What not to write on your security clearance form (1988)
milk.com
milk.com
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?" Again, we're on a college campus. "Ok, well, we're just going to put down no for all of that."
The guidance these days is to tell the whole truth and describe the circumstances. Lying on the form will definitely disqualify you and a couple dumb things a few years ago won't necessarily.
Revoking naturalization or a green card involves a huge legal effort, but if it can be shown you lied on the application, that’s a much easier case.
Many US laws seem to be designed for ease of prosecution than for strict fairness. For example, open container laws are probably easier to prosecute than drunk driving.
It's not the lie itself, it's that you lied at all. Now you are untrustworthy. Drug use in the past is typically not an issue, particularly if you were young at the time. The whole process is to determine if you have good judgement and can be trusted.
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 that important in the first place? Pest control?
No need to prosecute for expulsion if there were lies on the immigration form; it becomes just an administrative matter.
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.'
Disclaimer: not legal advice, for entertainment value only.
There's already precedent that having a state medical marijuana card already makes one ineligible, and using as an ID when trying to purchase a firearm is grounds for automatic denial by the seller. Hawaii, which requires all firearms to be registered, went even further, proactively cross-referencing their gun registry with the medical marijuana one (https://www.leafly.com/news/politics/surrender-your-guns-pol...).
It's not really surprising that the law is so broad, given that it was written in 1968 when anti-drug craze was still ramping up. The reason why it doesn't get amended is, I think, because it manages to touch two third rails at once: Republicans don't want to be perceived as "soft on drugs" by their base, while Democrats are afraid of being seeing as not sufficiently aggressive wrt "gun violence". And so, here we are.
On the other hand for someone pumped up on coke it would be a big worry. Though I guess if the US had medical coke cards they would be banned as well :)
So Marijuana with a widely accepted medical benefit is considered a more dangerous drug than coke which is much more addictive and makes (some) people total pumped up jerks?
I really can't imagine that, it should be the other way around. This is what I don't understand about the US federal drug policy. Most countries define marijuana as a "soft drug".
I wonder how this came to be.. It sounds a bit like a 'war on hippies' thing from the 70s still lingering around the law books or something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger
As to why, the guy had many purported horror stories to tell about weed - collecting such was his hobby. Often, although not always, they boiled down to overt or covert racism. Some choice examples:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”
“I think the traffic has increased in marihuana, and unfortunately particularly among the young people. We have been running into a lot of traffic among these jazz musicians, and I am not speaking about the good musicians, but the jazz type.”
“Colored students at the Univ. of Minn, partying with female students (white) smoking and getting their sympathy with stories of racial persecution. Result: pregnancy.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Backgr...
This is mentioned in the article. It's a pretty standard way to overthrow democracies — it subverts the system, using the system.
And my delayed response likewise agitated the Mr 202 area code spec agent.
Additionally it creates a condition of jeopardy, because now you've made an official statement, and if it's false you're now potentially chargeable for perjury or making false official statements. So if you're a super-slick spy type and they can't pin something on you conclusively, but are sure you're up to something (in the same way they could only get Al Capone for tax evasion), then at least it gives them a pretext to take action and charge or deport you.
On the other hand, if you answer yes to this question they will probably don't let you into the country... But I can't say for sure.
:D
I would have ask if they were a judge. At least they are tasked with weighing the facts and deciding and not fighting for one point of view
But then in the US it still wouldn't matter unless they are your judge.
If you lie on your immigration form, you gained entry under false pretenses. Nothing complicated or grey about that.
They might not be a terrorist, in which case they weren't lying.
edit:
Huh. These guys:
https://www.dlawgroup.com/california-freedom-to-walk-act-for...
claim it is still illegal, but cannot be ticketed for without certain conditions. I wonder why, or if, this weird condition exists.
(I see it is supposedly to prevent police harassment, but that doesn't explain the weird legal status)
So maybe an expulsion tribunal is 50.1% too?
In a civil case, it's likely to be about the preponderance of evidence and in front of some non-court administrative body there may be no particular standard of evidence at all.
Their evidentiary standards are closer to “nonexistent” than to preponderance of evidence.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Judge_(United_St...
- If you answer "No": That's what they expect everyone will say, but having it in writing may still come in handy in international disputes. Say you're considered a terrorist in another country. The form, AFAIK, doesn't define by whose standards you are a terrorist, so it might be grounds to kick you out if the US isn't specifically interested in keeping you in.
- If you answer "Yes": You most likely have mental issues. Entry denied.
- If you stress too much over it: Entry denied, possibly notify relevant law enforcement.
- If you start to ask questions about it, like precisely what is meant by this question and why: You either have mental issues, or are up to something. Either way, entry denied.
I feel bad for him that he got caught up in local politics. I understand those normal people ate up the rich guy foreign ploy. What they missed was their rights were being trampled on while the rest of the world opened up and they were distracted by a fake booeyman.
I'm not Australian, but did follow the story with some interest as I do like professional tennis.
I thought it reflected much more poorly on Djokovic than on Australia. They set the visa rules, Djokovic violated those rules (and not subtly either).
It was too bad that he was unable to play at the AO last year, but that was (AFAIK) specifically due to his actions in violation of Australian law.
Those actions being lying on visa forms. And he did so regarding something that could be easily checked and confirmed/debunked.
Had he not lied, he probably would have gotten his visa.
If I'm a visitor to the country and say the same thing having signed an affirmation that I'm not going to advocate for violent overthrow of the US government it's not a first amendment case, it's a lying-on-immigration-forms case and out I do.
"Brandenburg was convicted of violating a criminal law that prohibited speech that advocates crime, sabotage, violence, and other similar acts after he spoke at a KKK rally. The Supreme Court found that the law infringed on Brandenburg's First Amendment rights, and created the imminent lawless action test. In order for speech to fall out of First Amendment protection, it must 1) be directed at producing imminent lawless action and 2) it is likely to produce such action."
I think there is an exception for ones made against certain public officials, which IMO are likely unconstitutional, but no one is really excited about challenging those.
That paragraph is not much different from what you'll find from self-described stocastic terrorist LibsofTikTok.
And, you know, I certainly agree that this kind of speech is terrible! But just as the US first amendment has protected, for example, supplying lists of doctors providing women with healthcare, showing crosshairs over them, putting red crosses over ones who have been murdered, and so on, the US has decided over the years that you have to issue very direct threats, or very clear instructions, to be held liable for speech that could incite harm.
Even advocating for violence is constitutionally protected.
A credible threat would, generally consist of specific actions that the person would have means to carry out.
Part of it is liability (tho I like to think they send the most reliable parts on sample orders), but also ITAR.
The point of this is not to get people to admit their plans.
Its to convert having those inchoate plans into a crime (fraud against the government) that can be prosecuted if discovered without any criminal act after entry (and can be used, with a reduced proof threshold compared to prosecuting crime, as a basis to withdraw status and deny any future application.)
(I had never been convicted of any crimes, so admittedly I could have just said "no" without causing a scene.)
Such a tragic, disgusting euphemism for the murder of millions, without them getting to devour their corpses.
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.
Surely this is not as easy as just pointing out the 'correct' definition of words. The difference between "execution", various other forms of killing you mention, and murder can't be so clear that you can easily say "it doesn't apply in this case".
> not useful
More than rhetoric and saying what is useful, sometimes I just feel like I should be saying what I find to be true. After billions and trillions of 'killings', with people saying 'useful', definitinly correct things in response, I just want to be more honest, sometimes—instead of pretending I don't find certain things disgusting, distasteful, vile etc for the sake of garnering 'converts'. I am not running an evangelism program—I'll leave that to the experts. They will perform like the they do regardless of what I say. Maybe honesty is the more useful policy in the long term.
It's exclusively asked as a, "turns out you lied, that's perjury" question to make deportation easier in criminal cases.
The article you link suggests that the quarantine area is the region from which it's illegal to bring fruit out.
The wikipedia article also does something interesting where it describes a mature fly as being an "apple maggot". I would have thought that the term "maggot" referred exclusively to the larval form.
It is illegal to bring homegrown fruit into eastern Washington, regardless of terminology.
I guess fundamentally the distinction is "if they can catch you, tell the truth, and if they can't, make yourself look good", but I guess it can be hard to know.
I can guarantee you that no record of any such arrest exists in paper or electronic form anywhere in a database that can be queried in Pakistan, even if US immigration authorities had a way to get cooperation from Pakistani federal police authorities without involving very high-level diplomatic contacts. Answering truthfully on a question like that will just fuck up your own case.
Is it still being legitimately arrested if you've been detained unlawfully for a shakedown by corrupt police? The same happens in many developing nations. It's actually more like being kidnapped.
Some of the process of using other data sources to verify that what a person has said is truthful/factually accurate only works if you're dealing with people coming from places with non-corrupted legitimate record keeping and bureaucratic processes.
I mean, immigration is extremely stressful process (been there, done that, currently repeating for my spouse), consular staff are demigods who literally rule over people lives, and people have a lot of superstitions, but I highly doubt it's going to be an issue.
I had a late passport renewal, which is considered an administrative infraction where I've lived. I have no idea how this translates to "have you been arrested or convicted of any offense or crime" on DS-260, so ticked the box just in case. Naturally, I was asked about it - I've explained that I don't know if this counts but that's what happened, and that I'd rather mistakenly mention this than fail to disclose. And everything went perfectly fine.
I told him he had no such authority, unlike with the room full of Mexicans around me he was used to harrassing, and even if I didn't answer his (non-citizenship related) questions he'd still have to let me in.
By god did that piss him off, and I spent many hours detained, but in I went. After hearing his irate and false claims that my passport would be revoked, not allowed in, etc etc.
