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Comment by jjguy | Hacker News Reader

Cute, but unlikely to be Snowden's job.

* The KRSOC is about 35 minutes outside Honolulu, far enough to not be "Honolulu" http://goo.gl/maps/R2vYe

* The position clearance requirements are just SECRET, NSA roles require TS/SCI + full scope poly

* There are lots of BAH jobs in Honolulu at PACAF and PACOM, amongst others.

* Positions of Snowden's type don't require 50% travel, those are more consistent with the PACOM and PACAF roles where you're supporting units throughout the Pacific.

All that said, these kinds of positions are a great way to go live in Hawaii for a few years. If you're young, single and want to live the island life for a while, it's a easy path.

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This seems like an "evergreen" position - one they always have live and collect the resumes from, calling candidates whenever they actually have a need.

I feel like having a position with security clearances and all of that good stuff may preclude a young and single person from doing many things he or she might like to do.

as per usual, golden handcuffs.

Nope. Every military officer in the US has Secret clearance, so it's not as big of a deal as you might think. You go through an investigation which requires you to list things up to seven years in your past, but isn't a big deal if you are a decent human being without a criminal history. After the investigation you work and live pretty much like anyone else except there are things you can't tell your friends. If you want to go out of the country you basically just let them know where you are going ahead of time and it's no big deal. The only thing you might not be allowed to do is travel to Iran or Cuba. Oh, and if you are like my friend and get three DUIs you lose your job and clearance. Just don't screw it up that bad and you have nothing to worry about.

I understand that you can't seek psychiatric help, or else you lose your clearance. And other fun stuff like that.

In any case I know quite a few "decent human beings" who would not be able to get a security clearance.

No, if you self admit you can still keep your clearance. At least at the Secret level. If you are admitted to a mental institution after a breakdown it might be a different story, but I don't know anyone like that. But getting counseling and being on antidepressants isn't an automatic disqualifier. And when I said decent human being, I left out the part mentioning that it helps if you have parents who are American citizens and aren't in a whole bunch of debt and don't have a bunch of foreign contacts. But I think you'd be surprised at how easy it is to get a clearance if your job requires it.

False, there are people with TS clearance who regularly see psychiatrists. This is one of the misconceptions that is left from the policies of 30 years ago. Other examples include homosexuality and past drug use, both of which formerly precluded you from a clearance but no longer do.

And think about it. These things precluded clearance because they were seen as things you didn't want made known. The idea is that if you were engaging in homosexual activity this could be something that a foreign power could blackmail you with to get you to turn over secrets.

i have never heard of something not getting a secret clearance, as long as they were honest about the skeletons in their closet (drug use in the past, etc). i have heard a DUI or arrest makes it very hard-to-impossible to get one. TS+ is a whole different story, but who the hell would want one of those anyways

Most of the stuff you're probably thinking about is fine as long as you own up to it up front. It's when they catch you in a lie that you're going to have a lot of trouble. If you tell them you never smoked pot and they find a picture of you inhaling on Facebook you're in big trouble. Even then you might get a clearance, though you get the treatment first.

The hassles go up as your clearance does. Depending on what you're doing you may be precluded from travelling to anyplace on this year's list of villainous countries.

I found the biggest problem with DoD work came when I left it and started interviewing for jobs in the commercial sector. I couldn't tell them what I'd been doing for the last eight years. I could say something like "I worked on a large project written in C", but anything more than that was verboten.

Here is another candidate (posted earlier):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5856795

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