What not to write on your security clearance form (1988) • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by notch656c » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

leoqa wrote: post #244

Symmetry wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant that lying was more acceptable on police applications because police, in the course of their duties, often have to lie whether its telling a suspect that you have proof of their guilt and they just need to confess or using boilerplate language like "there was a strong smell of marijuana" to justify a search in the paperwork whether you smelled anything or not.

This is absolutely not the case. Law enforcement background checks are more intense than clearance, and drug use policies are very black-white. The general principle is that you must be unimpeachable such that your testimony is valid in court.

In what country is this the case that police have unimpeachable history?

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

#282

Post by dbspin » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

archon1410 wrote: post #237

dbspin wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The livestock question might have been added during the Foot and Mouth epidemic, which could be spread on footwear and necessitated the destruction of livestock in the millions in Ireland and the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

> destruction of livestock Such a tragic, disgusting euphemism for the murder of millions, without them getting to devour their corpses.

Please don't equate the death of people with the death of non human animals. It's not useful and it's needlessly inflammatory. Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. The term doesn't apply to deaths in battle, through negligence, or by execution, however distasteful we might find those things. It also doesn't apply to the killing of animals - whatever ones moral perspective on the matter.

Just rhetorically, using inflammatory terminology isn't going to convert anyone to vegetarianism / veganism. For those of us who've lost friends and relatives to murder (including myself unfortunately), it's profoundly distasteful.

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

#283

Post by notch656c » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

dilznoofus wrote: post #161

ArnoVW wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always understood that those questions are just a legal construct to be able to get you out of the country in case of issues. No need to prosecute for expulsion if there were lies on the immigration form; it becomes just an administrative matter.

I mean, yeah. It's like gun laws that prohibit having a joint whilst commit armed robbery or whatever - it's not actually trying to stop the behavior, merely empower the prosecutor after the fact. But, hey, there might be a true believer on the T-side! God says you're not supposed to lie, so it's a real Catch-22 - 'Render unto Caesar the evidence he deserves.'

It's my understanding that same law about the joint still applies just for having an otherwise lawful firearm in the safe doing nothing.

Disclaimer: not legal advice, for entertainment value only.

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

#284

Post by jkaplowitz » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

mynameisvlad wrote: post #241

Agentlien wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes you just can't win, though. I used to work for a Swedish company making training simulations for surgeons. There are of course special rules regarding customs declarations of medical equipment. Our salespeople often complained that when entering the U.S. it was basically a coin toss if the customs agent would be angry with them for declaring our simulator as "medical equipment" and wasting their time, or ge…

I had the same problem with something so much more benign than that. I was a Green Card holder. Technically, you need your card and foreign passport to enter the country. I got yelled at for giving them my passport once, with the guard claiming it’s useless and not needed. So then I started having it on hand but not providing it on the spot, at which point I’d get yelled at for not providing the needed passport upfro…

My understanding is that the passport is not actually required at the CBP checkpoint if you present a valid unexpired green card. But yeah, there's no way different officers should be yelling contradictory things at you.

Side note: A passport may still be required to board an inbound international flight even if I'm right about it not needing to accompany a green card at the CBP checkpoint, depending on the rules of the airline and the departure country.

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

#285

Post by notch656c » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #226

washywashy wrote: post #131

The illegals drugs question never made sense to me. It’s asking you to admit to something that won’t necessarily show up on a criminal background check if you haven’t ever been caught. Assuming you have been caught or are still using, other preemployment screens will catch that. So why not ask other questions like: “Have you ever murdered someone?” “Have you ever stolen?”

pretty sure there is indeed a "are there any felonies you've committed for which you've never been convicted/indicted" question to cover that base

It's been awhile since I read it but I believe they ask you about all felony convictions whereas the use / non-convicted felonious activities itself only goes back like 7 years (perhaps not coincidentally is also statute of limitation for many federal crimes).

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

#286

Post by abruzzi » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

my first "real" job was managing the public computer lab at college, and doing misc IT type tasks. Also part of my job was managing the workstudies that attended the lab and helped students. It was a pretty lightweight job and the workstudy positions had a fair amount of turn over as students moved on.