I got put on CBPs shit list many years before that because I helped some people in a scary country which made some dumb uninformed government worker sad face. They do that stuff no matter how nice I am. Finally I learned they will treat me like shit and break my things even when I am nice so I should at least be assertive about my rights in the process.
The same happens in the US. We've just given authorities leeway to institutionalize stops and arrests and even convictions that would otherwise be considered illegal - especially if they were ever to be put under scrutiny and scrubbed of the blank check that is given to avoid gumming up the works with accountability. And these incidents do affect employability and eligibility for aid, at much lower levels than applying for a clearance or a visa. It's just something to keep in mind.
The general principle is that you must be unimpeachable such that your testimony is valid in court.
The point of the deep dive is not to prove you've always been an upstanding citizen, but to look for factors that make you an easier target for foreign intelligence services such as:
1. Do you have any financial problems that could make you easier to buy off? (Bad credit, gambling problems)
2. Do you have any (real or perceived) addictions that might impair your judgement or can be leveraged against you? (drugs and DUIs)
3. Are you currently attempting to hide any criminal activity that you could be blackmailed with?
4. Do you have any sensitive foreign connections or other possible allegiances?
Another friend lied and said no (this was for a college internship so I knew a couple people working there) and got rejected once their story didn't check out with their personal references.
(For a recruiter he did an uncanny job at convincing me never to work for the NSA)
Then I realized the real red flag would be if you weren't stable enough to have friends who would help you out a bit.
The main reasons people betray their country are MICE (Money, Ideology, Coercion, Ego). Drugs might be expensive (money), might themselves be a secret you hold (coercion/blackmail) or might cause you to do dumb blackmailable things (e.g. fall into a honey trap). So, that's what background check folks are looking for w.r.t. drugs.
Hiding drug use makes it look like maybe it could be used to blackmail you, and suggests that maybe you're hiding other things.
Also, they're looking for people who follow the rules, won't bring classified material home, won't try to impress people by revealing classified info, etc.
http://dustinkmacdonald.com/recruiting-intelligence-assets-w...
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=RASCLS+in...
Also, guarding the houses of a few high officials is much easier than guarding the houses of everyone with a security clearance.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
There are lots of dumb rules, but keeping classified documents inside secure areas is not one of them. Once, I was working as a contractor, and there was a NATO classified document I needed for my work. I just needed to be a citizen of a NATO country and have a clearance from that country (check and check). The hitch was that I needed someone in my company to read me the paperwork/walk me through the PowerPoint presentation that I'd go to prison if I shared the info, etc., etc. and watch me sign on the dotted line. There was nobody at my employer who was certified to give me that presentation. (There was someone who was signed up to get the training to walk people through the NATO paperwork, but that was going to be 3 months later.) Someone at my client was certified to give that presentation, but (for accountability reasons) it needed to be someone at my employer who gave me the "you will go to prison if you share this NATO information" presentation. So, what we did is have my friend sit down across from me with the document. I'd ask her questions, she'd read the documents, and mentally redact the information by giving me wide ranges of frequencies, bitrates, etc. I then wrote my computer models, and if they needed higher fidelity, someone at the client later came back and patched the estimated values I used. It was a bit of a pain and a bit silly, but you follow the procedures. If you can't do your job while following the procedures, then you escalate and escalate until you can do your job while still following the procedures.
It takes a certain level of tolerance for BS to work with classified information and stay within the rules, but that's a valuable skill that carries a good amount of financial reward.
I always found this odd too because I agree with the sentiment that you're expressing. It's always been told to me that the reason they don't want people with a history of drug usage (different from current usage) is that it can be used as blackmail against them. But the explanation of blackmail is that it can get them fired, from a job where the only reason that happens is because you lied on your clearance. Wouldn't they want no skeletons in the closet?
These stories don't mean the person would have past when immediately denying the past offense...
While growing up, and during my studies I had often considered job roles where security clearances would presumably be required, but I decided to stay away from that world for multiple reasons:
1. when a sector is heavily propagandized / advertised in media (books, films, ...) then usually it's to attract more talent who wouldn't spontaneously apply. lots of people get disillusioned in armies etc around the world, which is why the experience is artificially inflated in movies etc...
2. I understand that in some situations people in certain job roles need to sacrifice some of their personal freedoms in order to protect the freedoms of the population at large, think for example freedom of expression vs secrecy, and the need of secrecy say among the Polish, French, British, ... in the context of the cracking of the Enigma coding system. To join and apply for security clearance entails signing away certain rights and freedoms. The mere thought that the only way to find out if that's a good decision or not is by taking that decision for life is nauseating to me. Even if I were to become an employee and the practical experience would be that the organization and the individual that signed up agree on the need for secrecy 99% of the time (which sounds very optimistic), I would balk at that 1% or more of the time where I disagree, where I might be convinced the secrecy is creating more problems than solutions. That thought seems unbearable to me, so I'd rather have no security clearance at all and feel ... free.
The thought is that someone could blackmail you into revealing secrets by threatening to expose your lie, thus causing you to losing your clearance, job or worse.
For one thing, admitting to past criminal acts doesn’t add a new criminal act with the statute of limitations clock at 0, whereas lying in any official government process, like a security clearance application, does.
(Polygraphs are pseudoscientific BS in the first place, but I know there are some cases where you must undergo them for whatever reason.)
EDIT: I'm not aware of any polys leading to discovering enemies of the state. Its all self-elected information from my understanding, in line with your suggestion.
Polys are not the end-all for detecting bad guys but if you choose to ignore it anyway, it certainly becomes useless.
I hadn't heard of the Ames poly history but I just looked it up and its interesting because apparently he had the same mindset that I do about polys in general [1], and basically when the poly tech said during the interview that they were getting some weird results, he essentially told them the same thing [2] and they were like "yeah youre right" lol.
[1] - https://sgp.fas.org/othergov/polygraph/ames.html
[2] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/2002/04/16/failure-of-the-polygraph/07c406a5-0aa3-4e20-8dcc-89781162aaa8/In his original 1986 poly, he popped on one question but basically smooth talked his way out of it so it never was something that required followup (i.e. they were sufficiently convinced he was a good guy). In the 1991 poly it gets more interesting because the entire poly was partially a ruse because he was _already under investigation_. Due to timing, the interviewer didn't get coached to dig in on specifics around financial issues, and so they followed a bog-standard interview which Ames passed. The really interesting quote around this is how the postmortum basically says this was a bad poly because they didnt play enough mind games to get him nervous in the first place:
In its review of the Ames polygraphs, the CIA IG report quotes several current and former polygraph examiners who stated that the Ames case should not be considered to be a polygraph "chart interpretation" problem. Rather, they say, the fundamental problem is that the 1986 and 1991 polygraph charts were invalid because the examiner in each case failed to establish a proper psychological atmosphere in the examination sessions. A former polygrapher noted that without proper preparation, a subject has no fear of detection and, without fear of detection, the subject will not necessarily demonstrate the proper physiological response. Consequently, they surmise, the Ames polygraph tests were invalid because the process was flawed by examiners who had not establish the proper psychological mind set in Ames because they were overly friendly. As a result, Ames's physiological reactions were unreliable.
During the poly, few question in, guy asked me if I ever looked up how to beat a poly. I naturally said yes cause I was startled that this in fact could be one of the questions, which automatically ended the interview.
Thats when I realized that smart people don't work in the government.
I guess this is sort of a chicken/egg problem since you can't or won't get hired for the job if you appear too familiar with the workings of the recruitment process. But then if you don't get hired, they might be leaving out one of the better informed candidates.
Anecdotally from the defense contractor industry I've known a number of people who have a whole bookshelf of books on subjects like cold war era espionage, are deeply familiar with some of the most noteworthy moles/spies that were publicly prosecuted and jailed (or north korean, chinese, soviet officers and officials who were just straight out executed with a bullet to the back of the head). It didn't seem to prevent any of them from passing their clearances. Some jobs want to know that you're motivated to learn the subject matter at hand and research its past 60+ years of history.
Its so frustrating because from my perspective its like... what do you want me to say/do here? Do you really think a curious person isnt going to look up polys? Am I supposed to deny that I did that? The whole thing is a joke. How many good candidates are we missing that could be working in the public sector just because of this BS filtering?
E.g. i admitted to drug use, but the firm was so insanely detailed there was no way to be fully honest. It literally asked how many times youve done each drug, who with, whered you get etc. Well for a raging polysubstance addict, this is hilarious. Just listing all the differe t drugs would take more room than there was on the forum and that doesnt even start to account for all the tertiary information they wanted.
I got interviewed of course. Was a very weird experience sitting in an office in my workplace 14 feet from my boss talking about "yeah I did cocain a few times" "why did you stop" "well it feels good but it makes you act brazen, selfish, and flippant. Also it sucks to be around people who are coked up"
Anyway, I got the clearance
Additionally they were looking for any hint that you might have had an ongoing/current drug habit where you would either be vulnerable to financial pressure or societal coercion from drug dealers/persons associated with drug dealers, and that they they believed you were no longer a user was likely a factor.
My spouse was considering applying to the Air Force almost 20 years ago (for the language learning school), and got the recruiter very excited after demonstrating excellent scores on the ASVAB... then it all fell apart after they answered some questions honestly about past depression and refused to lie about it on the forms as the recruiter wanted them to.
The only stumbling block came when the interviewer asked "have you smoked marijuana?". I truthfully answered no. The interviewer suddenly changed from bored old lady to the hardened, ex-cop that I suspect she was, glared into my soul and asked again. "No", I answered once again. "Well, that does not check out with your background. We will have to ask around on that one." She did ask around, my friends corroborated my story and I got the clearance.
