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Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

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Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#31

Post by angry_octet »

ajdlinux wrote: post #22
riot504 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the US give a Top Secret clearance to an immigrant? edit - You can't immigrate to a country then expect to receive a Top Secret clearance regardless if it is the US or any other country. I don't suspect Russia will give me a clearance if I were to immigrate and find employment at a tech company. There would be a major national security incident waiting to happen.

As an Australian who lives in our national capital, I can assure you that our friendly local FVEY agency will happily employ Australian citizens at a Top Secret Positive Vetting level who are naturalised immigrants or dual citizens (a huge chunk of this country are dual British citizens, in particular). I get the impression that it makes your life a bit more difficult, but it's definitely achievable.

PV is treated differently to lower levels.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#32

Post by angry_octet »

metaphor wrote: post #23

> The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. government with a security clearance is about $119,000... In other words, the average USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

It does seem high. I don't know where they get this info, because these are all contractors, so the only info the govt has is how much it pays the labor hire company (e.g. Booz). There are no govt public service employees on a special 'cyber' pay grade. But a special IT stream would make sense - like doctors and lawyers. Otherwise the skills haemorrhage will continue.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#33

Post by throwaway225 »

For those in this thread that are confused what the tech companies could be looking for with these cleared people, let me give you an example. I used to work for a company that ran DNS services for public utilities i.e. "critical infrastructure". Every week we would get a classified list of "bad" domains (usually domains that malware would phone home to) from a 3 letter agency and we would notify the utilities if we saw any DNS requests for those domains from any of their computers. Only cleared personnel were allowed to see the list or touch any of the computers that saw the list in any way.

A tech company that wanted to work with a 3 letter agency to see such a list in order to protect their own infrastructure would need cleared personnel and a SCIF (the windowless air-gapped rooms that cleared people work from) to even talk to the agency about a list.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#34

Post by mcguire »

metaphor wrote: post #23

> The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. government with a security clearance is about $119,000... In other words, the average USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

Note that many of the systems engineers are not working directly for the government.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#35

Post by metaphor »

Mz wrote: post #20
metaphor wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...one path to citizenship in the US is to serve in the military. True statement. > So, if all members of the military have some degree of clearance... False assumption. Jobs that fall under services, personnel, public affairs, medical, contracting, vehicle maintenance, and supply come to mind. This is far from an exhaustive list and will vary in scope between branches of service.

I have personally met foreign nationals who were infantrymen. It is possible my statement is overly broad. But if being in the infantry, like my ex was, grants some degree of clearance, then I have personally known foreign nationals in the US military who must have had a security clearance to do their job at all. I based my remarks on a remark my ex made. I spelled that out as clearly as I could. My conclusion is cor…

I specifically disputed your assumption that all members of the military have some degree of clearance by pointing to select jobs which explicitly do not require any level of security clearance whatsoever. Nothing more.

Specifically addressing infantrymen (Army MOS 11x, Marines MOS 03xx), it's not difficult to imagine a case enlisted immigrant on a defined path towards naturalization being granted iterim clearance to train and perform basic routine duties, but is constrained to non-deployable status and can neither participate in classified briefings nor handle classified material pending valid JPAS investivation disposition...which is all theoretical motherhood and apple pie, except a security clearance isn't actually mandatory for many infantry MOSs.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#36

Post by nataz »

113245 wrote: post #19
gervase wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that they actually exclude ALL dual nationals, even those whose citizenships were the result of birth circumstances, unless you are willing to formally renounce your second citizenship.

Not true, you can hold a clearance and stay a dual citizen.

It depends...some organizations require dual citizens to renounce their foreign citizenship before they get their clearance.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#37

Post by metaphor »

trdtaylor1 wrote: post #27
metaphor wrote: post #23

> The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. government with a security clearance is about $119,000... In other words, the average USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area, one of the highest locality pay in the country

For USG systems engineers, clearance level has zero impact on compensation; you either have it or you don't.

> Most with that high of clearance are working in the DC area...

For a systems engineer based on 2017 DC locality, that's lead-/supervisory-level GS-14 Step 3, or working-level GS-13 at the tail end of a long career in government...hardly an average.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#38

Post by Mz »

metaphor wrote: post #35
Mz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have personally met foreign nationals who were infantrymen. It is possible my statement is overly broad. But if being in the infantry, like my ex was, grants some degree of clearance, then I have personally known foreign nationals in the US military who must have had a security clearance to do their job at all. I based my remarks on a remark my ex made. I spelled that out as clearly as I could. My conclusion is cor…

I specifically disputed your assumption that all members of the military have some degree of clearance by pointing to select jobs which explicitly do not require any level of security clearance whatsoever. Nothing more. Specifically addressing infantrymen (Army MOS 11x, Marines MOS 03xx), it's not difficult to imagine a case enlisted immigrant on a defined path towards naturalization being granted iterim clearance to…

That is not my assumption. That is my recollection of what I was told by a knowledgeable individual whose word I trust on the subject.

It may be inaccurate. It is fine to share what you know. But, if you want to nitpick the hell out of a comment based on accuracy, you need to at least read the comment accurately and frame your objection or criticism with precise accuracy. If you cannot even accurately read and frame my comment while critiquing it, it basically gives me the impression that the whole point is to try do some kind of ugly social pecking order negging rather than improving accuracy of information in the discussion. And that generally does not go over well with me.

I am 100% fine with pedantry. If you know more than me, totes cool. But the inaccurate framing -- which suggests sloppy thinking on my part -- looks awfully suspicious from where I sit.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#39

Post by metaphor »

mcguire wrote: post #34
metaphor wrote: post #23

> The average annual salary for a systems engineer working for the U.S. government with a security clearance is about $119,000... In other words, the average USG systems engineer is roughly a GS-14 Step 6 based on 2017 Rest-of-US locality...GTFO with this garbage.

Note that many of the systems engineers are not working directly for the government.

To be sure, the article states, working for the U.S. government, not working for a private company contracted by the U.S. government.

If the latter, then US$120k as a mean sounds about right, anecdotally based on friends who work in that part of industry.

Re: Tech Firms Seek Washington’s Prized Asset: Top-Secret Clearances

#40

Post by nataz »

jlgaddis wrote: post #25

The article uses the Russia election situation as an example, but one doesn't need a clearance -- or any classified information, for that matter -- in order to prevent a large number of these recent "hacks" or, at the least, make the attackers work much harder to be successful. When companies can't even be bothered to install security updates on public-facing applications or web sites (cf. Equifax), is anyone really…

In order to conduct an appropriate vulnerability assessment, you need to be able to classify your adversaries capabilities and motivations. That's hard to do with out some kind of privileged information. Only then can you get down to the stuff that most people think of when they talk about "security" - e.g. the risk mitigation and countermeasures.

Edit - added text

To continue the point, the Russia example is important. Individual commercial ventures are not set up to handle state level attacks. Any company that thinks they are is going to be in for a rude awakening.

Worse, companies like Google and Facebook are going to be vulnerable by their very design and function.

Sure, the credit bureau hacks are bad, but truthfully that's only the tip of the iceberg as far as consequences.

I'm not discounting your point that you may have found government cooperation unhelpful, but I will say if you are one of these large companies that could be the target of a state level actor, you are going to want a state level actor on your side. And in the US that means you are going to have to have employees with access, which means you are going to need to have a government sponsor for clearances.

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