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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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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