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Comment by walrus01 | Hacker News Reader

further warning, if you apply for a secret or ts clearance (which many, many IT jobs in the federal government require and particular anything that interacts with the DoD), you will be put through a polygraph... It's even more intrusive now and the background check is even more thorough in the post-snowden era.

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> the background check is even more thorough in the post-snowden era.

Why is that?

I mean, this would be a case of "shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted" except that Snowden would pretty clearly have passed a more thorough background check. His background wasn't the problem.

The only thing I can think of that might actually have preemptively filtered him (or those like him) out would be some sort of psych test biased toward authoritarianism.

because knee jerk reaction, assuming logical reasons for well thought out responses on the part of the federal government dinosaur apparatus will only make your head hurt.

Hmm. I guess I thought ramping up the number of polygraph tests and re-evaluating which systems are accessible by people with various roles, responsibilities, and clearances would be a much higher priority.

Background checks are obviously a necessary and useful tool, I am just not sure I understand which dotted lines (regardless of their logic or illogic) connect "Snowden" to "more background checks" in a knee-jerk reaction.

Actually not completely true. It depends on the agency that sponsors your clearance and it has more to do with the agency's involvement in the intelligence community. The White House does not require it.

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