hckrnws

"Here, fill it out again and don't mention that."

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."

My first clearance interview, about 10 years ago, it was all going along just fine. I had the standard litany of "bad" things any early 20-something American guy gets into - a few mushroom trips, an alcohol ticket, friends from foreign countries. No deal-breakers so long as you are honest and I answered honestly.

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).

I knew several guys in the military who had never smoked weed. Their recruiters had them lie on their applications and say they had smoked it because they feared nobody would believe them and their honesty would be questioned. This was such a common experience that it was almost a trope: the only people who have to lie about their marijuana history are those who have never used it.

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.

I don't understand why the US is so full on about marijuana. I've heard this is a major thing in federalinterviews but other much more scary drugs are not.

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.

A great deal of government positions involve carrying a gun. Having a gun and being a pot user is a felony with 10+ years in jail. It's one of the most serious non-violent offenses for mere personal use possession on the books.

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.

The flip side is that someone hoping to prosecute a "pot user" for being such while obtaining a firearm would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspect was indeed a "pot user" at the time one answered the question.

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".

The scan of your license does not leave the computer of the dispensary.

That is until they get ransomwared.

In that case I need to report that my identity has been stolen.

I can not give you legal advice but only tell you my personal understanding for entertainment purposes. And my personal understanding is that the same prohibition applies even for possessing it, not just when you acquire it. My non-lawyer mind it's pretty clear under 18 USC 922.

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.

The relevant bit(s) would be "It shall be unlawful for any person [...] who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)) [...] to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce."

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.

> or possess in or affecting commerce

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.

It would apply as it pertains to being "in or affecting commerce"; it'd be quite the stretch to apply that to possession outside the immediate context of a purchase/sale/transfer, though I suppose it wouldn't be the first time the Feds abused the ever-loving hell out of the Commerce Clause. Maybe taking a gun across state lines while high would qualify?

> 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.

So in the end using drugs while possesing a firearm makes it worse, it's just that those aren't federal laws but still apply.

Read up on Jeremy Kettler's attempt to avoid interstate commerce and also Wickard v Filburn. You probably know about the latter but not the former.

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.

Those are what I was alluding to when I said "it wouldn't be the first time the Feds abused the ever-loving hell out of the Commerce Clause" :)

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.

Wait until you read the gun free school zone act, which seemingly makes it interstate commerce merely to be on a public property proximal but not on school property, no matter you have no intent to interact with the school or the school property in any way.

I recommend you consult a lawyer. Always understand the difference between "the law can be flouted and probably safely gotten away with so long as I don't piss off anyone powerful" and "this is legal."

That's the thing: as written, the law puts everything short of "I was literally high at the time I took possession of the firearm" in the "this is legal" category.

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.

Once again, because I am not a lawyer I cannot give you specific legal advice for your situation.

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.

> A great deal of government positions involve carrying a gun.

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.

By my reckoning the majority of clearances are DOD active or reserve/guard [0]. That alone pushing it to 50+% of the people need to be allowed to have guns even if they only shoot a rifle once during basic and then are supposed to be able to figure it out if shit hits the fan. Now consider 3 letter agencies etc.

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...

Thanks, that explains a lot.

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.

Cocaine is schedule II. A doc can write a federally valid script for it. So someone could be using it and hypothetically not be breaking the law regarding illegal user with guns.

Asking for a friend: what should you do if you were a legal firearm owner before moving to an area with medicinal cannabis and then got your card? Sure don’t do it in the first place, but what options should so recommend to my friend in order to keep them out of trouble? Also, does the ATF trawl through state cannabis records to cross-reference gun owners?

This doesn't really answer the question though. "Why" is it looked on in this way?

This smells like a "war on drugs" thing where it's illegal because it's extremely convenient for law enforcement that this combo is illegal.

Security screening criteria doesn’t get updated often.

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.

I haven't been in a federal interview, but I would say it gets more focus merely because it is the most popular of the illegal drugs by a landslide.

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 is a very severe crime for the ~40% of US that owns arms.

Only if you carry them with you, right?

No, any illegal use or addiction to a wide array of drugs makes it a crime for you to own, possess, buy, sell, transport, etc., a firearm, and separately a crime for anyone to knowingly sell or transfer one to you. Marijuana is included, and because it is a Federal Schedule I narcotic, all use is, by definition, illegal use, even state-permitted medical use (and even though there is a federal policy against direct enforcement of the federal prohibition of marijuana against state legal use, this policy does not extend to the criminal firearms exclusion tied to it.)

