> When I handed the form in to the security officer, he scanned it quickly, looked me over slowly, then said, ``Explain this''--pointing at the FBI question. I described what had happened. He got very agitated, picked up my form, tore it in pieces, and threw it in the waste basket.
> 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.''
Everything fits into bins and categories with checkmarks and such. As an entity it has no "bin" for "investigated as Japanese spy as a joke when was a child". So you have to pick the closest bin that matches. However, that doesn't mean the same government later won't turn around also punish you for not picking the right "bin". Not "realizing" that it's its own fault for not having enough categories i.e. bins for you to pick. And, some may argue, that's a feature not a bug...
In response to the seeing like a bank article, one thing which can make this a lot better is to use asynchronous ticketing or messaging systems instead of phone trees.
At my bank, I can just send a message in the app, even when it's closed, about whatever I want. Then, when the bank opens, someone reads it, and then either handles it, or transfers it. Then, if its transferreed, that person either handles it or forwards again.
The same triaging of basic issues exists, the same tiers described in the article, but the user interfece is wildly
superior. I take 1 minute to write what I need to write, and then a few business hours later, its solved. I don't need to waste my time on hold. I don't need to be instantly available for an undetermined period for a call back. I don't need to explain the same issue repeatedly. If I'm asked a question, I can answer it, and the answer is then attached to the full log that every escalation or transfer has full access to.
This is so much better that I refuse to do business with most businesses that don't offer something like this. I was extremely pissed when a data broker leaked my SSN and I was forced to deal with such institutions to clean up that mess.
And then, over with AGSVA, they just do interviews. Every candidate gets one, and they absolutely do bring up all the random crap that happens to various people as kids. And ask why it wasn't on your form.
the challenge is always determining what the "bins" are.
maybe the government has no bin for "investegated by the FBI for a silly and innocuous reason". but maybe they do, and lying about it slots you into the bin for "lied on their security clearance form".
The fact is that even for (NATO) top secret security clearances, there are lots of people that lie through their teeth, and receive the clearance. Obviously on things that aren't in any records. The big ones being alcohol use, drug use, personal finances, foreign partners. Some are more forgiving than others, though.
The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.
Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.
I was chatting with an old classmate at a homecoming a few months ago, and he mentioned that, during the polygraph top get Canadian Top Secret clearance for a co-op job, he had to say how many drinks he had each week. Being a university student, it got brushed aside, but the answer was considered to be alcoholism-level.
> The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.
Well yeah. If it's not affecting your job then what's it matter? If your a closet alcoholic then sure that's something the Russians could hold over you.
There's millions of people with clearances; that's impossible to staff at below market wages and also above average moral(?) standards.
When gift buying for minimalist friends it's common to offer gifts of perishable items or experiences like tickets. So that a week from now the gift has been cleared from their domicile.
It also seems like a fairly smart way to do graft. If you're bribing someone and they drink up or smoke all the evidence then they can't prove how much or how often you bribed them. Which would make alcoholics a good target especially if you can get your hands on fancy liquor.
Smoking weed is openly committing a federal crime, and also potentially signalling a lot of other unsavory things such as being a scofflaw and being involved with other criminals, socially speaking, including at least one drug dealer. So, it makes sense that you should get scrutiny.
The US government uses data brokers and the banking industry to continuously monitor cleared people. Eventually they will find any problematic patterns of life.
omg this was my experience. I figured there was no point lying officially, so I listed exactly how many times I smoked weed and took mdma. I was banished to the unclear side for my entire 3 years there. Meanwhile the head of IT was a raging alcoholic. I even wrote their very first J2EE webapp, which required me to be escorted to the cleared side anytime someone needed help with my code. I couldn't touch the keyboards! I was giving vi instructions verbally lol
> Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.
I have to defer to you here since it sounds like my experience is more limited, but this is not my understanding at all. The agencies care a lot about financial indiscretions, as those applicants are most susceptible to compromise. And indeed, if you look at the lists of denials and appeals, you might think that money issues are the only reason anyone is ever denied.
I appreciate the fun, but he's clearly messing with them or has Asperger's. You can definitely reduce hoops by knowing the bins, which they helped him with.
The thing that is missed in most efforts to replace people with machines is how often the people that are being replaced are on the fly fixing the system the machine is intended to crystallize and automate.