My background involved undergrad education at a #1 party school, in a college town where open marijuana usage was common well before being legalized. And I had casual experimentation with other drugs (the aforementioned shrooms) and plenty of alcohol usage. I was probably the only one in my college acquaintance circle that didn't smoke on a semi-regular basis. I sometimes think I could have lied and said "yes I smoked weed", and still gotten the clearance. It would have actually been less of a red flag for the investigator(s).
From Wikipedia:
>In 2002, a review by the National Research Council found that, in populations "untrained in countermeasures, specific-incident polygraph tests can discriminate lying from truth telling at rates well above chance, though well below perfection". The review also warns against generalization from these findings to justify the use of polygraphs—"polygraph accuracy for screening purposes is almost certainly lower than what can be achieved by specific-incident polygraph tests in the field"—and notes some examinees may be able to take countermeasures to produce deceptive results
EDIT to add: Ironically he had gotten in trouble for phone phreaking as a teenager.
If the thing you did was less bad than the penalty for treason or revealing secrets (life in prison and/or death) then the blackmail argument falls apart. It's just more irrational hocus pocus by self-important bureaucrats. Hell the thing you're blackmailing doesn't even have to be true, they can just find an ex lover and blackmail that person to say you raped them or whatever, and well even if you beat the charges your kids get tossed into DCS/foster care your life is ruined etc etc.
Yet another reason why I'll never work for the government.
It's not uncommon for people to _commit suicide_ over things they are being blackmailed about.
Plus people doing the blackmailing aren't stupid. They don't go "we know you lied on your clearance form about smoking weed once. Get us that top secret document!"
They start with something much lower risk and then leverage compliance into higher and higher value targets.
The US has such insane conspiracy laws frankly it isn't much effort for a few motivated individuals let alone a state actor to blackmail someone for the worst of false offenses using some corrupt "witnesses." Maybe before the war on drugs it was easier to blackmail someone with real offenses than fake ones but nowadays it's probably easier to manufacture them TBH.
If you want top secret documents, you don't start by asking for top secret documents. You start by asking them to violate a relatively innocuous rule. Changing a date by one day on a file so it's no longer late or something like that. Doesn't matter what it is. The point is that it's not worth being exposed over. And the rule you're breaking would technically be worthy of getting fired over. Especially for the thing they're blackmailing you over. "It's changing a date by one day, no one would know, and it's not worth losing my job over."
It starts off "Hey man, I was cool about the weed thing, do me a solid here." Then it's "Hey, remember that thing you did, do you think you could do this slightly bigger thing?" If they refuse, you can bring up that first thing they did.
Then, a year or two down the line, you're fucking cooked. They come to you and say, "Look man, you've done this, that, and the other thing. If they find out, you are fired, in jail, life ruined. What I need now is this top secret document."
The idea is to build a list of escalating transgressions so in the end, the asset feels as if they have no choice but to comply with your requests. You don't need fabricated offenses. You just need a small issue you can use as a starting point.
If someone has done something really bad (maybe murdered someone) then yes, directly blackmailing them to do something major might work.
But in general the things we are talking about are mostly things were someone lied on their clearance form and if they decided to they could get that cleared up and cause the foreign agent significant problems by reporting an approach.
So instead they escalate. They don't directly blackmail you - you just happen to meet a woman at a bar who happens to have pictures of you smoking weed at a party 5 years ago. So you are joking around about what a great party that was, and it just happens to turn out that this woman works at a defense contractor and they are waiting on this stupid proposal to be released so they can bid on it, and you don't happen to know when it will be released do you?
So you go look it up. It's not classified, maybe it's commercial-in-confidence at worst. But then this woman needs to know how long she should rent her apartment in town for, so exactly how big is the project? How many units are they ordering?
That's still not classified, but is need-to-know. But she's hot, so you tell her.
And now they have you. You might not actually realize yet you are being blackmailed, but as soon as they ask for classified info you realize she can ruin you.
I'm no expert on spycraft or anything like that, but this sounds overly reductionist. If they can threaten you to lose your career, then maybe doing one tiny little other thing that won't matter seems like it might be worth it. Now they can blackmail you further.
> they can just find an ex lover and blackmail that person to say you raped them or whatever
How do they find that person? How do they blackmail them? It becomes exponentially more complicated than just blackmailing one person. Additionally, someone finding themselves in the situation that they are being actively targeted with blatant lies is much more likely put up an indignant and active defense vs somebody who actually has a guilty conscience.
If working for a murderous government that sends drones to bomb kids overseas, invade vietnam and iraq, imprisons innocuous non-violent offenders for decades, funds nun-raping militias in central america, etc doesn't give one a guilty conscious I honestly have no idea what would. It's got to make you feel far more guilty than whether you put on a form you grew a bad plant or not.
>How do they find that person? How do they blackmail them?
Finding someone's ex is not complicated. We're talking about blackmailers so I think a blackmailer knows how to... blackmail. And the example I gave was just one of a million possible scenarios I can imagine an enemy using. The point was using something fake is likely as easy or possibly even easier than using a real crime for the purposes of the enemy, and thus the ratcheting effect you describe is immaterial to whether they start with the bad plant grown that wasn't listed on the form or because they told the compromised person that they'd reveal the false criminal allegations.
Most people care a fuck of a lot more about things that are close to them than things that are far, far away.
If you're wondering in good faith and not just trying to score stupid political points, all I can say is, uh, strongly recommend you Log Off.
In a Hollywood movie, they would just locate an old acquaintance from your youthful years who is currently in debt.
The counter-example I'll mention is that if someone framed you for CSAM and could convince people you actually were doing that, blackmail might be effective. Not only is it fully beyond the pale, but just going to prison would be a death sentence.
Someone being falsely accused like this would most likely immediately report it to their boss in the government asking for help. It would be very unlikely that the person would hide it and become an intelligence asset for the blackmailer.
This attitude of tolerance eroded later in the 80s. During the Reagan regime, they (DoD?) sent out a memo saying that marijuana use was "incompatible with national security goals". Not sure what the effect was out in the trenches though.
On the other hand, I also never smoked weed and I said so on my application, and nobody ever gave me trouble about it. Maybe I just looked like enough of a square for it to be believable.
What's the hangup with this particular drug that's actually legal in many states?
Ps: I've been asked that question too in less formal settings and I always truthfully say no which does raise some eyebrows as I'm Dutch :) But I've really never done it. Not counting all the second hand smoke around me though.
It's also very easy to detect because pot stays in your system longer than about any other drug and the penalty for pot use by non-firearm owners is so weak and unenforced that people often forget it is a very severe crime for the ~40% of US that owns arms. People mistakenly get nonchalant about it.
Only if you carry them with you, right?
AFAIK it's the feds position that even merely having a medical marijuana card (which doesn't mean you actually have ever even bought/consumed weed) and owning a gun makes you a felon.
Note: not a lawyer, not legal advice.
If anything, Grandma being the card-carrying pot user and not you would likely be evidence in your favor - to be presented and argued by a competent defense attorney in court, of course, not by you to some power-tripping cops interrogating you (the only correct response to a cop asking you anything for any reason at any time under any circumstance is for you to invoke your rights to silence and an attorney - and such a "shut the fuck up" strategy has indeed gotten people out of pot-related convictions, at least if these lawyers are to be believed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o).
Was I an opiate user? If I just keep the script but never fill it am I more an opiate user than the guy on the street with a little baggy of white powder? People seek out and obtain scripts for stuff they never use, all the time.
Given that they were prescribed to you, "yes" would be a reasonable assumption, barring you able to provide evidence introducing reasonable doubt (e.g. "I still have every pill I was ever prescribed").
In any case, "was" is the key word. You were given a prescription for a finite number of doses, whereas usually a medical marijuana card is more indefinite.
The quasi-legality of state-permitted and federally-prohibited-without-direct-enforcement is kind of an awful trap, and that’s even before you consider the risks if the federal enforcement pause – which doesn’t change the criminal law and thus would not raise ex post facto concerns for enforcement against acts that occurred during (or before, if the statute of limitations allows) the pause – were to be lifted.
Perhaps a trap that rises to the level of (HHOS) conspiracy to commit a crime: TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242
disclaimer: The answers I give on form 4473 are absolutely truthful.
The government has to remind you it's illegal because well "everybody" does it and it really doesn't seem like it actually is and it sure as hell doesn't feel like you're doing something wrong or harmful. So somebody has to tell you that this drug is really bad because you'll go to jail for it for a long time.
The main reason pot is bad is because it will get you a jail sentence. The main reason you'll get a jail sentence is because it's bad. Hope that clears it up.
It wasn’t that long ago that marijuana was an illegal drug in every state. And as a schedule 1 drug marijuana gets lumped in with crack and PCP.
I have no doubt updating security clearance requirements is a massive bureaucratic mess nobody is interested in doing.
So the requirements remain, but everyone just “massages” the answers to fit current norms.
The vast majority do not; there are 137,000 that are authorized to carry a gun and/or make arrests, out of 2.85 million non-military federal employees.
I feel very confident saying being qualified to use a gun is essential to the majority of those with an active clearance, and thus highly relevant to the drugs question part of the clearance.
[0] https://news.clearancejobs.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Se...
I've submitted to no less than five background checks for purchasing firearms. My ID has also been scanned at multiple dispensaries in the same state as those background checks. Not once has the latter caused any issue with the former - in all likelihood because "I at one point set foot in a dispensary" != "I actually purchased something in that dispensary" != "I actually consumed something purchased from that dispensary" != "I was a user of something purchased from that dispensary at the time that I answered a question about whether or not I use federally-controlled substances".
