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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

Even being charged without conviction can result in a serious reduction in job opportunities.

Is that accurate? Being charged with a crime but then having charges subsequently dropped shouldn't show up in a background check. Plus, given their line of work, I think in their profession it would basically be a badge of honor.

It does show up in background checks unfortunately, and it is considered.

You'd have to get it expunged for it to not show up. Even then, it will still show up for security clearances and such.

Can confirm. I needed a security clearance for government contracting work when I was in my mid-30s. The background check flagged a dismissed charge from when I was a teenager.

Yes it absolutely matters. My brother was charged with three felonies in his only arrest, all of them dropped.

It shows up in his background report and no company has cared (or taken the time to notice) that they are dropped charges and not convictions.

He's basically treated like a felon and effectively got bumped out of his career.

Also, I've seen many job applications that ask a question like: "Have you ever been arrested for a crime, regardless of the outcome?" Presumably mere involvement with law enforcement (even if acquitted or charges dropped) is some kind of signal in these guys' risk formulas.

This can happen just being under investigation. Or worse, no arrest, conviction or investigation. Just word of mouth kind of stuff can do it.

Employers also have a convenient privilege to maintain these narratives about a former employee. This is employer to employer confidentiality where they can say almost anything about you to another potential employer and you never have the chance to hear it or correct it.

Everyone should support the ability of even a person with a conviction to continue working and contributing to society. It's kind of a civil death that leads to bad outcomes for those targeted.

>Everyone should support the ability of even a person with a conviction to continue working and contributing to society. It's kind of a civil death that leads to bad outcomes for those targeted.

And not just those targeted either. The communities where those people live are deprived of the higher economic activity of someone with a middle/upper-middle-class income/lifestyle than someone who can only get a job mopping floors or washing cars.

That has a definite downward drag on the economic health of the communities where folks aren't given the opportunity to contribute because of past transgressions or, as we're discussing here, unwarranted criminal charges and investigations.

It's not just sad, it's a disgusting waste of human potential. More's the pity.

How fortunate to not live in China with its dystopian "social credit" system!

It’s an absolute pain if you ever need to apply for a security clearance, or a visa for a foreign country.

Probably not in this case though.

It's hard to say if they would be able to gain security clearances in the future. Not to mention automated application systems will drop them from the system immediately with a prior arrest.

One of them went on to start their own physical pentest firm. I think they're doing fine. I also think if they'd lost clearances, or ran into later clearance problems, that would have made it into their complaint. I don't know, maybe you're right. It's not like I disagree with them about suing.

I mean it was fine for these guys because they got huge press and happen to be in an industry that can handle this. They've got experience, current employment, industry contacts, and there's really barely a functional college curriculum, or certification track for this. You #1 need to be trusted to break in since you know, they teach each other how to break into high-security facilities.

I really just wanna point out that getting contracts for government administrative building is already like, way in and near the top of the game, this could have set them back 9 months or none at all, still, someone has to be held accountable when there is an obvious miscarriage like this.

I mean they called their boss! They had a special letter! Why didn't shitty sheriff just like demand that the security chief come out and make some calls? 600k sounds fair I suppose but 6 years sure doesn't when its an elected official!

Civil litigation takes for-ev-er.

THIS should be illegal. If you are arrested and have all charges dropped, you should not show up on any database whatsoever, nor be required to answer “yes” to “gave you been arrested.”

The SF86 has a 7-year lookback on arrests. Clearance is fundamentally discretionary, though; it's a risk assessment. I don't think you have even a due process right to it.

I say all this but --- knowing that the principals in this story might read this thread and drop in and correct me, which would be awesome --- I think it's actually more likely that their careers benefited from this news story, and that they probably didn't lose any cleared business from it. I can't say enough that these two became industry celebrities over this case.

> Clearance is fundamentally discretionary, though; it's a risk assessment. I don't think you have even a due process right to it.

Security clearance is subject to due process protections (at least, insofar as it is a component of government hiring and continuation of employment), because government employment is subject to due process protections and the courts have not allowed security clearance requirements to be an end-run around that.

Are you sure about this? I looked into it, but only for about 45 seconds, and there are cases like Navy v. Egan that basically say the opposite.

(I'm going to keep saying: this is just an abstract argument; I don't think there's any evidence these two pentesters had any clearance issues.)

Navy v. Egan (1988) acknowledges a due process protection but limits it to procedural due process, not review of the merits of the clearance determination (i.e., the due process protection does not extend to substantive due process.)

Subsequent cases (mostly at the Federal Circuit, I can’t find the Supreme Court getting involved much since) like Cheney v. DOJ (2007) and Cruz-Martinez v. DHS (2020) have developed what that requires.

For cases outside of government employment, though the decisions so far are only at the trial level, Perkins Coie LLC vs. DOJ (2025) and Zaid v. Executive Office of the President (2025) are worth checking out in this regard.

pretty sure the companies making money providing this service would bring a freedom of speech defense if you tried to get a law passed keeping the information from showing up in a search, and would win, despite the obvious idiocy of the result.

prior arrests mean nothing and most ATS won't flag you; you could be innocent and they let you go.

prior convictions are a different story.

in most cases our ATS won't even ask, instead it'll come up in a background check after you clear the first HR hurdles. even then arrests may not show up.

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