When I joined the Air Force, they helped us fill out the clearance forms. One question was related to marijuana use in the past. The NCO helping us told us “if you have used it before, be honest. They will know.” But then followed it up with “remember: you used it less than 5 times and you didn’t like it”.
It's easy to pass judgement on a decision like that when so far removed from the context where/when it took place.
It's likely that answering yes to that question meant an instant rejection for the clearance AND summer job. The FBI was probably not inclined to spend money looking into such an obviously trivial matter just so some kid could get some work experience. "Sorry, try the McDonald's down the street."
That security officer did the author an incredibly big favor.
In this particular case I think it has more to do with the times than anything else. Discovering the records of that investigation from when he was 12 in the 40’s would have likely been a massive undertaking if not impossible. The investigator likely recognized this and just had him remove it.
These days I don’t think that happens with digital records. Omitting that incident would almost certainly cause more issues than not now as I’m sure they’d turn up in the investigation. If not included on your sf86 you’d likely be grilled about it.
Investigators are usually reasonable in my experience. If you omitted it because you earnestly forgot because it happened when you were 12, they’d likely understand if you were forthcoming about it during your interview. Investigators are human though so it depends on how they feel.
What they really care about is stuff to try to purposely hide.
Nitpick: it’s not like the FBI investigated a 12-year-old with a library card. That would be humiliating. They investigated an alarming new cipher and doggedly ran down any possibility of a West Coast sleeper cell during an era of Japanese internment.
The right answer was: the FBI was investigating the note.
The word investigated is a lot bigger than some simple inquiry someone makes. Investigation is actually a complete tear down of someone's past in a search for clues. He was not investigated. He played a part in an investigation of a lost cipher. His cipher was investigated.
He made a cypher with a school friend, which cypher was handed by a stranger to the FBI and investigated. That one possible outcome of the investigation might be 'the subject is a Japanese spy' doesn't mean _he_ was suspected of that; not by the FBI at least.
If he said, "I made a cypher in school", then likely the form would have been considered fine? Presumably his record clearly showed the FBI incident, so I'm surprised that lying in the second form didn't cause concern sufficient to question him. But there you go; I've never had any associations with TLAs, what would I know.
The advice was from the 1949-1952 period. I imagine that was the prevailing wisdom developed getting literal former Nazis jobs in our space program, etc.
I ran a dial-up BBS in the late 1990s. One summer a few of my loyal users suddenly stopped calling.
About a year later I learned that one of my users hacked an airport. At the time a few of my users would set their computers to dial random numbers and find modems answering. One of the numbers was a very strange system with no password. The story I heard was that they didn't know what the system was, because it had no identifying information. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/doj-charges-...
> the hacker left behind a calling card by changing the system identification name to "Jester."
> The attack on the branch of an unidentified major pharmacy chain occurred on four separate occasions from January through March of last year. The hacker acquired the names, contact information, and prescriptions for the pharmacy's customers
I think the story you heard was a watered down version of what they were doing. You can’t do things like exfiltrate data from a pharmacy database and not know what the system you’re attacking is for.
At least we now know that everyone working in classified programs is above reproach and cleaner than clean. It's a good thing too, because working without accountability in secret would definitely be abused, but thankfully that's not the case because the people hired are too pure and good.
It's also a very good filter for high openness and creativity, ensuring that the most sensitive works attracts the most brilliant creative geniuses. Truly these nations know how to develop their advantages in the best way.
It might have been 2002, can't remember, when they upgraded the e-QIP software for the security check form.
I was doing my mandatory update coincidental with the roll-out and when I got to the question, "mother a US citizen" I had to check the "no" box and the immediate pop-up was "date of first contact?" which actually got me thinking along existential lines for a moment.
This story was written in another text also and discussed on HN. It was longer and the author also described how later in life he introduced a standard to wear hemlets on bicycle competitions. (Sorry, I dont have a link handy)
I admire people who don't lie about past drug use on their clearance forms. Sure, it might delay their clearance, but I still admire them.
The core social problem with drug addiction and alcoholicism is this concept of telling people what you think they want to hear from you, not telling them the truth.
Security clearances are probably a really good example of Goodhart's Law.