Maybe if background checks included drug tests this would be a practical concern, but as it stands, unless you show up to the gun store stoned out of your gourd (hell, even then), there is little opportunity to demonstrate "the defendant lied about not being a user of illicit substances at the time one purchased the firearm".
At the end of the day the feds got a warrant to drag me to the hospital and internally search my body for drugs because third party hearsay that an anonymous cop said an anonymous dog supposedly said I had drugs (there were none and their search was fruitless). If third party hearsay is good enough for a warrant why wouldn't video evidence or ID scan of you at the gun store and the pot shop? Sure you can claim "well the test at the hospital shows metabolites and the video shows buying weed and guns but hey you can't prove I actually used weed" but good luck with that.
So a prosecutor would need to prove that I was "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" at the time that I received a firearm or ammunition that has crossed my state's borders (which would presumably be nearly all the firearms and ammunition I own, but still). There's also the parallel prohibition on the seller's end (and another one involving the actual background check questions), with the same present-tense language of "is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance".
> If third party hearsay is good enough for a warrant why wouldn't video evidence of you at the gun store and the pot shop?
A warrant != a conviction. The video evidence of me at both stores would not establish that I was "an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance" at the time that I took possession of the firearm.
Now, if there was video evidence of me smoking a phat blunt right outside the gun store before walking in and walking back out with a firearm, then yeah, that'd be a slam dunk case (assuming the prosecutor could convince a jury that it was indeed cannabis I was smoking). Likewise, if I was actually tested for cannabis in my system and the tests indicated that it was indeed in my system at the time I took possession of the firearm, then that would similarly be a slam dunk case.
(I guess even in the latter case I could maybe argue "yeah, I was an unlawful user, but I quit before buying the gun", but that defense is pretty weak if it's still in my system; I reckon it'd be stronger if I was sober for an actually-significant amount of time.)
Barring those? I ain't a lawyer, either, but my personal understanding is that the present-tense wording leaves a loophole big enough to drive a truck through it. Obviously the safest bet is to not rely on that being the case, but it's pretty easy to answer "No" to "Are you an illegal user of or addicted to any controlled substance?" without it being a felonious lie.
Doesn't this mean that the prohibition of using such substances doesn't apply just to the moment of purchase, but to the whole period of time that you posses a firearm? I'm not a lawyer either and I'm not even American, but this is how I would interpret it. Also it would make little sense to have a law saying that you can't be a user of illegal drugs at the moment of purchase of a firearm, but you can start using such substances afterwards.
> Also it would make little sense to have a law saying that you can't be a user of illegal drugs at the moment of purchase of a firearm, but you can start using such substances afterwards.
The law in question derives from the federal government's Constitutional authority to regulate interstate and international commerce, which is (I would guess) why the language fixates on that aspect. The federal government doesn't otherwise have the power to infringe on the Second, Fourth, and (possibly) Tenth Amendments - as would likely be necessary to federally require gun owners to submit to random drug tests over something that one's state has made legal.
Meanwhile, my state (last I checked) has laws on the books separately prohibiting intoxication (be it via cannabis, alcohol, or whatever) while in possession of a firearm; to my knowledge, most (all?) states do.
If growing your own plants with nothing but seed and material from the earth on your property, and then feeding it to your local animals is interstate commerce.... then it's hard to imagine any firearm even if made of iron pulled from the earth underneath you and machined on site and never sold to anyone or hell even fired could be considered to not have interstate nexus.
Both those cases entailed the defendants manufacturing something, which would be where the Feds would claim jurisdiction via their jurisdiction over interstate commerce. It's harder to make that argument w.r.t. something after a retail sale has already concluded (i.e. after the interstate commerce has happened). I wouldn't doubt the Feds would try to assert that literally everything that ever happens is or pertains to "interstate commerce", but that'd be sufficiently broad as to invalidate all sorts of other judicial precedents if actually held up in court.
This of course only pertains to federal law; states have their own laws, and said laws usually prohibit being armed while intoxicated - regardless of the legality of the intoxicating substance.
I strongly, strongly believe you are overconfident in your interpretation, particular when I read the provisions regarding possession which may be a seperate crime from say what was written on the 4473 at the FFL.
But I'm not the one you have to convince. I pray you are never in a position you must do the convincing.
I do not believe I am an authoritative enough of a professional to convince you, even were it that I had time to type a more complete explanation. Again I recommend you consult a lawyer, and preferably one that has worked in this area. My opinion as a rando on HN has no legal bearing on the justice system.
That is until they get ransomwared.
In that case I need to report that my identity has been stolen.
I still wonder why the law is that way though. As drugs go, marijuana is probably the least worrying when it comes to gun possession. As it makes people docile and relaxed, it will help de-escalate conflicts.
As opposed to coke which makes people pumped up or even the fully legal alcohol...
It sounds like federal law should catch up to reality. Though as a European I am not in favor of widespread gun use anyway but that's another discussion.
You are not going to lose or be rejected for a clearance because you have a few foreign friends. It is just another one of those things you have to report to the government (meaning the government issuing the clearance).
I called up and asked them what to do about this question, because obviously the answer is yes if you include prescription medications. They didn't even understand what I was asking.
The conventional wisdom is to answer truthfully, and justify your answers. You really don't want to get caught lying. It's not up to the person asking you to fill out the form to tell you what to list and what not to list.
If the government can't find enough qualified people they need to adapt the process (and they have). Some things are 100% dealbreakers and should have been changed a long time ago (see local Marijuana jurisdiction laws), but I'm a firm believer you shouldn't lie to get the job. Find another one and move on. My .02.
>I had the exact same experience when applying for a clearance while I was in college
Speaking as someone on the autistic spectrum, this is why the entire clearance process is a joke and has been since I had the misfortune of meeting some of these spooks as a child.
They claim that the one thing that will preclude you is lying, but obviously as posts like these demonstrate, that's not the case.
I still remember going on a date with a woman who was recently divorced... she told me about traveling up and down Baja California for RAND (smoking her brains out along the way).
I've met a ton of these people -- they'd have been precluded from federal employment back in the day just for being divorced... or a woman... or a myriad of other things... but somehow they manage to get these cushy roles and cling to them.
I've since quit doing any job interviews... at all. I got the sense folks were treating them like free consulting sessions, so I'm very purposefully showing up in the comments when something comes up in the news and refusing to "stop posting".
At the end of the day, if you "do a clearance", you're helping perpetuate war crimes, and it's been that way since Iraq, arguably as far back as when the draft ended.
(I got the sense they, the royal they, "the feds" were aggrieved I kept applying to the agencies in my hometown, but hey, I was born here, and I'm not required to ignore antisocial behavior. It's not my fault if it begins to look like you're abusing someone you met as a child -- denying them employment in the private sector then overpolicing their applications in the public service)
Feds: Do you use drugs? Guy: Yes. Feds: Do you plan to stop? Guy: No.
The feds went away and conferred briefly and then came back and told the guy that they needed him to at least say he planned to stop, so he said that, and got the clearance.
My reserved, nerdy self was replacing her bubbly English major bestie, so I don't think she liked me much from jump, anyway.
My thought is always, well, the planet I visited is called Earth and is made out of earth, so it's more than likely that I came into contact with soil. I answer "no" anyway, because I feel you're not supposed to answer "yes" to that question, but I couldn't actually justify my answer with a straight face. So far, not in prison! Keeping my fingers crossed though.
“So you want me to mark No for all the answers?”
“No. No. That’s not what I said. You should answer all questions with the proper answers. All I’m saying is I need these questions to be NO if we want to proceed”
I read between the lines and everything was no. When I went to MEPS, a processing stop where you get physically and mentally cleared to join, he told me to not admit to smoking weed. When we got into the room at MEPS, they said if you used drugs and we find out and you didn’t tell us, you can go to jail for 10 years, etc., so I raised my hand and told on myself. The whole drive home my recruiter was like “why didn’t you just say no?”
When I eventually got to my first command, an investigator came to speak with me about my pending clearance. She said they found some discrepancies, I told her the recruiting story. She asked if I’d be willing to take a polygraph. I initially accepted but then asked if I was required to. I wasn’t and if I didn’t want to do a polygraph I could instead do a sworn statement which I did. Eventually got my clearance but it took a long time.
I told him that I had smoked marijuana (I was still studying for my degree at University), and that a number of my friends also smoked, and they were the reason why I smoked (peer pressure). I also informed them of the damage I had seen done to our friendships inside the group, as certain friends had gotten into fights with other friends over the money needed to buy the stuff. I also gave names and contact details of various friends in that group. I informed those friends that they would be interviewed, and to just tell the agent the truth -- as I had done.
They all reported back that they had been interviewed, and told him the truth. But they also didn't give me any more details, and I was fine with that.
What was a little strange about that whole clearance investigation process was that the agent also wanted to know the addresses of my grand parents, in addition to the fifteen year history of everywhere I had lived myself. And about a month later, one of my grandmothers got a visit from a Secret Service agent. Turns out that the Defense Investigative Service didn't have any agents in that area, so they farmed out that work to the local Secret Service office.
So, yes -- I did smoke, and I did inhale. And all the agents cared about was whether I was trying to hide something like this, because that would mean I would be vulnerable to blackmail over those events.
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.
That sounds far less exciting than scrambling to find a fifth columnist and potentially being hailed as a hero.
True, but it's not completely bleak either. I once wanted to take out $40 from an ATM, and it gave me $60! I never told anyone and this is the first time I am sharing this. If a time comes to fill out a security clearance application, should this go in there?
Moral of the story: it takes money to make money. :)
One time, I wanted to take $40 out of an ATM, it gave me $80 instead. I checked my Internet banking - they had the ATM withdrawal at the expected location, but only for $40, which is all I’d asked for. Then, a few days later, I got another $40 debit transaction, but of a strange type I’d never seen before - it was labelled something like “MANUAL ADJUSTMENT”. I assume someone at the bank had worked out that the ATM screwed up and manually corrected it.
