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Comment by TrackerFF | Hacker News Reader

The fact is that even for (NATO) top secret security clearances, there are lots of people that lie through their teeth, and receive the clearance. Obviously on things that aren't in any records. The big ones being alcohol use, drug use, personal finances, foreign partners. Some are more forgiving than others, though.

The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.

Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.

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The US Military is currently led by a dysfunctional alcoholic totally unqualified DUI hire.

Oh, you mean the guy that benched 315 lb the other day? The guy who’s led the US military flawlessly through several major operations over the last year?

Check your news sources…

> I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot

When? In the 90s? Biggest pothead I know has had a clearance since '05. For my own form, I straight up admitted I had done it and did not regret it.

It was always explained to me as a mix between, 'are you going to fuck things up by being in an altered state' and 'is someone going to blackmail you to make you into a double agent?'

If your family and wife know you sometimes sleep with men, that's not necessarily a problem. If nobody knows, that's a problem. Similarly if your wife and boss don't know you owe $50,000 to a bookie or your coke dealer, that's a liability.

Actually would be sort of interesting if your boss did know you owed a bookie $50k and they found a way to use that to make you into a triple agent...

>It was always explained to me as a mix between, 'are you going to fuck things up by being in an altered state' and 'is someone going to blackmail you to make you into a double agent?'

You are missing the foremost consideration - how critical/specialised/irreplacable is this person in their role and can we just ignore the positive test instead.

If you are good enough at what you do and management like you positive tests dont seem to matter if you make the right noises about it being a one off, retesting clean etc.

> Actually would be sort of interesting if your boss did know you owed a bookie $50k and they found a way to use that to make you into a triple agent...

Welcome to counterintelligence you'll like it here

I was chatting with an old classmate at a homecoming a few months ago, and he mentioned that, during the polygraph top get Canadian Top Secret clearance for a co-op job, he had to say how many drinks he had each week. Being a university student, it got brushed aside, but the answer was considered to be alcoholism-level.

In a weird way, that's almost a positive sign, if you view the security-clearance process as mostly being about quickly clearing away secrets that could be used for blackmail down the line, when the person has more authority and more to lose.

P.S.: Further musing: There's a system-design tension between granting access to people that are "perfect" versus "flawed in ways we are aware of and can manage." Where a process ought to land on that spectrum depends on certain assumptions about baseline applicant quality, an estimate of the organization's accuracy at [false/true] [negatives/positives], and the impacts.

If you auto-reject the people who admit to something sub-criminal like cheating on their spouse, that means no applicant will ever admit to it, so you'll end up with more people hid it. In the long run, that means a higher proportion of employees who have something an adversary can use for blackmail, and the blackmail is more-effective because the repercussions are large.

You can get co-op/internship that requires a Top Secret clearance?

There are co-operatives in manufacturing which would need their staff to be security-cleared in order to win government contacts (such as assembling weapons). Perhaps this is what parent is referring to. Co-ops aren't just for groceries :)

In the Canadian university lingo, co-op refers to a (usually paid) internship that you complete as part of your degree. You usually have a couple co-op terms/semesters along with your traditional terms. For example, you may start your degree with two semesters of classes, then a semester of co-op, then one of classes, then another two co-ops, more classes, etc. until you complete the degree requirements. Degrees with a co-op requirement usually will make mention of it (e.g. Software Engineering with co-op).

Oh, that's really interesting. We have them in the UK too, but they're called placements rather than co-ops.

Yep. I worked on the control system for the Virginia class attack sub-marines for my co-op. Also got to ride around in a Seawolf class submarine.

That's pretty cool. I'm guessing you're American, not Canadian, right? I didn't realize American schools had co-ops; I thought they mostly/solely had internships.

> The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.

Well yeah. If it's not affecting your job then what's it matter? If your a closet alcoholic then sure that's something the Russians could hold over you.

There's millions of people with clearances; that's impossible to staff at below market wages and also above average moral(?) standards.

> If it's not affecting your job then what's it matter? If your a closet alcoholic then sure that's something the Russians could hold over you

Alcohol lowers inhibitions and alters decision making. Drinking a lot of alcohol more so than casual drinking. Frequently drinking a lot of alcohol has a very high area under the curve of poor decision making.

Functional alcoholism can come with delusions of sobriety where the person believes they’re not too drunk despite being heavily impaired.

So they’ll do things like have a few (or ten) drinks before checking their email. It makes them a better target for everything like fishing attacks, as one example.

It’s not just about enemies holding it against you.

Gross misunderstanding of the threat model.

Phishing is not the problem here. Your laptop isn’t getting SIPR emails with links to fake login screens.

Being drunk at the bar/club/social event and telling that very interested lady a bit too much is probably the better example

Still not as bad as being susceptible to blackmail or bribes

That is not correlated to Alcoholism. The “extremely hot spy” problem is essentially unsolved.

I got ads from the army about "extremely hot spy" over Valentines day weekend

I think you’re misunderstanding the threat model for why security clearance cares about impaired judgment of your off time, too. There’s more to these people’s lives than when they’re on the clock (figuratively speaking). Getting compromised anywhere is a problem.