One reason for all these questions is really to determine if someone can be blackmailed, and thus a security risk. (Big reason they look at your financials and why debt can cause you to lose clearance) But the letter of the law trumps the spirit. A common lie these days is about weed usage. You may get or entirely rejected for having smoked in the past even if you don't today (e.g. you tried it once in college but didn't like it). So everyone lies and it creates a system where people are even told to and encouraged to lie, like in TFA. The irony being that this is exactly what creates the situation for blackmail! Now you can get blackmailed for having that past thing cause you to lose your job as well as lying on your clearance form.
Honestly it seems smarter to let the skeletons out of the closet. Spill your secrets to the gov. Sure, maybe the gov can blackmail you but a foreign government can't blackmail you for something that the gov already knows. You can still have filters but the dynamic really needs to change. Bureaucracy creates its own downfall. To reference another comment, I'd rather a functional alcoholic have a clearance and the gov know about it than a functional alcoholic have a security clearance and the gov not know about it (or pretend to not know). We've somehow turned clearance checks into security risks. What an idiotic thing to do
You shouldn’t be denied for smoking weed in college and disclosing it. I had no issues with that. The other thing is you can appeal a denial of your clearance if you can demonstrate the issue is not an issue. If you truly did only smoke weed in college and get denied due to that, you could appeal and make your case that your weed use is not ongoing, ended in college, and not an issue in your personal life. It’s not guaranteed to be a successful appeal, of course, but the process does exist.
The bigger problem is when people fib about their usage. Saying you only used it in college when you’ve used it more recently is something people do fairly often, and seemingly are encouraged to fib about.
It seems to me that if you lie and get the clearance, it is better than being honest and getting NACKed. Maybe morally dubious, but there's financial incentive and motivation for having a clearance.
Yeah on my SF86 I listed all the dumb shit I did and the investigator called obviously kind of concerned but receptive. We went through each one and his key point was "do you understand you can't do that" and as long as you answered yes, documented it on the form ahead of time, and it was obvious you weren't lying through your teeth then pretty much anything you did that wasn't in the last 3-5 years was pretty much immediately forgiven.
Some security officers are really touchy on these kinds of things and will tell you to exclude or lie but investigators pretty much never care what you did as long as it is obvious you don't plan on doing those types of things again or being an active problem.
They just want it for their records and they want you to be an open book such that they don't feel you are concealing anything problematic.
imagine curing alcoholics and drug dependant ppl who work for you ?
I'm really surprised at how they would rather ignore or silence all and report that they is strictly no problem among their pool of employees, to say they have the best employees and good KPIs
It doesn't look like a winning strategy indeed.
I myself refused to do government jobs as the table in which you had to list foreigners in your friend list was just so small. They prefer you to say you don't know nobody.
Also yeah, I agree with you. These forms are straight out of the 1950s when more liberal habits have been coming since the 60s. And we're straight up declining anyone who is outspoken about his habits while he knows the true boundaries of the laws.
The government is just selecting applicants who do the sharia or some straight up vague "you have to be a good guy" menaces that completely opens them to blackmail
I have a somewhat similar story involving the death of an extremely elderly neighbor by an accident on his farm,
and the suspicion by the state police that I at 12 years old had murdered him, based solely on someone saying they thought they saw me messing with his mailbox from a car that was similar to the one parked in our driveway. The mailbox which stood directly next to ours at the end of an easily walkable driveway. So yes, Mr. SF-86, I had once been investigated for a felony. Oh, you're only supposed to tell the truth if the truth will help the government catch to a bad guy? Very impressive system, sir. Top notch.
All the articles at https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/ are a goldmine. I prefer the one of a student called ''Missile'' Seitz buying a missile for nothing, and then didn't have to pay income taxes for several years
I once worked at a top financial firm which had regular background checks from Pinkerton (yeah, that very agency from the books and with bad US history).
They sent me a questionnaire asking to fill personal details in a Word file while their email signature said not to disclose personal details over email.
Security clearance business is rotten to the core.
This happened to my mom when being interviewed when coming over here in the 60s.
During verbal questioning she said something like “of course”. The government agent turned deep red and asked her if she understood the question (English isn’t her first language and she hadn’t). She’s been here since.