It was made up by the two kids, so maybe they did that but it didn’t narrow down their case…
Money would be spend on the wages of those agents anyway, even if they had nothing to do.
Being at war, you want to make sure it's not an enemy using the code.
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 follow-up - no "HAVE you ever stolen" or "WOULD you ever steal from your employer", or "why were you considering it" or anything like that. My mind never stops and there's virtually nothing in the world I have not "considered" (as in, thought about, crossed my mind, evaluated, etc). Similarly, years later it actually took my Canadian therapist a little while to adjust as well when he asked if I ever considered suicide and I cheerfully replied "Yes!" (I'm not suicidal, in the least, by any of the normal metrics; but I genuinely don't understand people who have "never considered" it - how do you block & limit your mind? 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?).
I don't know what other people do with their brains; my wife falls asleep within 30 seconds of her head hitting the pillow, my mind insists on spending an hour or three "considering" things I apparently shouldn't put on a job application lol :-)
1. sit quietly and comfortably
2. breathe through your nose
3. find the feeling of air moving in and out of your nose
4. observe that feeling of air
5. if your mind starts observing other thoughts instead of the breath feeling -- 'I have an itch', 'this sitting position is uncomfortable', 'what about my meeting tomorrow' -- you notice your observation has left the air-in-your-nose feeling, and you gently redirect it back to focusing on that instead of the thoughts.
6. Repeat. You'll slowly increase from 2-3 seconds of focus to minutes at a time.
> 3. Most importantly, unsurprisingly, I suck at it. I keep trying every now and then; maybe I'll give it another go :)
You're better off with 3-5 minutes daily, regularly, than with longer sessions sporadically. It's a matter of practice and getting the knack of concentration down. Slowly increase to 10-15 minutes a day over a month or two, and really focus on getting the technique mastered more than anything.
The book Mindfulness in Plain English is both available freely online, and my favourite guide to getting it right.
It's kind of like spam subject lines... a call to action.
My nose is bleeding? I need to... Wait, my ankle is killing me, let me just... Oh, no, now my back, quick stretch will ... Hmm, I'd be so much more meditative if I just pop on to Amazon and order a proper cushion...
Just sit. You'll be fine.
Remember that the word user also governs the skeletal muscles. Not the most ideal situation, but you have to expect some strange things if you grow such a complex thing as a brain from some goo. When these things, or other things happen, just watch them, let them pass, and then bring your attention back to the breath in your nose.
It's like balancing. How do you get better at balancing? Stand precariously every day and eventually your muscles will strengthen and you will be balanced.
Similarly, bringing your attention back to the breath in your nose is how you get better at this thing.
Just some tips that helped me.
The problem is not the interpretation of a word. The problem is how the ocean of other people answered this question. There comes a point when being honest is completely stupid, and when most people use the word honesty they don’t mean to cross into the completely stupid territory.
That being said I’d consider such a person to be a fine candidate for friendship.
No one is completely honest. Courtesy is the art of lying.
I have "Considered" stealing from my employer several times. When I was 15 I was a refugee and worked in a Radio-Shack-like store in Croatia. We built PCs in back and sold them in the front. The front and back were separated by a curtain, and highest value items (ram sticks) happened to be stashed on the shelf on the side of the entrance. I realized it would take literally 5 seconds for a customer to reach through the curtain and grab them. That got me thinking on whether as an insider I would have higher or lower risk than a random customer. How could I reduce the risk? What's a simple, non-overly-elaborate method that would let me accomplish this? So I did spend some time considering this problem space (and then next day suggested to my boss to move the RAM further inside:)
Similarly with suicide. Everybody's life is hard and has ups and downs. I've "considered" suicide in several different ways many times in my life, sometimes at "obvious" times of hardship, otherwise at simply slow, boring times. I'm largely a cheerful optimistic person FWIW, but I find everything interesting even fascinating, including that particular life (ending) choice.
Talking to couple of my closest oldest friends, who are most similar to me, they have few mental taboos. But talking to most other people, at least as far as they're willing to be honest with me and/or themselves, they have never considered SO MANY topics, virtually regardless of how light or heavy we define the word.
When I was working at IBM, a my manager introduced me in passing to one of his peers who was getting a huge promotion, about three levels up. Why such an unusual promotion? He'd noticed a way that 4 people could conspire to exfiltrate $25 million on a Friday and be in some non-extradition country before it was noticed. He had reported this flaw, and they were promoting him for alerting them. He had certainly "considered" quite deeply stealing from his employer, and was being rewarded for doing the right thing.
And, of course, an honest answer on his BestBuy app would have disqualified him.
We can quibble about the meaning, but this is an absolute fail on the job application, unless the goal is to filter out intelligent people who have naturally curious minds.
There is a huge difference between thinking about something and taking action to do it. You have brought us another great example of utter cluelessness in corporate HR.
Not sure why you think this is a crazy goal for a retail job. If you can't figure out that you should say "no" to the stealing question, no matter what the truth is, then you're probably not a good fit to work retail.
In fact, I'd bet that most of the "yes" answers to this question are people who are curious but have poor social understanding. I imagine that someone who really would steal is also dishonest enough to lie on the question.
Bingo!
I do expect that there are attempts to filter out overly intelligent people for some jobs. There was a lawsuit in Connecticut by an applicant who scored too high on the police exam and was denied a job. He lost the case, and established the right for police to reject people for being too smart as they might get bored or something (sorry, I don't have a link on hand).
But, as you point out, this question filters out only the honest and intelligent people.
It leaves you with the pool of people who are either dull or dishonest. Classic HR fail.
Looks like the reason is: we refuse all smart people equally and it's a means to reduce turnover...
What a joke.
(and yes, if you're reasonably sharp and not a super-stickler, you should be able to suss out the screening intent of the question, constrain the current meaning of "consider", and answer "No" regardless of your previous thoughts and understanding of the word — it's not like thoughtcrime is prosecutable ...yet)
“Have I deliberated over whether or not to do this?”
Not:
“Have I thought, in the abstract, about how I might do this, or what it might be like?”
Lots of other similar "I'd never do that" situations I've definitely considered.
I admire your honesty though. 99% of people would lie.
As long as you label it as an "intrusive thought," and it isn't incredibly (daily) common, that is perfectly normal.
One person in my family claims they've never had this thought ever, and it truly baffles me.
Seriously though, I suppose I was misusing the word "evidence" here... I haven't actually studied this beyond observing and talking to people I know. I would also be interested in reading on the topic if anyone can suggest something!
Sometimes figuring out if they're just obsessing because they're worried about a thought, versus actually perseverating over a potentially actionable drive, is really really difficult.
Not saying you have OCD, it's just a whole area that can lead to seriously debilitating problems for some individuals.
I think I'm pretty neurotypical and fall somewhere in the middle, but I can see how a minor change in that "setting" would have a big impact on my behavior.
I remember a period of my life where I was struggling a bit more than normal with anxiety, and my creative / intrusive brain was like "how about you think on the concept of suicide?" to which my brain responded "wow now you're thinking about suicide, you should really seek help".
In reality, it was just an intrusive thought. But the fact that my brain jumped on that thought, and ruminated on it as "if the thought popped into my head, maybe I'm not OK", that was the thing that caused problems.
I don't think that it's some people follow prescribed paths. I think everyone has familiar and less-familiar paths, and some paths are totally out of the way. And I think the overlap of what's considered familiar and what's considered out of the way have much less overlap than is commonly understood.
Thanks.
The useful interpretation is to exercise empathy and put yourself in the mind of the person writing the questionnaire, and ask what definition they are likely using. For example, your therapist doesn't care if you had a random intrusive thought thirty years ago, they care if you presently have actual designs of self-harm. Likewise, in the OP, the person interpreting the security clearance doesn't care if you were accidentally caught up in a silly witch hunt when you were 12.
Practice empathy. Guess at others' intent in order to do your best to give others the information that they want. But then insist that they use plain English in the future and that doing otherwise is wrong.
This pretty well sums up my experience of the HN comments section.
In this case, however, it wasn't semantic. My ex and I were on the same page as to how we were using "think". She was claiming that by our shared definition of think, most people didn't, and we did.
The effect is similar to the statement, "don't think of a blue elephant" - it's pretty hard to not immediately think of some kind of a blue elephant (Dumbo the Disney character? A wild African elephant that got blue mud all over it? A painted elephant in a Indian potentate's parade? Etc.)
Psychologists use the term 'ideation' to distinguish between merely thinking about a topic, versus obsessing over a topic, making plans related to a topic, and so on.
Someone once asked him “Would you ever consider putting any other siding on your house besides brick?”
His answer: “I’d consider it. And then I’d brick it.”
Worst case: falling over and killing people in an earthquake (happened especially with many commercial properties in my hometown, Christchurch, in 2011 earthquake).
Even with very minor damage you end up with fine mortar cracks so sealing fails, and wind blows water through cracks. Nobody fixes cracks properly so the problem is hidden by the repointing and painting over, and also cracks reopen on minor aftershocks years later.
I like bricks, but I would avoid them in say California.
Congratulations, you will only hire liars. Which I think describes 90% of hiring these days.
One piece of advice my mom gave me which I always follow is: don't tell them (a company/job/boss) anything that could be used against you. There's no need to be truthful here, this isn't a consultation with your doctor. So lie, tell them you're healthy, you never had any problems with anyone ever, never admit to anything. Truth is for your doctor or your therapist (and your mom!).
(There's also a fun related video that sometimes makes the rounds, "never talk to cops" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE). I suppose it's specific to US law, but I find it interesting nonetheless).
