
What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form - RevRal
http://milk.com/wall-o-shame/security_clearance.html
======
chr15
I 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> for more information.

~~~
jrockway
Why 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.

~~~
bigmac
There are private sector jobs that require security clearance and pay well.
Consider Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, etc. Lockheed on GlassDoor:
[http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Lockheed-Martin-
Salaries-E40...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Lockheed-Martin-
Salaries-E404.htm)

~~~
jrockway
But ones that don't pay almost $100,000 more:

[http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Bank-of-America-Vice-
Preside...](http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Bank-of-America-Vice-President-IT-
Salaries-E8874_DAO.htm?filter.jobTitleExact=Vice+President+-+IT)

The top end of "Senior Developer" at Lockheed is around $100k. The top end for
the same job at BofA (with an impressive-sounding but meaningless title) is
$200k. And you don't have to lie about being investigated by the FBI. And if
you get bored, you can just jump ship to their competitors across the street.

Dunno, but I'm not convinced that anyone should worry about security clearance
unless they are completely unable to write even the simplest computer program.

~~~
bigmac
I'm doubtful that anyone with a VP-Level title at BofA is writing software. I
have a feeling you're comparing entirely different jobs here.

Additionally, Lockheed built (among other things) the SR-71 and the F22. Its
probably a safe bet to say that writing the control systems for those machines
took more skill than "the simplest computer program."

~~~
sokoloff
Financial services firms are FULL of Vice Presidents. At Merrill Lynch, we had
a 23-year old, 2 years out of school who was an Assistant VP and many
mid/late-20s engineers as VPs. [Almost] All of us wrote code all day long.

(BofA has since purchase MER, long after I left.)

------
eob
> 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
In 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.

~~~
rdtsc
This 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.

~~~
cabalamat
This is true of bureaucracies in general. They each have a number of
pigeonholes they want to put people in, and the trick of dealing with them is
to decide what pigeonholes they have, decide what you want to be regarded as,
and taylor your answers accordingly.

~~~
ErrantX
> They each have a number of pigeonholes they want to put people in

I'm not sure it's entirely fair to consider it that way. Bureaucracy work on
Binary options because that generally makes things a lot easier. It's a hack.
It might not be perfect for every individual to answer questions - but it
makes organisation a lot smoother.

The officer was happy with the answer to his question about spying; so he
decided it was not relevant to include it.

To me that sounds like bureaucracy working a little bit :)

It is when it goes wrong that it goes really wrong...

(It's like the gender question; if I ever have to ask for gender, which is
infrequent, now I will consistently ask "what reproductive organs do you
have?"))

~~~
someperson
It may be better to pigeonhole people depending on which sex chromosomes they
have (and how many of each), rather than what reproductive organs they have.

This helps cater for aneuploid people, as well as people who have underwent
gender changes.

------
ck2
It'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.

~~~
Dobbs
I may be the exception or not but we spent a fairly large chunk of time
talking about it in middle school.

That would be within the last 6-8 years if you are curious.

~~~
dhimes
I was in middle school three decades before you, and we did not. Glad to hear
that it has changed.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The further something gets in the past, the less direct impact it has on
current people, so the less need for hushing up there is.

Unfortunately, that window in the middle is when the talking really needs to
happen and when the most revisionism can occur.

------
Sukotto
Les 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>

~~~
trop
Also well worth reading is his "My analog to digital conversion"
(<http://www.stanford.edu/~learnest/digital.pdf>), which despite its title is
actually a bildungsroman about some terrifying engineering errors in 1950s
military technology.

------
noonespecial
I'm more interested in these so called "provocative things" one can write that
expedite the process.

~~~
Alex3917
There 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
No, 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 :)

~~~
aquateen
Better 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.

~~~
pyre
> _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
You 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.

------
bkrausz
The 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
I 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".

------
avar
It 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".

------
wglb
This is a bit along the lines of Patrick's marvelous post
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1438472>

------
raintrees
What happened to the letter S? Isn't it after T in frequency?

------
bluedanieru
It'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
You've been reading reddit too much.

In the real world that doesn't much happen.

~~~
daten
<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
And their own <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).