I kind of get that the agent is looking out for the applicant in this story. You have no idea what’s going to happen when you do a security clearance thing and they ask about this and that. How serious is the wrong answer.
Excepting my favorite question which something like “have you ever tried to topple the government?”
The system is messed up when screening for honesty encourages people to lie.
When I was 15, a couple months short of 16, I ended up working as a student intern at a research facility. They required a clearance to badge into and out of the building, but I never worked on anything that directly needed the clearance.
So I was given the form to fill in and read the question:
Since you were 16, or in the last 7 seven years, have you ever smoked weed?
So I thought, I guess I better think back to when I was 8!
My favorite part of re-upping every five years is the investigator indignantly asking why I spent multiple years in all these different countries and showing him the government orders that posted me there. There's really a "left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing" aspect to this process.
> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.
Presumably this is the famous (?) story of him listing his race as “mongrel” whenever asked?
> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.
Investigating a cryptographic key found near a major military installation during war time doesn’t strike me as a waste of money. We have the full information about the outcome, but the San Diego FBI field office did not.
I think that’s what makes this story so funny- the FBI was acting appropriately and rationally, but ended up with a relatively absurd result.
It's not funny. It's a dag-gone jobs program. ICE, TSA, and more throw away billions to effect little but a heavy burden on the population. These organizations, FBI and other law enforcement included, invent crises and problems so as to secure even more funding.
Maybe the individual investigator in the story is excepted considering it seems he took it seriously, perhaps, but yes, a lot of money is intentionally thrown into these organizations for security theater, jobs programs, and padding the pockets of political friends and cronies.
What we should be worried about is how many legitimate threats fly under the radar because time and again these organizations have been proven to be highly ineffective at actually preventing what their charters mandate, but they can appear to be very visibly effective by incarcerating thousands of innocent people.
I mean, in this case the government spent thousands because there was a small amount of circumstantial evidence that suggested there was clandestine communication happening during wartime.
What was the immediate government spending on Japanese American internment, where there was no evidence or investigation into the ~120k people whose lives were disrupted, and who were transported, housed, fed and guarded for multiple years?
Arguably, spending thousands on investigating something specific is less wasteful than the alternatives the government was willing to take at that time.
Doing the investigations is a whole industry in itself.
If it's true that security is only as strong as the weakest link, and they grant people like Jared Kushner top security clearance, then it's all theater at this point.
Like the USofA, the British interned "enemy nationals" - this policy extended across the Commonwealth including Canada, Australia, India, and elsewhere.
During the Second World War, the British government interned several different groups of people, including German, Austrian and Italian nationals.
However, following Nazi Germany’s military successes in France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the spring and summer of 1940, there was increasing concern that ‘enemy aliens’ in Britain would form a ‘ fifth column ’.
These concerns were amplified by the British press. As a result of this growing fear, the British government interned approximately 27,000 ‘enemy aliens’, including those assessed as low risk, supposedly in the interests of national security. Those interned were predominantly men between the ages of 16 and 60, but 4000 women and children were also interned.
Technically Heinrich Harrer was not a civilian as he held the "honorary" rank of a Nazi sergeant in the SS, kind of an early PR stunt rank given due to his status as a world famous mountaineer .. still it points to the internment of Germans and Austrians in India and references an interesting book
rdtsc|8 days 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.''
It's important to "see like the government" when dealing with the government (pun on "seeing like a bank" by https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/seeing-like-a-bank/ if anyone didn't catch the reference).
Everything fits into bins and categories with checkmarks and such. As an entity it has no "bin" for "investigated as Japanese spy as a joke when was a child". So you have to pick the closest bin that matches. However, that doesn't mean the same government later won't turn around also punish you for not picking the right "bin". Not "realizing" that it's its own fault for not having enough categories i.e. bins for you to pick. And, some may argue, that's a feature not a bug...
phreeza|8 days ago
So you've come almost full circle!
john01dav|7 days ago
At my bank, I can just send a message in the app, even when it's closed, about whatever I want. Then, when the bank opens, someone reads it, and then either handles it, or transfers it. Then, if its transferreed, that person either handles it or forwards again.