One day I got a call that one of my workstudies had applied for an internship with the NSA and put me down as a reference. They wanted to schedule a meeting with me to talk about the applicant. Up to that point I had received a few reference check calls from companies that were hiring former workstudies, and they never lasted more than 5 minutes, and they never wanted in-person meetings.

The meeting ended up lasting over an hour, and not once did they ask me about technical capabilities or job duties. All the questions were about his social connections, personality, narcissism. I realized that this wasn't a reference call but a security clearance screening. A lot of times they asked the same question in multiple ways, trying to trip me up or see if I had inconsistant answers. They also asked questions about me, presumably to determine if I was a trustworthy source.

A few years later I applied for security clearance since I had moved jobs to the US Navy, and I had to maintain PC with classified data on them. My clearance level was probably the lowest level because their interview of me was not as probing as what I went through for the workstudy that applied to the NSA (I never heard whether he got the internship.)

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

#287

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #190

NikolaNovak wrote: post #149

When I moved to Canada, at age 16-17 I initially failed a lot of job applications at places like Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc. For some reason, many of them had a type of "Corporate Personality Test" on their application, and asked the same "Have you ever considered stealing from your employer?" to which I would cheerfully answer "Yes". Apparently this was an automatic deal-breaker; there was no f…

> What mental fences do you have that you have never "considered" such an obvious course of action in the likely billion of seconds of thinking?). Honestly I think it may just be semantics. When I think about the usage of the word "to consider," there does seem to be two different and distinct meanings. When people use it in the sense of "to consider a course of action" it actually has a different meaning than when t…

[deleted]

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

#288

Post by notch656c » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:27 PM UTC

applejacks wrote: post #275

idopmstuff wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, seems like if you're hiring for a low-level retail employee, it's not necessarily a plus if they're the kind of person who deeply analyzes this sort of question instead of giving the superficially correct response. Particularly if this was in an employer-friendly time from a hiring perspective, and they had an endless supply of candidates.

> they're the kind of person who deeply analyzes this sort of question Clearly they didn't deeply analyze the question in the relevant context. Answering "yes" to this is high school level "edginess". One needn't condescend, as there are equivalent questions at all levels of hiring, all with equally obvious (in)correct answers. No, you shouldn't answer "what is your biggest challenge" with "not showing up to work dru…

Some cultures, and strongly correlated thus nationalities, are more brutally honest than others. So it may just be a test to see if you're an apple pie white American, which could be unlawful discrimination.

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

#289

Post by gateorade » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

evouga wrote: post #207

sybercecurity wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interview/form is looking for potential blackmail or tendency to lie or obscure facts. If you are honest, that's fine, although they sometimes ask that you are currently using as well and that is a strike against you.

I was talking to an NSA recruiter last year, though, and they told me they routinely report applicants to the FBI for confessing to crimes during a polygraph. So damned if you do, damned if you don’t… (For a recruiter he did an uncanny job at convincing me never to work for the NSA)

I mean, that might be true if someone confesses to heinous/violent crimes (and shouldn't they?) but its definitely not true for things like minor drug use/sale etc.

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

#290

Post by floren » Thu, Jan 19, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

grishka wrote: post #82

technothrasher wrote: post #67

"Here, fill it out again and don't mention that." I had the exact same experience when applying for a clearance while I was in college, for the "have you taken illegal drugs" question. When I honestly answered yes, the interviewer got fidgety and then asked, "well do you take them now?" no. "Do you know any drug users?" We're on a college campus, what would you like me to say? "Well, are you friends with any of them?…

My only experience with serious US government forms was applying for a tourist visa. This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US". Also the entry form they give you on your flight deserves a mention. This one has "did you handle livestock in the last X months" repeated like 3 times in different phrasing. Not as stupid as the first one, but... why? Why is that question t…

The federal and state departments of agriculture go to great efforts to control agricultural diseases. Others have mentioned foot and mouth, but there are lots of other things. For instance, half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. A couple years back the Governor very publicly violated that long-standing order: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-...