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)
#2[deleted]
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#3Related:
What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 - June 2010 (98 comments)
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#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?
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#5[dead]
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#6> 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 and intense, and is suddenly about being sane of mind. https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html
Greetings from germany, where we have ethnicity or, officially, mostly nothing in this place. (Police will kinda inofficially still racial-profile you, since "north-african looking" seems to be easier than to say "tanned, slim and curly hair")
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#7> 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.
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#8> 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…
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"), and - now that the latter has become a charged term - "West-Asians", officially sanctioned by the Berlin police HQ as a non-racially-loaded term, but meaning the same.
The euphenism treadmill is strong over here as well.
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#9[deleted]
Re: What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
#10Sadly, the moral of the story seems to be that the 1943 FBI had loads of zealous (performative?) plods on staff, but ~zero law enforcement professionals. In '43, the US had plenty of highly competent professional cryptographers, who were quite experienced with current Japanese, German, Italian, British, etc. codes. Before an entire local FBI office spent even a day on this case (let alone 6 weeks), maybe they should have asked some of those professionals to look at the supposed "Japanese code key" page? If it turned out to be a known code that (say) Canada used for low-security consular messages, that'd quickly narrow down or close the case.
EDIT: If they believed the "Japanese code key" page might be genuine, why didn't they pass it up to the professional code-breakers ASAP? Sitting on it, while the Japanese used the code to plan an attack on the US, could make that local FBI office look like a bunch of idiots and traitors. So perhaps they did pass it up, were told that it was a waste of time...but didn't want to accept that answer.