The same triaging of basic issues exists, the same tiers described in the article, but the user interfece is wildly superior. I take 1 minute to write what I need to write, and then a few business hours later, its solved. I don't need to waste my time on hold. I don't need to be instantly available for an undetermined period for a call back. I don't need to explain the same issue repeatedly. If I'm asked a question, I can answer it, and the answer is then attached to the full log that every escalation or transfer has full access to.
This is so much better that I refuse to do business with most businesses that don't offer something like this. I was extremely pissed when a data broker leaked my SSN and I was forced to deal with such institutions to clean up that mess.
shakna|8 days ago
ErigmolCt|8 days ago
raverbashing|7 days ago
People of a more autistic orientation here seem to think this is a no-no when in fact it's quite the opposite
The note was investigated. Not the person.
notatoad|8 days ago
maybe the government has no bin for "investegated by the FBI for a silly and innocuous reason". but maybe they do, and lying about it slots you into the bin for "lied on their security clearance form".
TrackerFF|8 days ago
The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.
Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.
DonHopkins|8 days ago
moron4hire|8 days ago
When? In the 90s? Biggest pothead I know has had a clearance since '05. For my own form, I straight up admitted I had done it and did not regret it.
0xTJ|8 days ago
ErigmolCt|8 days ago
lesuorac|8 days ago
Well yeah. If it's not affecting your job then what's it matter? If your a closet alcoholic then sure that's something the Russians could hold over you.
There's millions of people with clearances; that's impossible to staff at below market wages and also above average moral(?) standards.
hinkley|8 days ago
It also seems like a fairly smart way to do graft. If you're bribing someone and they drink up or smoke all the evidence then they can't prove how much or how often you bribed them. Which would make alcoholics a good target especially if you can get your hands on fancy liquor.
Nasrudith|7 days ago
wakawaka28|7 days ago
kevin_thibedeau|8 days ago
heraldgeezer|8 days ago
HWR_14|8 days ago
yowayb|8 days ago
albedoa|8 days ago
I have to defer to you here since it sounds like my experience is more limited, but this is not my understanding at all. The agencies care a lot about financial indiscretions, as those applicants are most susceptible to compromise. And indeed, if you look at the lists of denials and appeals, you might think that money issues are the only reason anyone is ever denied.
Lying about having smoked weed is another story.
Keekgette|8 days ago
[deleted]
grepfru_it|8 days ago
yowayb|8 days ago
neilv|8 days ago
ink_13|8 days ago
kamyarg|8 days ago
Thank you for the digging that up and sharing.
SpaceNoodled|8 days ago
aliceryhl|8 days ago
boothby|8 days ago
roughly|8 days ago
appplication|8 days ago
bityard|8 days ago
It's likely that answering yes to that question meant an instant rejection for the clearance AND summer job. The FBI was probably not inclined to spend money looking into such an obviously trivial matter just so some kid could get some work experience. "Sorry, try the McDonald's down the street."
That security officer did the author an incredibly big favor.
master_crab|8 days ago
The coverup is always worse than the original sin.
ErigmolCt|8 days ago
u1hcw9nx|8 days ago
There is nothing morally wrong in felonies like this, just don't get caught.
alansaber|8 days ago
scoodah|8 days ago
These days I don’t think that happens with digital records. Omitting that incident would almost certainly cause more issues than not now as I’m sure they’d turn up in the investigation. If not included on your sf86 you’d likely be grilled about it.
Investigators are usually reasonable in my experience. If you omitted it because you earnestly forgot because it happened when you were 12, they’d likely understand if you were forthcoming about it during your interview. Investigators are human though so it depends on how they feel.
What they really care about is stuff to try to purposely hide.
tomrod|8 days ago
sigwinch|7 days ago
The right answer was: the FBI was investigating the note.
nashashmi|7 days ago
cs02rm0|8 days ago
You can guarantee the many people who work for intelligence agencies of US allies aren't admitting to that when they travel to the US.
It's all a bit of a game.
unknown|8 days ago
[deleted]
midtake|8 days ago
He had no obligation to put that on security clearance form whatsoever.
pbhjpbhj|8 days ago
He made a cypher with a school friend, which cypher was handed by a stranger to the FBI and investigated. That one possible outcome of the investigation might be 'the subject is a Japanese spy' doesn't mean _he_ was suspected of that; not by the FBI at least.