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.

> The quasi-legality of state-permitted and federally-prohibited-without-direct-enforcement is kind of an awful trap

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.

No. A single speck of pot + just being someone that owns guns at all is 10 years in jail. Look up "constructive possession."

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.

A medical marijuana card is a much stronger indicator of "I am currently a user of marijuana" than even current possession, let alone some past purchase. The whole point of such a card is to be prescribed marijuana, and the whole point of a prescription is for you to follow it.

Why? I've read a number of accounts of people who got the card just to buy/grow for their cancer stricken grandma or whatever. Sure maybe it's a lie but then again it's pretty believable and reasonable.

Usually it'd be the grandma getting the card, then, no?

Even assuming grandma is going to buy it herself, which probably isnt always practical, there's probably some people out there not thrilled about going to jail because grandma put pot in the console of the car or left it on the kitchen table and suddenly they have constructive possession without a card.

Right, but that's the thing: possession (even in the actual sense, let alone constructive possession) doesn't mean use. A card declaring (in effect) "I have been prescribed cannabis to use it as medicine" does mean use.

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).

When I had my wisdom teeth removed I received a legal prescription for opiates and had the prescription filled and took possession of them. Thankfully I was able to tough it out with just NSAIDS and never took them.

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.

> Was I an opiate user?

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.

Whhhhaaat how do I not know this??? Thank you sir. I'm gonna be asking my lawyer some questions.

Even if you are a (legal) medical user?

There's no such thing as a legal pot user, but it does have a nice ring to it while the state tax man is collecting money to make people believe that.

I filled out DoD form for TS clearance years ago and answered honestly that I had smoked weed and done coke in college. That's what my boss said to do. He said if they caught you in a lie you were finished because that meant you could be blackmailed.

EDIT to add: Ironically he had gotten in trouble for phone phreaking as a teenager.

Yes, it is about blackmail. At the start of the 80s, smoking weed or being gay was OK with DISCO (Defense Industrial Security Clearance Organization) as long as you came clean about it and (for example) did not try to hide your sexual orientation from your friends & family. Because therein would lie the opportunity for blackmail.

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.

Interesting. This was mid 90's.

Anyone can be blackmailed.

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.

I mean, I used to say that I'd never be able to run for public office because <thing that a lot of people do, but that I should be mildly circumspect about>. These days, have you seen the people in public office?!? If you can be elected President after some of the shit that last guy is on the record as having done, I think blackmailing me is probably hard.

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.

For many people this isn't true.

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.

I don't see much functional difference between outcomes of committing suicide because you were blackmailed regarding a fake but believable rape accusation vs say blackmailed because someone found out you grew a bad plant. In the end though suicide seems like an honorable pick if the binary option is that or revealing life-or-death secrets to the enemy.

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.

I don't think you see what he's saying.

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 can be blackmailed to do ever progressively worse things over something minor, why couldn't you do the same thing and possibly even faster with something major?

There's no "one size fits all" answer here.

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.

Because dealing with experienced blackmailers is not something that most humans have good intuition and fully rational responses for.

> 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.

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.

A rational person would immediately report it whether the blackmail was true or not. The penalty for revealing secrets is worse than about any crime except a few high level drug dealing or crimes involving death. If you get fired because you didn't admit to eating a scary mushroom or whatever so be it, the alternative is much worse.

> 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.

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.

> How do they find that person? How do they blackmail them? It becomes exponentially more complicated

In a Hollywood movie, they would just locate an old acquaintance from your youthful years who is currently in debt.

> 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.

> etc doesn't give one a guilty conscious I honestly have no idea what would.

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.

Yes, I did not particularly enjoy the two and a half years with that division!

You're assuming a level of rationality on the part of the person being blackmailed which blackmailers will do everything to avoid. Look at the reports of people getting caught giving away secrets for and it's often shockingly little given the stakes. Remember the main issue with harsh punishments as a deterrent: people generally don't assume they'll be caught.

Not related to a security clearance, but a coworker at a summer job in high school was applying to be a police officer. He was told to answer "yes" when they asked if he had ever smoked pot, because anyone answering "no" was presumed to be dishonest.

Interesting, but not at all surprising, to learn how early cops are trained to lie for the "greater good."

"Power attracts the corruptable".

I had a somewhat similar experience with the polygraph portion of my clearance process - apparently its common to calibrate the machine to the subject by asking "have you ever smoked marijuana" and they expect you to lie and say "no" but then sometimes people have never smoked marijuana.