The other piece of advice is trickier, and I personally do not follow it too closely (everything in life is circumstantial:). Two aspects to mention:
1. Often, a lie is more harmful than a slightly harmful truth. And opportunities to get caught in a lie start with the application process - some applications have multiple seemingly unrelated or different questions that aim to reinforce the validity of your claims; this will also sometimes be reinforced with interviews, reference checks, etc. And then if you get the job or grant or whatever, there's still the risk of getting caught at virtually any point in the future.
My wife and a few of her friends have been HR managers at quite varied corporations, and universally they lament that people get fired over an insignificant lie. What they lied about might've been a verbal "Hey don't do that" or a formal reprimand, but lie got them immediately fired.
2. Variation of that but, perfection and/or fakeness can stand out. Not to say there aren't people who can lie/fake perfectly, and sometimes many of us think that we can pull it off better than we can. But while I cannot claim that I have never fibbed or concealed in my life, last few decades I've been lucky enough that I didn't need to.
And luck is an important word; I've been lucky professionally since I came to Canada, which enabled me to have good success going counter to that advice: e.g. to every new manager, I proactively indicate explicitly that I "Attended university but have not graduated", I came extremely upfront when I started photography business even though it had nothing to do with my IT dayjob, etc. I find one's experience at large companies is partially shaped by formal policies written by people far away from you, but also hugely by the actual people surrounding you, and I've been lucky / chosen well over the years. Milleage most definitely WILL vary, and I've been in sufficiently different / more precarious or dangerous situations to be fairly aware of my current privilege.
Then for you especially, but really for everyone -- don't talk to the cop without a lawyer. Just don't. (at least if you are in the USA).
For all the reasons you mention. Lying to the cops can be committing a crime in itself. Trying to think it through and figure out exactly how much of the truth to tell in what way -- can either leave you accidentally committing the crime of lying to the cop, OR accidentally incriminating yourself (even if you don't think you've done anything wrong). The cops have way more training and practice and experience at this interaction than you, you will not outsmart them.
In the USA (and probably other places, but I know the USA), you have the right to not talk to the cops without a lawyer, and you should exercize it, even if you think you've done nothing wrong. (Plenty of people who think they've done nothing wrong end up screwed by the cops).
I'll repost it here for emphasis. I'm sure this applies mostly to the US, and also that the attorney is overstating his case a bit for comedic effect, but I'm also convinced that what he's saying is mostly right (at least, for the US legal system).
Again, for emphasis: he recommends that even innocent people never talk to cops!
I am good friends with police officers and firmly believe that _most_ of them are good people trying to do good work.
But the most succinct way to put it is: if you are an innocent person, you simply have nothing to gain by talking to the cops without a lawyer. And potentially everything to lose if they choose to pin something on you somehow.
I think it is wrong to overgeneralize.
What if the cops ask you about a missing kid, where you are innocent and actually might have information to get that kid back alive, because you happened to see the number plate from a black van speeding off at time X?
If the cops ask you about a missing kid, you don't know that you are not a suspect. You cannot know, actually. If you are a suspect -- regardless of your innocence -- and you talk to the cops without a lawyer, you may implicate yourself in some way. Yes, innocence doesn't matter one iota. Having factual evidence about the kidnapping could conceivably implicate you faster. Recollecting what you thought happened and making an honest mistake can potentially implicate you. The video goes into examples of this.
Really, watch the video.
So maybe let me refine my question, what if it is your neighbors child, you know closely or even your own child. You still would not talk to the cops, out of the fear that they wrongly suspect you and have a dead child on your consciousness?
I mean, I am not from the US, but if your police is really that bad, I think you gotta change something.
And I watched that video (some years ago) and if I remember it right, in his example the person that stupidly talked to the cops, was actually guilty.
This attorney seems to think the Fifth is enough, but people don't know they can use it. He doesn't think all cops are bad, where did you get this idea?
> So maybe let me refine my question, what if it is your neighbors child, you know closely or even your own child. You still would not talk to the cops, out of the fear that they wrongly suspect you and have a dead child on your consciousness?
Yes, that's the advice. You shouldn't talk to the cops without a lawyer even in this case, lest you end up implicated in a crime. If you want to talk, lawyer up! (Note: if the missing kid is your neighbor's, you can bet your ass you are a suspect and should definitely lawyer up. People the victim knew are suspects! If the missing kid is your own, you have more pressing concerns than being careful and will probably ignore this advice; know that you are definitely a suspect).
By the way, in my country you can give information about missing children through a hotline (unrelated to the police), no need to go talk to cops. Not sure how it works in the US.
> And I watched that video (some years ago) and if I remember it right, in his example the person that stupidly talked to the cops, was actually guilty.
You misremember. Most of the examples he gives are of innocent people (or of not obviously guilty people). He claims the people who are more at risk when talking to the cops are innocent people. In a followup video he mentions the Innocence Project and that his primary motivation is preventing a lot of wrongful convictions in the US.
In this case, the cops suspected the father. After they found the body of the daughter, which had drowned, they didn't tell the father (because he was a suspect but they didn't want to be forced to read him his rights) and claimed to be still looking for her in order to continue incriminating her father, who thought he was aiding the investigation but was actually being interrogated as the prime suspect. His mistake: volunteering to talk to the cops without a lawyer.
Watch it here, I've picked the right timestamp for you: https://youtu.be/-FENubmZGj8?t=1202
By volunteering to talk to the police, you may also end up providing information that -- according to the cops -- "only the killer could have known". Oops! Even worse, if the interview wasn't taped (and in some cases, even if it was!) the cops can claim, either mistakenly or on purpose, that you provided self-incriminating evidence even if you didn't. Duane provides examples of how, even if your answers are taped but the cops' questions aren't, seemingly innocent answers can get you in trouble. Example: "I swear I've never touched a gun in my life" (cops: "we didn't mention the murder weapon, how did he know it was a gun? We didn't ask this. Suspicious!").
"because you happened to see the number plate from a black van speeding off at time X? "
Assuming the kid is still alive and was in that van (which you do not know) - but by providing that info to the cops, they could track down the adress of the kidnappers and save that child.
I see no downside with providing that information. Only lots of downsides of not providing it.
But like I said, if the assumption is (like Duane apparently has), that cops are always bad, corrupt and the enemy, well, then this is the problem to deal with.
And about that poor father:
"but was actually being interrogated as the prime suspect. His mistake: volunteering to talk to the cops without a lawyer."
He didn't ended up in jail, right? He was just wrongfully accused and interrogated in a very wrong way adding to his misery. That chance wouldn't stop me from cooperating with the police, if there is a chance to save someone.
One thing that most people don't understand is that cops are 1. regular people 2. with a job; and most people misunderstand what that job is.
In criminal cases like this, a lot of their job is "gather evidence that can be used to prosecute". They will approach it with certain amount of professionalism, jadedness, focus, empathy, skill, awareness etc based on how much of it they started with and how much of it has worn off in this harsh harsh profession. On the other hand, from young age, we are taught their job is "to protect you", which we tend to subconsciously personalize and interpret as "protect me" and therefore "are implicitly on my side".
Two of my close friends are cops, for one I photographed their wedding, and... stories are fascinating and completely not what the naive child in me would expected. My friends are good people trying to do a good job. We are just brought up with a misapprehension as to what that job is.
In your scenario, there are definitely downsides to providing this information by talking to cops: you can get implicated and even convicted of the crime, and the actual criminal be left alone. At any time during your conversation with the cops, they may decide you know too much (or know details only the kidnapper would know), or find some turn of phrase suspicious, and turn you into the primary suspect. Remember Duane's claim that many cops believe "9 out of 10 times, the caller is the one who committed the crime". This applies here, too.
The downside is pretty big: not only could you be in legal trouble -- even convicted -- but the actual criminal could get away. This is not hypothetical, since Duane mentions cases where this happened! (E.g. the man wrongfully convicted of killing his wife; or the man wrongfully convicted of killing a local shopkeeper after volunteering to help the police find the killer, out of a sense of civic duty).
If at all possible in your country, I would advise you to report this information to a missing children hotline unaffiliated with the police, instead of speaking to the cops without a lawyer.
> But like I said, if the assumption is (like Duane apparently has), that cops are always bad, corrupt and the enemy, well, then this is the problem to deal with.
This is not at all what Duane claims. Respectfully, I must ask you to refresh your memory of the video. I also recommend the follow up video which I linked to, where he explains his motivation (i.e. decreasing the appalling number of wrongful convictions in the US).
> He didn't ended up in jail, right? He was just wrongfully accused and interrogated in a very wrong way adding to his misery. That chance wouldn't stop me from cooperating with the police, if there is a chance to save someone.
We don't know whether he ended in jail or not, Duane doesn't say. We only know he got in real trouble, and this after the cops knew his daughter was dead, so at that point there was no possible way to "save" anyone. He does mention at least two cases where an innocent ended up in jail, one of them for 20+ years, while the assassin of his wife got away. His mistake? He spoke to the police, volunteering information, and without a lawyer present.
It's of course your choice to risk it and speak to the police without a lawyer. In the US, it's a risky, unwise choice -- one cops wouldn't take themselves, for example -- but it's your choice. A choice your attorney would strongly urge you not to take, but that you're entitled to take anyway.
Or you can be responsible for the death of a child. With kidnapping and possible sex crimes, it can be a matter of minutes between life and death. And if I have seen something and can pass that information directly to the officer investigating the case, then I will do it, instead of taking hours preparing my legal defenses risking it all.
"It's of course your choice to risk it and speak to the police without a lawyer."