If he said, "I made a cypher in school", then likely the form would have been considered fine? Presumably his record clearly showed the FBI incident, so I'm surprised that lying in the second form didn't cause concern sufficient to question him. But there you go; I've never had any associations with TLAs, what would I know.
xenocratus|8 days ago
HWR_14|8 days ago
gwbas1c|8 days ago
About a year later I learned that one of my users hacked an airport. At the time a few of my users would set their computers to dial random numbers and find modems answering. One of the numbers was a very strange system with no password. The story I heard was that they didn't know what the system was, because it had no identifying information. https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/doj-charges-...
Aurornis|8 days ago
> The attack on the branch of an unidentified major pharmacy chain occurred on four separate occasions from January through March of last year. The hacker acquired the names, contact information, and prescriptions for the pharmacy's customers
I think the story you heard was a watered down version of what they were doing. You can’t do things like exfiltrate data from a pharmacy database and not know what the system you’re attacking is for.
alwa|8 days ago
From an OG computer scientist [0], about antics at age 12 which might strike some of us as familiar :)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Earnest
emmelaich|8 days ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20231021140222/https://web.stanf...
breadchris|8 days ago
jsheard|8 days ago
Also the server header is "lactoserv"
Hamuko|8 days ago
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5526903/domain-name-val...
qup|8 days ago
alansaber|8 days ago
keepamovin|8 days ago
It's also a very good filter for high openness and creativity, ensuring that the most sensitive works attracts the most brilliant creative geniuses. Truly these nations know how to develop their advantages in the best way.
cheese_van|8 days ago
I was doing my mandatory update coincidental with the roll-out and when I got to the question, "mother a US citizen" I had to check the "no" box and the immediate pop-up was "date of first contact?" which actually got me thinking along existential lines for a moment.
avodonosov|8 days ago
bjt12345|8 days ago
The core social problem with drug addiction and alcoholicism is this concept of telling people what you think they want to hear from you, not telling them the truth.
godelski|8 days ago
One reason for all these questions is really to determine if someone can be blackmailed, and thus a security risk. (Big reason they look at your financials and why debt can cause you to lose clearance) But the letter of the law trumps the spirit. A common lie these days is about weed usage. You may get or entirely rejected for having smoked in the past even if you don't today (e.g. you tried it once in college but didn't like it). So everyone lies and it creates a system where people are even told to and encouraged to lie, like in TFA. The irony being that this is exactly what creates the situation for blackmail! Now you can get blackmailed for having that past thing cause you to lose your job as well as lying on your clearance form.
Honestly it seems smarter to let the skeletons out of the closet. Spill your secrets to the gov. Sure, maybe the gov can blackmail you but a foreign government can't blackmail you for something that the gov already knows. You can still have filters but the dynamic really needs to change. Bureaucracy creates its own downfall. To reference another comment, I'd rather a functional alcoholic have a clearance and the gov know about it than a functional alcoholic have a security clearance and the gov not know about it (or pretend to not know). We've somehow turned clearance checks into security risks. What an idiotic thing to do
scoodah|8 days ago
The bigger problem is when people fib about their usage. Saying you only used it in college when you’ve used it more recently is something people do fairly often, and seemingly are encouraged to fib about.
commandersaki|8 days ago
OneDeuxTriSeiGo|8 days ago
Some security officers are really touchy on these kinds of things and will tell you to exclude or lie but investigators pretty much never care what you did as long as it is obvious you don't plan on doing those types of things again or being an active problem.
They just want it for their records and they want you to be an open book such that they don't feel you are concealing anything problematic.
vscode-rest|8 days ago
hinata08|8 days ago
I'm really surprised at how they would rather ignore or silence all and report that they is strictly no problem among their pool of employees, to say they have the best employees and good KPIs
It doesn't look like a winning strategy indeed.
I myself refused to do government jobs as the table in which you had to list foreigners in your friend list was just so small. They prefer you to say you don't know nobody.
Also yeah, I agree with you. These forms are straight out of the 1950s when more liberal habits have been coming since the 60s. And we're straight up declining anyone who is outspoken about his habits while he knows the true boundaries of the laws.