The polygraph is 100% pseudoscience - at best it's a prop to make interrogating people that don't know it's fake easier because they believe the interrogator can read their mind, but it falls apart when the person being taken knows that it's woo. So we shouldn't really use technical/scientific terms like "calibration" when talking about it...

It’s not like, thetans. It may not be reliable, but it’s not pseudoscience.

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

Now I'm curious. How had you never tried marijuana given that situation?

Vanity. Having lost significant body fat mid way through high school, I could not stand the idea of consuming a drug whose side effects included “the munchies”.

Investigators are required to find “derogatory information”. I wasn’t an investigator myself but knew some people who did it as contractors. They said they couldn’t turn in a package for adjudication without something negative. Weed was usually the check in the box for that, but if it wasn’t then they had to dig to find something else.

What is wrong with friends from foreign countries?

The chances of someone being a foreign agent increases significantly if they are from a foreign country. Meaning if you have foreign friends there is a small but non-zero chance that they desire, for their home country, the sensitive information you are being trusted to protect.

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).

This is surprising because it's the exact wrong thing to do. Past drug use will not disqualify you from a clearance, but lying absolutely will. Depending on the clearance level they will interview a number of people, including second degree connections. I know someone who used to be an investigator, and it surprised me when they told me how often first degree connections would say bad things about their 'friend'.

Yeah. My father didn't do secure work, but he was an immigrant to the country where I was born. As part of the immigration process, he was asked whether he had ever been arrested (maybe it was charged, I don't recall and he's long gone so I can't ask). He said "no". In fact, he had been arrested as a pre-teen for stealing an idling tractor and joyriding in rural post-war England. Immigration authorities don't care that a teen went for a joyride on a tractor. They care that he lied. Took a bunch of lawyering and paperwork to resolve the issue.

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.

On the other hand, you can answer this too truthfully and just screw yourself up for no reason. Example: I know Afghan former translators/employees for ISAF projects who have been arrested by Pakistani "authorities", local police in various cities just for the purpose of shaking them down for bribes/money.

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 don't think any consular officer would hold it against someone if they truthfully tell "yes, I've been arrested", even if the documentation doesn't confirm it. During an interview they would most likely ask about the circumstances (whenever they know no record of it exists or not), and telling them "I was arrested for [cite the reason if there was any or say "an unexplained reason"], they openly told me they wanted my money, but still it is being detained by some formal authorities (or someone pretending to be such) so I had to answer truthfully" is very unlikely to be a problem. They'd tell the truth, and it's not like they did something wrong.

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've seen immigration officers go on power trips before, and it ain't pretty. That much discretion with little if any opportunity for the potential victims to retaliate goes to some people's heads. And then they just need an excuse.

Well, if they decide they don't want you to pass - I suspect they'll find their excuse then, no matter what. With power tripping people, I believe, it's typically not about someone's file but if they arbitrarily like you as a person or not.

I had one tell me, a US citizen presenting with valid passport, he had the authority to prevent me from entering the united states.

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.

Reminding CBP/ICE of something like that in a confident way is a good way to get a thorough anal cavity search and/or all the carpets and upholstery in your car destroyed.

Indeed. They have to (eventually) let you in, but they don't have to put your car back together after they tear it apart.

I see you've read my other accounts of experiences with CBP lol.

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 many developing nations.

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.

But what if you said you were kidnapped by people in police uniforms and forced to pay a ransom?

'have you ever been kidnapped' is a different question than 'have you ever been arrested', I suppose.

So in context, they ask if you've been arrested, you say no. But this is because you characterize an incident as unlawful, while others characterize it as a lawful arrest.

Surely the answer for the example is "I was falsely arrested because I refused to pay a bribe". Since paying bribes is illegal in most countries, that shouldn't be an issue and you can't be accused of concealing it if it came up later.

Yea, sounds like terrible advice. I tried pot a couple of times in college, honestly really disliked what it did to my memory, and disclosed it on my EPSQ 2.2 clearance paperwork. I had absolutely no problems. The background check folks never even asked me about it.

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.

The "MICE" model of understanding behavior like Robert Hanssen, etc has also been extended to RASCLS:

http://dustinkmacdonald.com/recruiting-intelligence-assets-w...

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=RASCLS+in...

If two US presidents in a row (and probably more) can bring classified information home, who are they to request me not to?