And I did talk to the police without a lawyer in a couple of situations. As a wittness and also as accused (actually a bit like Duane describes, meaning they did not tell me that, asking me only wittness questions, but I knew).
"This is not at all what Duane claims."
No it is not, but this is what his advice implies for me, if it means I should not help finding a missing child without contacting a lawyer first.
I know that people have been wrongfully thrown in jail and worse. But overgeneralisation is never helpful. So yes, if there is time (and money!), a lawyer is helpful, but lawyers can make misstakes too and if it is a matter of life and death and minutes, I take those chances to potentially save someone and I would be surprised, if you wouldn't, if you come into such a situation in reality.
This is unrelated to whether you speak to the police. In fact, you can be indirectly responsible of a death because you speak to the police, making them narrow down their investigations on you ("9 out of 10 times, the caller is the one who did it"), wasting time and letting the criminal go unimpeded for enough time to kill someone. Duane provides examples of this, which for some reason you insist on disregarding.
If you want to help, I'd say call a non-police missing children hotline instead, if those exist in your country.
> And if I have seen something and can pass that information directly to the officer investigating the case, then I will do it, instead of taking hours preparing my legal defenses risking it all.
You're risking spending 20 years in jail or even death row, then (not hyperbole: watch Duane's video). You don't need to spend hours preparing anything, just call a lawyer.
> And I did talk to the police without a lawyer in a couple of situations.
By your own admission, you don't live in the US. While I'd really hesitate to involve the police even in my country (where they are truly corrupt and dangerous), Duane's advice is specific to the US. It doesn't necessarily translate to other countries.
> But overgeneralisation is never helpful.
In this case, it seems that it's the truth rather than "overgeneralization" (Duane mocks these warnings "not to generalize" in his video, to great effect! "But what if I'm about to fall from a cliff and the only person who can help is a cop, should I talk to them?"). This lawyer speaks from experience and is an expert on the Fifth Amendment; you are not. Cops agree with him and follow his advice. He has plenty of evidence to back his advice.
Ignore him at your own peril. You're free to do so, but it's unwise.
Which generation do you belong to, out of curiosity?
Even then, depending on your demographic, being honest about things like pain might get you labelled as a drug seeker.
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 the same word is used in other contexts.
I gave it to my attorney and she read over it and handed it back to me. "You already have an attorney. My letter will read like an attorney wrote it. Yours should instead look like a human wrote it."
The _obvious_ answer to this question, if you want a job, is "no". Anyone that answers "yes" is a liability, regardless of their actual intention to steal.
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 drunk", even if it is indeed your biggest challenge, and one that you work hard to successfully overcome every day.
Another commenter refers to this as "walking the corporate walk" but I think it's more "having an understanding of context and appropriate levels of sharing" and it applies at all times in life.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-negotiate-around-the-...
(who would have thought it is so difficult to beep out words in HN, I had to escape each *)
That's kinda why I always say "the fuck word" instead of "the eff word". I've had too many interactions where somebody felt comfortable correcting my word choice for me to be polite about it. ("Fuckin' heck!" is pretty fun too; people just don't know how to respond.)
For instance the word "merde" ("shit"). When you say "ET. MERDE." clearly breaking the words apart and emphasizing them - everyone will think "something definitely bad happened" but nobody would be offended. This is only one of the zillion examples.
Now, there is a very, very fine line between being "appropriately, cleverly vulgar" and "vulgar". You do not want to be the latter.
You can say a whole daisy chain and still be fine: "oh putain de merde, quel enfoiré de Word, ma thèse sur Paul Sartre a disparu" ("fucking shitty bastard of Word, my PhD thesis about Paul Sartre has just vanished").
When I go to the US, I always forget to switch on the puritanian-s**t-filter and people look at me really sternly. I even had one older lady coming to my table where I was seated with my teenager boys when she somehow head the word "merde" (as in "et. merde." when I broke something) to tell me that the children should not hear such words.
To me this sounds like an invitation to unload my worries.
They didn't actually use Kool-aid in the Jonestown massacre, people just think they did.
I can not see how this paradigm could end well.
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time
And then if someone is on the spectrum, and they already know that they have trouble reading those wink-wink-nudge-nudge clues properly, they might stick with the rules as written simply because that's something objective that they can be sure they're interpreting correctly.
Plus when screening many applicants with few differentiators, this might be an easy question to reject on.
You're thinking in terms of grey while they're testing to ensure that you have at least a basic understanding of black and white.
If not, what you're describing sounds like "theft ideation," which I'm sure employers wouldn't be thrilled about but wouldn't warrant a question on the application.
now, any of my ex's can agree, i'm the worst liar in the world and if that test thought i was being honest, there's definitely something busted with it.
My experience with the same sort of personality tests that you've described is somewhat similar. When trying to get hired (I was desperate for anything at that time) at WalMart, the personality tests seemed to ask 3 basic questions - but about 20 different ways to approach each question - (a) do you get into fights at work? (b) do you steal? and (c) do you care if your boss steals?
0: - https://www.amazon.com/Punching-Frontlines-New-Brand-Cultu-e...
Almost certainly HR and your therapist were not interested in every infinite possible though you may have ever had, but whether it was something you seriously considered or planned and may have even made intent towards actually completing.
> but I genuinely don't understand people who have "never considered" it - how do you block & limit your mind? 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?).
Having an intrusive though pop into my head ("You could totally just jump in front of the train!") is not the same as actually considering the steps towards actually planning suicide. I have had intrusive thoughts, but I would say I've never "considered" suicide.
It is ok to get into fights during your break as long as you aren't at the store
It is ok to take office supplies home if they aren't valued more than $10
It is ok to not clock out for a smoke break if it is less than five minutes long
Apparently, there were people who failed the test.
The other part of the test is that it is on record. So when someone does get into a fight during their break the GM can pull the test out and say "see, you knew this."
I don't think people block their minds. I think they just lie on forms more. I also sometimes struggle with which lies are expected.
I absolutely do not mean this as an insult and I a honestly curious, but could you be chance be on the autism spectrum? I know I am, but not so much that I don't know that you must lie to that question. Though I did have to learn the hard way that you should not tell romantic partners that you wish your loud neighbors would die, because it would objectively improve your life. Or like when we learned about illegal slash-and-burn agriculture destroying the rain forests and hurting the global climate and I asked my teacher why the government wouldn't just shoot the farmers, to his intense horror and revulsion.
> but I genuinely don't understand people who have "never considered" it - how do you block & limit your mind?
I fully agree and think the same way, but neurotypical people generally scare away from thought experiments that make them uncomfortable because of their, as you said, mental fences.
First of all, absolutely hilarious - second of all, pretty intrigued by the old-school, brute-force method that actually ended up working.
[1] - https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/white-sedan-police-found...
I'm not a criminologist but I think they might have classified the glasses and the glasses case and maybe found enough evidence indicating that the glasses have been made in the U.S. or maybe even in San Diego.
Even if they didn't, then it's still their job to do exactly what they did and they were successful. They found the real owner of the glasses and were able to confirm, that the person isn't a potentially dangerous enemy spy. That case can be closed and they can do something else.
I later realized that they don't expect any one to answer these truthfully, however if in future you are caught doing (Edit: or having previously done) any of these things the "lied on Visa application" is grounds for an instant revocation of the Visa without all the other possible complications.
This must be an awkward question for Iraq War veterans.
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.
Afterwards at the pharmacy, it turns out my prescription included a box of antihistamine.
Obscure allergic reaction and obscure disease often look the same. You treat them opposite. The former, you want to suppress the immune system, and the latter, you don't. In obscure circumstances (e.g. a doctor is debugging a serious rash after a surgery while you're unconscious and on an IV), those sorts of tidbits can be important.
Those conversations don't seem tomatter much, because when getting common small procedures done (such as mole removal) the doctor will use whatever they prefer. Epinephrine is a vascoconstrictor, so it helps with bleeding and keeps the anesthesia (eg: lidocaine) from wearing off as quickly. So, doctor's prefer it. So each time I have to ask the doctor if that's the variant they are using, and if they could do without. Sometimes they do, sometimes they explain why it's best not to and we go ahead with.
I know I could outright say allergy and they wouldn't use it, but I really don't want to cut off a useful tool for them, for no good reason other than I don't like a minor, short-lasting side effect.
You don't discuss about your actual medical condition and he doesn't tell you why he prescribe each drug and for which purpose?
Were they thinking, "The patient might find these handy if they have pollen allergies but never really thought to do anything about it"?
Or, were they thinking, "The patient doesn't seem to know if they're allergic to this prescription I'm giving them, so I'll give them an antihistamine to go along with it just in case."
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 get angry at them for trying to sneak this medical equipment through customs without declaring it.
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 upfront. It’s almost as if they like yelling more than consistently following rules.
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.
That part of my life is behind me so now I get the next fun challenge: Which passport to use when going up to Canada and back as a dual citizen.
To enter and leave the US, you're supposed to use a US passport and not a Canadian one. To enter Canada, it's smoothest and fastest to use your Canadian passport, but they do have an exception for US-Canadian dual citizens that allow you to use a US passport.
If you use a US passport and claim to be a Canadian citizen at a CBSA checkpoint, they might send you to immigration screening to verify your claim, especially if you don't also show some evidence of citizenship like your citizenship certificate. If you use a US passport and claim to be a Canadian citizen to a commercial transportation company like an airline on the way into Canada, they're advised to do "due diligence", but there is no specific set of documentation required. The citizenship certificate would probably satisfy them, and in practice many times maybe the US passport by itself too.
This might literally kill her.
I know this is pedantic, but that's exactly what I would expect from a security clearance vetting process.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for a special vetting process to have stricter standards.
Edit: it's a story from 1988, so at the time it was only 45 years ago.
