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What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

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Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#21

Post by 082349872349872 »

xdfgh1112 wrote: post #7
Reubend wrote: post #4

> 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. Did he ever write about what that trick is?

https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html Other poster posted the same link but is getting downvoted so might get overlooked.

By way of context, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia would not be settled until 1967.

(but note also that these "race" questions were all over US forms well into the 1980s. By my time, however, it appears that "mongrel" answers were being routinely coded as "Decline To State")

Lagniappe: anyone curious about actual Caucasian phenotypes can find them on Youtube, eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTdXQabTTRg

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#22

Post by fransje26 »

AdamN wrote: post #12
DocTomoe wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we do have "Nafri" (North AFRIcans), "Ausländer" (foreigners, but only used for "problematic" foreigners somehow), "Migrationshintergrund" (migration background, meaning everyone who is an immigrant, and anyone related to them for two generations, regardless of nationality), "Südländer" (initially people from the south, such as Italians, Greeks, Jugoslavians, but nowadays "people coming from the middle east"),…

I'm a White American living in Berlin, what word would the Berlin police put in my file??

Sozialflüchtling

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#23

Post by strken »

a3w wrote: post #6
Reubend wrote: post #4

> 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. Did he ever write about what that trick is?

> After about three months it stopped and a month later I was suddenly informed that the clearance had been granted. The other two people whose investigations were begun at the same time did not receive their clearances until several months later. Mongrels are mixed race dogs, I guess? So just put the concept of "race" under scrutiny, and have your mental health debated. E voilà, your background check takes off fast…

These stories date from the 40s and 50s, and the author notes in one of them that the American forms now use ethnicity too. I suspect that at some point in the 40s Germany would have had a very extensive racial classification system.

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#25

Post by yosito »

Reubend wrote: post #4

> 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. Did he ever write about what that trick is?

This is an interesting point. I once had to fill out a security clearance form for a job at NASA detailing every individual I had had contact with outside of the US in the last 10 years. Since I've traveled extensively internationally, and couldn't even begin to mention all the people I've been in contact with, I just wrote an essay explaining my lifestyle. I expected to get denied, but I got security clearance faster than anyone else in the department had ever heard of.

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#26

Post by FpUser »

ckastner wrote: post #18

It's a great story, but didn't the author confess to a felony by publishing it? He lied on an official document, even if directed to do so by the person across him. I know this is pedantic, but that's exactly what I would expect from a security clearance vetting process.

Or maybe get a life and go catch actual spies. When the law makes innocent suffer fuck it.

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#27

Post by ant6n »

xdfgh1112 wrote: post #7
Reubend wrote: post #4

> 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. Did he ever write about what that trick is?

https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html Other poster posted the same link but is getting downvoted so might get overlooked.

This one actually has a programming related lesson at the end!

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#28

Post by psychphysic »

ant6n wrote: post #17
Daub wrote: post #13

This quote... > 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. Reminds me of this scene from Starship Trooper... https://youtu.be/Le-uDcNlJO4?t=118

This sort of thing happened a lot with East Germans in the 90s etc. After unification, we of course all became Western Germans, with the right to travel to the US on the visa waiver program. You just had to fill out the I-90 form (and pay 6$ when crossing a land border). It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Well, most East…

> It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party.

Not that different today, includes are you a war criminal or wanted by Nuremberg and are you a islamic terrorist no? Similarly there's still increased rules if you have been to particular places

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#29

Post by mcv »

I'm so that guy. Not for security clearance, but medical questionaires. I always fill them in with total honesty, listing the most minor and irrelevant details if they fit the question. My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere, even when I think: "but shouldn't you mention that thing?"

Of the two of us, she's the one who has tons of experience navigating and running bureaucracies, and does so quite well. I'm terrible at it.

Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)

#30

Post by olsgaarddk »

mcv wrote: post #29

I'm so that guy. Not for security clearance, but medical questionaires. I always fill them in with total honesty, listing the most minor and irrelevant details if they fit the question. My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere, even when I think: "but shouldn't you mention that thing?" Of the two of us, she's the one who has tons of exper…

Last time I was at the doctor, I answered “not that I know of” when asked if I had any allergies.

Afterwards at the pharmacy, it turns out my prescription included a box of antihistamine.

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