The US is safer if you don't bring home classified information. You don't have control over what the president does. It's in your rational self-interest to not bring home classified information. Your perception of fairness has nothing to do with it, and if you can't get over that, you shouldn't be handling classified information.

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.

Yeah, that’s not for me. My tolerance for that kind of BS is way too low. It’d no doubt take less than a week before I started to follow the spirit of the rules, rather than the letter.

Only one was a president.

Yeah but that was the one claiming he could retroactively make it okay so now that Biden is president I guess by that logic it's retroactively okay as well.

If the President does it, it's not illegal.

That's been my impression with myself and several friends going through the process. The defense establishment is looking for honest people without drug abuse problems, not people who've never tried a joint. But I understand the opposite is true when applying for a job in law enforcement.

To reiterate half of what you've said, but maybe in a slightly different way, the defense security clearance process is designed to determine how likely you are to be incentivized or coerced into revealing classified information.

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?

Police typically have a 5 year period they want for zero drug involvement. The military is more dependent on the position and clearance level, but the max limit numbers are arbitrarily set. They set the numbers high enough to make recruiting possible, but it isn’t based off of any science.

I meant that lying was more acceptable on police applications because police, in the course of their duties, often have to lie whether its telling a suspect that you have proof of their guilt and they just need to confess or using boilerplate language like "there was a strong smell of marijuana" to justify a search in the paperwork whether you smelled anything or not.

This is absolutely not the case. Law enforcement background checks are more intense than clearance, and drug use policies are very black-white.

The general principle is that you must be unimpeachable such that your testimony is valid in court.

In what country is this the case that police have unimpeachable history?

I’m mostly referring to federal law enforcement, I’m not familiar with local police suitability (but I’m guessing it’s not nearly as well resourced as the feds).

I wish my experiences with federal LEO in CBP could reflect that. I've lived some corrupt ass places but federal CBP officers take the cake.

[dead]

What do you mean "have to lie"? Such lies really should be illegal for police...

I would also expect lying to be a bigger red flag compared to past drug use, and while it seems these stories invalidate such an idea, I believe they actually validate it: these are stories of people who did get security clearance and they were honest, the ripping up part is more like a symbolic gesture from the system "let's both pretend none of that happened".

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.

That's my understanding as well. Lying on a clearance application is far worse than admitting to many criminal acts.

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.

> Lying on a clearance application is far worse than admitting to many criminal acts.

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.

Right after high school a friend of mine went into the military and needed a clearance for his assigned job on a nuclear missile submarine. Investigators came around and asked his friends back home about him, we all lied a little in his favor. I remember explicitly thinking at the time "Of course people's friends are going to lie a little for them. What's the point in asking these questions?"

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.

A friend of mine has the same experience. They answered yes to the marijuana question and still got clearance.

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.

The interview/form is looking for potential blackmail or tendency to lie or obscure facts. If you are honest, that's fine, although they sometimes ask that you are currently using as well and that is a strike against you.

I was talking to an NSA recruiter last year, though, and they told me they routinely report applicants to the FBI for confessing to crimes during a polygraph. So damned if you do, damned if you don’t…

(For a recruiter he did an uncanny job at convincing me never to work for the NSA)

I mean, that might be true if someone confesses to heinous/violent crimes (and shouldn't they?) but its definitely not true for things like minor drug use/sale etc.

But if the crimes that you confess to are skilled hacking crimes and the NSA hires you anyways, then the FBI never finds out ? Thus making the NSA judge & jury.

See also https://antipolygraph.org/

I'd be careful, a friend of mine answered yes (and doesn't smoke anymore/at the time of the question) and got denied a clearance for it. But we can also see others who are suggesting interviewers are pressuring them into a "no" answer, which I had some personal experience with. But it seems different people are having different experiences. I understand why people lie though.

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?

AFAIK they never tell you why you fail. It's quite possible/likely that your friend failed for another reason.

This is the right answer. Drug use (outside the past 12 months) should not rule you out for clearances.

I was completely honest on my form.

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

The fact that you frankly acknowledged the drawbacks and foolishness of casual cocaine use, with the benefit of additional age/maturity/experience, reflecting upon your own actions as a younger person is probably why they cleared you.

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.

"Older but wiser" ? Check. Cleared.

My only experience with serious US government forms was applying for a tourist visa. This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US".

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?