If the FBI investigates a spy seen driving a silver Honda Civic with license plate ABC-1234, and looks into an unrelated civilian who drives a silver Honda Civic with license plate ADC-1234 in case their witness misremembered the license place, that doesn't mean the unrelated civilian was "investigated by the FBI".
I'd say determining that is exactly the point of an investigation. That fact that it ended well doesn't change the fact that the process happened, and was triggered by said person.
In this specific case, the security officer made the correct decision in having him leave out this detail from the clearance form. Makes for a good story, though.
To me, these are the same, so I guess that's probably just my layman's view then.
After they found and identified who created it, the investigation was dropped before they investigated any particular person.
'course, with the general urge to be "tough on crime" and the inevitable occasional horror-story of truly heinous behavior discovered many decades later there probably isn't a lot of political will to support reasonable statutes of limitations, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of this stuff never expires.
Two, I had a similar (much less impactful) experience as a high school freshman donating blood for the first time. One of the questions on the health questionnaire was "have you ever had headaches?" I remember being confused at the wording as I checked yes because surely everyone has had a headache at some point in their life. The (astonishingly rude) person reviewing the paperwork got to that question, stared at me for a few seconds then just said "well?" After a brief back and forth she taps the question a 4-5 times. "What's this?" "I've had headaches before." She sighed and said "that's not what it means! go get in line"
OP is just being colloquial. But you are correct that there is a difference between sex at birth and gender and the medical system does handle that.
Nobody cares if it's correct or not until your health is in the line.
If I was suicidal but under treatment for it, I wasn’t suicidal for the purposes of the form.
Apparently I triggered some mandatory reporting law abd made a headache for everyone involved.
Oops.
Thankfully nurses know that well, check it instantly and ask to actually read the form. Blood donations are usually fun.
Did he ever write about what that trick is?
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")
The euphenism treadmill is strong over here as well.
fransje26 meant this as a joke, but the term has been used unironically to refer to East-Europeans (and the situation in the States regarding the non-existance of a functional social safety net would render them relatively similar in this case).
Other poster posted the same link but is getting downvoted so might get overlooked.
> He also remarked that they had asked him if he knew me socially and that he had answered "Yes, we just celebrated Guy Fawkes Day together". When the investigator wanted to know "What is Guy Fawkes Day?" he started to explain the gunpowder plot but thought better of it. He settled for the explanation that "It's a British holiday".
(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
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/virginia-...
[2] https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/couples-sue-over-vi...
There's so much Seeing Like A State in the punchcard incident as well. Having invented the categories, you must be made to fit them. These days plenty of people will say "well, of course he's right, you can't jam everyone into racial/ethnicity categories, and you shouldn't" then turn around and code gender as an immutable M/F binary in their database.
I wonder if the author got his answer through modern DNA ancestry.
Plenty of people from that era are still alive, like Elizabeth Eckford against whom the Arkansas National Guard was deployed to prevent her from going to school.
Hatred against miscegenation was so high that there was an entire legal structure to prevent ""mongrels"" from existing, so somebody writing that on their form is going to cause conniptions.
I laughed so hard.
Moral: give the agent an easy problem to find, but one with a simple solution in your favor. They will never look for a 2nd problem.
I check yes because I have a half eaten chocolate bar in my backpack.
They ask what I have and I tell them, and immediately send me on my way, it’s great.
My entire family are outside the US. A big chunk of the people I interact with are friends who also moved down to the states and are not citizens yet. I probably interact with non-citizens daily more than citizens. It would be practically impossible for me to detail everyone I ever interacted with 10 years ago while I was at a Canadian school getting my degree.
The whole thing is so absurd for anyone who has ever been outside of the US even once.
Gotta know this piece!
Is this person still alive to tell the other story?
Search for "Finger flex" / "e-t-a-o-i-n Spy", "Kick the Mongrel" / "White Faces in New Places", and "The Missed Punch" / "Mongrel in a Star-chamber" for the the F.B.I. and security clearance entries.
As one might imagine from these stories, he's quite a character, and still alive at 92 (according to Stanford and Wikipedia).
> Now with 55 years hindsight I realize that both our study group and the government nuclear safety committee overlooked other possibilities such as that a malevolent programmer might have been able to launch a missile all by himself. There was no certainty that such a scheme would have worked inasmuch as the SAGE software was reviewed by multiple people who might have questioned any odd-looking code. Nevertheless, we should have considered that possibility and taken steps to ensure that it didn’t happen. The reason we didn’t was that there was no such thing as a malevolent programmer in that era (1950s and ‘60s) – we were all honest, upright, and altruistic, so the idea that a programmer might sneak in evil code was inconceivable. Later experiences on the Internet have revealed other possibilities.
IIRC, Bertrand Russell had an observation about Western philosophers on a related question: they had a blind spot, in that they extrapolated too much from themselves, who weren't representative of everyone.
He asked where, and informed them they were all presumed to have died in WWII. They informed him one of his cousins was a near counterpart on the other side and provided a village name. Then they asked “would you talk to your parents and tell them to tell the neighbors it’s ok to talk to the G-Men”.
The FBI had apparently been going thru his tiny upstate hometown and scaring all the Polish/Czech/Slovak/Latvian/etc emigre neighbors who spoke little English.
Of course he didn’t tell them his sister wrote a letter to that village, re-established contact and then she, her husband and pre-teens (who only spoke English) flew over to Europe and took a train to visit. Thankfully everyone on the train distracted the security officials whenever they got near the kids.
Yeah, that did _not_ get approved.
Have you done any of the things in the past 10 years if Top Secret, 5 if Secret (keeping in mind you might have to go TS before you've worked there 5 years)? Don't apply for a clearance, because they will find out eventually.
If you apply then, be honest and fully truthful, and disclose everything. They are looking for signs of bad current judgement and things you are trying to hide that could be used to blackmail you.
Also, "Have you considered X?" should be taken to mean 'Has you given more than a passing thought to X?'. If you had a relative die and thought 'I wonder why people commit suicide' that's one thing. If you thought 'Maybe I should kill myself', that is suicidal thought, even for a moment. Doesn't mean you're likely to do it. Does mean you should probably seek professional therapy to help you cope with your situation (doesn't mean you have a long time thing, just means at this moment you need some help coming up with coping mechanisms that work well enough).
Unfortunately that was a big red flag for the investigators, and they interviewed 5-6 of my college friends asking about my behavior and whether or not I had a drinking problem. Very silly if you ask me but fortunately didn't seem to delay the process much.
> the most frequently occurring letters in typical English text are e-t-a-o-n-r-i, in that order. (The letter frequency order of the story you are now reading is e-t-a-i-o-n-r. The higher frequency of ``i'' probably reflects the fact that _I_ use the first person singular a lot.)
Wait, I thought the letter frequency was Etaoin Shrdlu
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_frequency
Interestingly, that Wikipedia article references the same "Secret & Urgent" book by Fletcher Pratt, but only for the Spanish letter frequency!
Also, though the header table confirms my memory, it cites a now defunct algoritmy.net website, and the per-language table below has a "citation needed" for english! The archived algoritmy.net website also doesn't mention what corpus it used!
glancing over at the idiot boy sitting next to me, who had been somewhat annoying me during the flight, i noticed that he had checked "yes" to all of them. i had a moments pleasure thinking what would happen to him once he got to immigration, but being basically a nice person, i suggested he got a new form from the cabin crew.
> 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...
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
Those are widely different questions. These people were affirmatively not war criminals nor wanted by Nuremberg. And they were not equivalent of islamic terrorists either - the equivalent of that would be membership in stasi or so.
This would be analogical to "was you muslim" or "did you had membership in Mosque".
And it does not make them war criminals either, you need to engage in war for that in the first place. It does not make them wanted by Nuremberg either, because Nuremberg never asked for them.
As late as 2018, they were asking about communist party membership [2]
[1] https://www.nnuimmigration.com/esta-questions/
[2] https://papersplease.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/DS-01...
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040708201659/http://immihelp.c...
I believe (I could be wrong) certain organizations in China basically only hire members of the communist party, so some people became a member of CCP due to their employment.
> This electronic communication has been processed by the United
> States National Security Agency.
Once upon a time, out of mechanical sympathy, it used to be popular to add keywords (eg. ДНР ЛНР SSBN-731 龍坡海軍基地 etc.) in .sig files, to give the descendants of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_7950_Harvest#Usage something to report.
(and back when I was tangentially involved with impedance matching crunch with high-capacity/high-bandwidth datastores, I wondered how "dual use" nominally civilian scientific programs like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Earth_Science might be.)
An acquaintance of mine (from East-Germany) had a US boyfriend who started to work for Lockheed - in the interview he was asked "Why doesn't your Eat-German girlfriend answer her phone?". She said she got some calls from an unknown number and didn't pick up.
Edit: I meant Eastern Germany, after unification (but her parents lived in East-Germany, i.e. the GDR) my bad.
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.)
What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 - June 2010 (98 comments)
* Stalked and gaslighted US citizen on US soil, using said SIGINT.
* Threatened US citizen on US soil with murder to deter investigation into previous federal crimes.
* Threatened to ruin US citizen as retaliation for not staying silent about above incidents
* Stalk and harass US citizen on US soil in public
etc
Clearance Holders
Wait, I want to hear THIS! (not interested in the security clearance, and not even a US person for that matter; just super curious!)
His hijinks remind me of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, which I happen to be re-reading right now.
ok, now I want to binge-read the second story!
Talk about burying the lede!
Charming story nonetheless.
Forms also lack any nuance, so mild funny things appear to be "serious transgressions worthy of the state apparatus".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 (99 comments)
* successfully gaslighted target during the death of a parent using hacked iMessages