The government is just selecting applicants who do the sharia or some straight up vague "you have to be a good guy" menaces that completely opens them to blackmail
moron4hire|8 days ago
dgacmu|8 days ago
(And arrested, but presumably you were not).
unknown|8 days ago
[deleted]
rurban|7 days ago
ikjasdlk2234|7 days ago
https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/government_surplus.html
sam_lowry_|8 days ago
They sent me a questionnaire asking to fill personal details in a Word file while their email signature said not to disclose personal details over email.
Security clearance business is rotten to the core.
lacoolj|8 days ago
ctoth|8 days ago
acomjean|8 days ago
I kind of get that the agent is looking out for the applicant in this story. You have no idea what’s going to happen when you do a security clearance thing and they ask about this and that. How serious is the wrong answer.
Excepting my favorite question which something like “have you ever tried to topple the government?”
The system is messed up when screening for honesty encourages people to lie.
ErigmolCt|8 days ago
svag|8 days ago
rkagerer|8 days ago
dang|8 days ago
What not to write on your security clearance form (1988) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34437937 - Jan 2023 (545 comments)
What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 - June 2010 (98 comments)
runamuck|8 days ago
toast0|8 days ago
Wheel of Fortune gives you several consonants, order matters less, and both lists share n r and t.
acehilm123456|8 days ago
So I was given the form to fill in and read the question: Since you were 16, or in the last 7 seven years, have you ever smoked weed?
So I thought, I guess I better think back to when I was 8!
bandrami|8 days ago
denotational|8 days ago
Presumably this is the famous (?) story of him listing his race as “mongrel” whenever asked?
nosrepa|8 days ago
https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html
bombcar|8 days ago
jll29|8 days ago
est31|8 days ago
themafia|8 days ago
It occurred to them. They like to test their apparatus out anyways.
kazinator|8 days ago
> (To me, $8 represented 40 round trips to the beach by streetcar, or 80 admission fees to the movies.)
Glasses being a ripoff scam goes back that far?!
forinti|8 days ago
I have to know this now...
kyusan0|8 days ago
Wowfunhappy|8 days ago
"When I was 12 years old, I exchanged encrypted messages with friends. The FBI found a code and briefly thought I was a spy."
Or, if there was even less space:
“As child, used encryption for fun. FBI found code & investigated.”
I would want to avoid lying at all costs, even if a superior instructed me to. Who knows what could happen.
sargun|8 days ago
topkai22|8 days ago
I think that’s what makes this story so funny- the FBI was acting appropriately and rationally, but ended up with a relatively absurd result.
basilgohar|8 days ago
Maybe the individual investigator in the story is excepted considering it seems he took it seriously, perhaps, but yes, a lot of money is intentionally thrown into these organizations for security theater, jobs programs, and padding the pockets of political friends and cronies.
What we should be worried about is how many legitimate threats fly under the radar because time and again these organizations have been proven to be highly ineffective at actually preventing what their charters mandate, but they can appear to be very visibly effective by incarcerating thousands of innocent people.
tverbeure|8 days ago
You can’t have it both ways… (not specifically directed at you.)
abeppu|8 days ago
What was the immediate government spending on Japanese American internment, where there was no evidence or investigation into the ~120k people whose lives were disrupted, and who were transported, housed, fed and guarded for multiple years?
Arguably, spending thousands on investigating something specific is less wasteful than the alternatives the government was willing to take at that time.
afpx|6 days ago
If it's true that security is only as strong as the weakest link, and they grant people like Jared Kushner top security clearance, then it's all theater at this point.
unknown|8 days ago
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ErigmolCt|8 days ago
tokenless|8 days ago
;-)
NooneAtAll3|8 days ago
it's like insurance claim - precise wording matters more than facts
nektro|7 days ago
aronhegedus|7 days ago
pixelsub|8 days ago
[deleted]
piskov|8 days ago
Anyone else did that during the war or only horrible Hitler and humane Americans?
Come think of it, I wonder what would happen to all the immigrants if full-on war ensues.
xyzelement|8 days ago
whattheheckheck|8 days ago
defrost|8 days ago
In Australia: https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/immigration-and-ci...
In India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years_in_Tibet
Technically Heinrich Harrer was not a civilian as he held the "honorary" rank of a Nazi sergeant in the SS, kind of an early PR stunt rank given due to his status as a world famous mountaineer .. still it points to the internment of Germans and Austrians in India and references an interesting book
unknown|8 days ago
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