I think you’re right. These are human systems always fighting the prior battle. Nowadays, it’s probably true that the threat from digital hygiene exceeds any intention to leak. The way that’s demonstrated is by the Secretary of Defense misusing Signal instead of being one level smarter and intuitively making the right messaging choice. The system is very much ready to build a preternaturally superimposing file on Pete Hegseth. But the system as a substitute for imagination is not elaborated to improve itself.

They don’t ask about any of that. If in a drunken blackout you find a USB drive on the subway and plug it in, the system is concerned about the blackout state and not the USB. It’s self preservation depends on telling the difference between incompetence and deception.

I will grant that if you experience frequent blackouts you will likely not get cleared.

And, within high-trust societies (eg Japan, Korea, Vietnam) getting wasted lubricates social bonds in the workplace. I've met successful functional alcoholics. Seriously, they actually function and make lots of money. They're also fun to be around as long as you're not working for them.

When gift buying for minimalist friends it's common to offer gifts of perishable items or experiences like tickets. So that a week from now the gift has been cleared from their domicile.

It also seems like a fairly smart way to do graft. If you're bribing someone and they drink up or smoke all the evidence then they can't prove how much or how often you bribed them. Which would make alcoholics a good target especially if you can get your hands on fancy liquor.

I doubt anyone in an official capacity is using such techniques, but I can tell you this is common in sales. A lot of people in management with control of budget have at least one of just a handful of human weaknesses.

The punchline is that automatic firing for 'vulnerabilities' itself creates the very blackmail vulnerabilities they are trying to avoid.

Smoking weed is openly committing a federal crime, and also potentially signalling a lot of other unsavory things such as being a scofflaw and being involved with other criminals, socially speaking, including at least one drug dealer. So, it makes sense that you should get scrutiny.

The US government uses data brokers and the banking industry to continuously monitor cleared people. Eventually they will find any problematic patterns of life.

The point is that they seem to worry more about being a weed user than being an alcoholic.

It is a federal crime to use cannabis. They've always been concerned about it.

That's the weird thing though. One is criminalized, the other isn't. The impact on job performance is unrelated to that though.

They're assessing truthfulness. You can be cleared with a history of moderate usage as long as you disclose it. They also flag alcoholics as a risk.

The Vietnam War and all the soldiers on drugs encouraged a very strict drug policy.

Makes complete sense. I've spent some time around Southeast Asia and met plenty of vets that discovered many psychoactive substances who also happen to be anti-war.

omg this was my experience. I figured there was no point lying officially, so I listed exactly how many times I smoked weed and took mdma. I was banished to the unclear side for my entire 3 years there. Meanwhile the head of IT was a raging alcoholic. I even wrote their very first J2EE webapp, which required me to be escorted to the cleared side anytime someone needed help with my code. I couldn't touch the keyboards! I was giving vi instructions verbally lol

> Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing hot, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.

I have to defer to you here since it sounds like my experience is more limited, but this is not my understanding at all. The agencies care a lot about financial indiscretions, as those applicants are most susceptible to compromise. And indeed, if you look at the lists of denials and appeals, you might think that money issues are the only reason anyone is ever denied.

Lying about having smoked weed is another story.

How do you really ever know if someone you hired for psyops is telling you the truth?

It gets weirder when they train you how to evade polygraphs as part of your role.. only to have you take one for your re investigation and to be asked "have you ever tried to evade a polygraph" or something along those lines. Of course you're not in a SCIF and your training or having been exposed to that training may in fact be classified. Quite the pickle..

I imagine that Intelligence has some of the same management problems that every other western company has and at some point management ends up mortgaging some of the trust and rapport they have built with their employees in order to Make the Numbers Go Up, at which point you challenge their motivations and you have no idea if they are quietly quitting or engaging in outright sabotage.

First job out of college, I spilled my guts on form 86, ~40 joints, ~10 ecstasy. Denied clearance the entire 3 years. This was 2002.

Were you sponsored by a company? I feel like there is a difference in diligence and expeditiousness when you have a sponsor that is familiar to the OMP/DoD.

And yeah, I said something like "I smoked a couple times in college but not anymore". This was about two years after college. I wonder if quantifying your joints raised a flag lol.

Are you saying weed should be punished less, or the others should be punished like weed?

I think they’re saying that there is an inconsistency, but they don’t suggest anything, leaving any conclusions to the reader.

It’s just “things aren’t right”, and not “here’s what we need to do…”

Yes and I am saying I am tired of those boring cop-out "analysis". Yes, having a social science degree, it was full of those. Make solutions instead. Anyone can """analyze""".

I'm not sure security clearance is really about punishing people.

You know exactly what I mean. Chased after, investigated?

Who are you replying to? When I click 'parent' on your post, the poster said nothing about his opinion on what should be done, only what he's seen.

Yes, and it is a very easy cop-out to say "oh I am just describing looolll". Solve problems instead. It is very easy to sit and just type.

I think I'm less confident that I know what you mean now than I was before.

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