Ah, the "are you a terrorist" section of the U.S. visa application is hilarious. I was honestly laughing out loud at some of the questions, imagining a sincere terrorist having their plan foiled by their strict moral code which requires them to lay out in detail their plan to topple the government :)

I am reminded of the (probably apocryphal) story about a logician asking for a visa to enter the US for a conference. When he got to the question "Do you plan to overthrow the United States Government by force or violence?" he hesitated and then answered "violence".

There's a true story about Kurt Gödel's citizenship application:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_Loophole#Backgr...

> Other writers have speculated that Gödel may have had other parts of the Constitution in mind as well, including the possibility that a partisan ratchet effect, via lifetime Supreme Court appointments and selective application of the law, could permanently stack the Supreme Court with Justices of one political persuasion.

This is mentioned in the article. It's a pretty standard way to overthrow democracies — it subverts the system, using the system.

[dead]

That is still the last question asked on the eQuip, and it has been reworded, implying that yes, this likely did happen.

And my delayed response likewise agitated the Mr 202 area code spec agent.

I've always understood that those questions are just a legal construct to be able to get you out of the country in case of issues.

No need to prosecute for expulsion if there were lies on the immigration form; it becomes just an administrative matter.

I mean, yeah. It's like gun laws that prohibit having a joint whilst commit armed robbery or whatever - it's not actually trying to stop the behavior, merely empower the prosecutor after the fact.

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.'

It's my understanding that same law about the joint still applies just for having an otherwise lawful firearm in the safe doing nothing.

Disclaimer: not legal advice, for entertainment value only.

You're correct. In fact, there doesn't need to be a joint at all - you become a prohibited person by virtue of being "an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance". Note that, since this is a federal law, it doesn't matter if it's legal on state level.

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.

It's strange especially because marihuana makes people very docile and laid back. Probably not a bad state for someone handing a firearm.

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 :)

Cocaine is schedule II. You can get a script for it. So the thing you say not only exists, but such a person could hypothetically legally own guns unlike the pot user.

WTF...

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.

It's much older than that. There was that one guy who was the founding commissioner of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics back in 1930s, and he was obsessed with the dangers of weed in particular:

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.”

My understanding was it also helped firmly establish federal wrongdoing rather than merely state.

It's mostly so that someone can't say "well you never asked!" -- okay fine we'll ask from now on.

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.

Yup. Thus the question about "have you committed war crimes". They added that one after having trouble deporting a one-time concentration camp guard.

I heard about a company web site that had a tick box like that on their download page. Unfortunately they got it the wrong way round so you had to claim to be a terrorist (or intending to build a nuclear weapon: I forget exactly what it was) in order to download the software. The story is that the web site was broken like that for about six months but it didn't stop hundreds of thousands of downloads from taking place. I hope no poor bastard in the FBI was tasked with investigating every case.

The UK visa application has the same questions pretty much identical. Also made me laugh!

Hm. I had multiple UK visas (but only visited once lol) and I don't remember that. Granted, all of those visas were applied for with assistance from the job I had at the time. The entry form was also much more boring.

Kinda makes me wonder what happens if someone checks yes. How do they deal with that?

Probably deny you entry?

The UK also had a question about communist party membership on their visa application. Funny thing is that the UK also has a communist party.

The US has this question as well, but I've heard that it didn't eliminate people from China who were able to make a "I had to join the party to get a certain job" argument. I presume that as long as you don't voice actual support for the revolutionary aspects of the ideology, the migra won't care.

The funniest thing is people now in government were members: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/01/why-jo...

That one's not funny, the really funny one is the "Are you a communist/polyamorous degenerate" section.

The federal and state departments of agriculture go to great efforts to control agricultural diseases. Others have mentioned foot and mouth, but there are lots of other things. For instance, half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards. A couple years back the Governor very publicly violated that long-standing order: https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/sep/16/inslee-brings-...

> half of Washington State is declared an "Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Maggot_Quarantine_Area) where it's illegal to bring in homegrown / wild-picked fruit lest you infect Eastern Washington's massive apple orchards.

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.

I guess technically the state of Washington has declared western WA and pretty much every other state in the continental US to be "quarantined" because those other areas have apple maggots. It's a lot easier to talk about eastern WA as the "quarantine area" though.

It is illegal to bring homegrown fruit into eastern Washington, regardless of terminology.

Isn't a mature fly just a maggot delivery vehicle?

I heard a pretty good interpretation of why these questions exist. If you say that you don't plan to commit crimes and then commit one, you have essentially lied on the form. In some cases at least it is way easier for the state to deport someone if they lie on their immigration form. But if the question wasn't there you would have to go through the whole legal process.

