your question to be a useful predictor, it would have to have low rates of both false positives, and false negatives. That doesn't seem very likely.
- ethbr0 5y ago> "And how much do you value the opinions of online communities?" Seems a more difficult question, but a more indicative one, which is why I included it. Per my experience, you can easily find individuals who spend similar amounts of clock time in online communities, but are very different in how much the community can influence them. F.ex. HN could offer me dang's karma count, and I wouldn't feel any compulsion to leak classified information here.
- User23 5y agoReminds me of the Google SRE who got literally frog-marched out of the Kirkland office for reading the messages of a female acquaintance. He got busted, because creep that he was, he tried to impress her by revealing that he did. And the Internet never forgets[1]. Persons, especially young persons, really need to be cautioned about the stupidity and consequences of this kind of behavior. [1] https://www.ecampusnews.com/2010/09/15/google-engineer-fired-for-accessing-teens-gmail-chat-logs/ https://www.ecampusnews.com/2010/09/15/google-engineer-fired...
- withinboredom 5y agoHow did he think that conversation would go?
- edoceo 5y agoFolk like that always see themselves the hero.
- dylan604 5y agoGetting a date and maybe more later?
- klyrs 5y agoOption 1, he thought he was some cassanova and that she'd be impressed by the effort he put into stalking her. Women who fall for this... exist, but not without significant childhood trauma. The relationships (two) I've seen form under such conditions have been passionate, short-lived, abusive, and eventually involve the police. Option 2, he has a humiliation/degradation kink and got exactly what he wanted.
- babuskov 5y ago> It's amazing how some people will risk their job, their clearance, and potentially their freedom, just to impress some random dudes online for a few minutes. Maybe they just feel alone, depressed, underappreciated and like nobody cares about them? Revealing it to total strangers somewhat obscures potential negative impact, while still getting them to feel important for a day.
- nwallin 5y agoAs a formerly alone, depressed, underappreciated TS clearance holder who nobody cared about, there was never a moment in my life where telling classified information to the public ever seemed like anything other than a first class ticket to a tremendous amount of misery. I only speak for myself, and I no longer have a clearance. But the idea that depression excuses disclosure of classified information... that's not how depression works. That's not how clearances work. It's anathema to me. If depression is an excuse for disclosing classified information, then depression is cause for denying a person a clearance. It is cause for revoking a clearance from a person who seeks mental health assistance. No thank you. It is much better to prosecute depressed people who violate their clearance agreements and to continue to permit depressed people to gain clearances than it is deny a clearance from every depressed person. I support giving clearances to depressed people, and I support sending depressed people who violate their clearance agreements to prison.
- Talanes 5y agoNo one was saying depression was a valid excuse for the behavior, just a reason someone might do it. Attempting to understand a motivation doesn't automatically mean excusing it.
- hutzlibu 5y ago"I support giving clearances to depressed people, and I support sending depressed people who violate their clearance agreements to prison." I see your point, in not trying to worsen things for depressed people - but don't you think on a general base, a mentally unstable person is more liklely to disclose something? And when you are really, deeply depressed - you don't care about anything anymore, except if it makes you feel better in that moment.
- temp8964 5y agoHey, not just "impress", that's tons of upvotes!
- csa 5y agoUpvotes have limited utility for an account that stands a good chance of being deleted.
- wolverine876 5y agoMy guess is that it's merely the common human trait of valuing immediate emotional desire over the intellectual knowledge of future consequences. People do it all the time when they eat, cheat on their spouses, press the snooze button, drink, or spend time posting on Hacker News.
- eurasiantiger 5y agoYou assume all choices are rational and wilful
- wolverine876 5y agoPerhaps I miscommunicated? I'm saying it's often emotional. But yes, you make a choice - not a carefully examined, systematic one, but you make a choice to hit snooze, commit adultery, etc.
- aeturnum 5y agoIt's a good reminder to be realistic about our security models. People sometimes do things without thinking them through that clearly (or they just think very differently than you might hope). An intelligence agency get more intel per dollar spent goading active duty people into revealing military secrets on obscure forums than you do with traditional bribery.
- richardw 5y agoIn really important environments, just the last part is good enough to be useful to an adversary. Someone now knows you know something and all they need is the leverage. Go with “no idea” The only upside to anything more than that is to impress or feel important.