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.

But you might legitimately not be planning to commit any crimes, but then change your mind once you get there. The fact that you committed a crime after saying you weren't planning to do so does not mean that you were lying.

Or worse, what if you accidentally commit a crime? Not all crimes are obvious and something that can be normal in one country can be criminal in another. For example, jay walking (crossing the street not at an intersection (when an intersection is not reasonably near by)). Or something else silly like that.

Cool. Hopefully you have $150k to hire the attorneys to argue that, and deal with the trainload of stuff that will come your way when they do.

Are you a lawyer?

:D

Ask 5 lawyers and get 5 answers. Either way it doesn't matter unless that person is your lawyer.

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

> 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.

Why would it be easier to deport someone for lying on a form rather than for being a terrorist?

Because you need proof, and proving that someone is a terrorist is a long expensive and not guarantied process, while the lying on a form thing is purposefully self evident.

But if you haven't proven they are a terrorist, how can you prove they are lying about being a terrorist?

They might not be a terrorist, in which case they weren't lying.

I doubt that this is the logic but there are different standards of evidence. If the traveler faces a criminal charge they'll get an attorney and the government will need to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

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.

Immigration courts aren’t real courts and the judges are part of the executive branch (Department of Justice), not the judicial branch [1].

Their evidentiary standards are closer to “nonexistent” than to preponderance of evidence.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Judge_(United_St...

Jaywalking is illegal. It doesn't have to be the same illegal thing they want you out for. They're just giving them more options.

The Freedom to Walk act, in California, just made it legal. (Not relevant to your point, just a side bit of interesting info).

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)

The main purpose is likely to allow the police to cite a pedestrian who is at fault for an accident, which helps protect the other parties involved from civil liability.

The law could be rewritten to take that into consideration. The current exception even has language in it to delineate its use.

I think there are following expected scenarios for this question:

- 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.

Well the form doesn't literally ask, "are you a terrorist? ". It's just a bunch of terroristic and criminal activities. So if you said no to "do you plan to commit any crimes" and then you rob a store or God forbid actually commit terrorism, which is a crime, you've lied on the form and can be expelled quickly

It may be burden of proof. Where I live, criminal court is to be thought of as 99% proof of guilt, where as civil court, eg being sued, is more like 50.1%.

So maybe an expulsion tribunal is 50.1% too?

The Oz government used some similar loophole (or threatened to use it) with the Djokovic covid saga at the Australian open. As I recall, a judge said that he could get a visa for whatever covid medical exemption reasons, but on his immigration form he said that he hadn't been travelling elsewhere. Social media proved otherwise, so he was caught in an easily provable lie on an immigration form. He was then able to be refused entry for reasons unreleated to the covid rules. In the end, they didn't have to rule on whether or not the Oz tennis association could issue a medical exemption for covid - they could kick him out on a much clearer legal basis. I don't recall the exact details, but that is the gist of some of the legal drama.

All it did was reflect poorly on Australia.

>All it did was reflect poorly on Australia

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.

Eh, I thought the fact rich celebrities were held to the same standards as us normal people reflected pretty well on Australia.

From the outside it seemed like lets go hard on this foreign player from an eastern European country no one cares about hurting relations with. He didn't get the vaccine and we are still trying to push lockdowns hard locally lets use this to score political points.

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.

You don't have any right to travel to a foreign country. You only get in if you convince them you won't be a troublesome guest.

If i was to guess i would say the same as for Al capone, easier to prosecute for an administrative issue for which there is clear evidence and a fast-lane of application rather than go through heavy procedure required for heavy crime for which you may not have clear evidence

If I said, in the US, "Peter Thiel is a woman-hating monster and the country would be better if he and every politician on his payroll was swinging from a lamppost Mussolini style" it would be difficult to make any case that I was doing anything not covered by first amendment protections.

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.

I don’t think death threats are covered by the first amendment.

Where's the death threat?

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.

For the purposes of the first amendment, this isn't a death threat, it's the expression of an opinion.

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.

This is not legal advice but I think they are. See Brandenburg v Ohio.

"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.

https://www.thefire.org/supreme-court/brandenburg-v-ohio

It’s cheaper to demonstrate a lie than to have people testify, etc.

If they commit a crime there is the question of whether they should be imprisoned or deported. That likely involves a court case, something US prosecutors famously hate (just look at all the plea bargains).

If you lie on your immigration form, you gained entry under false pretenses. Nothing complicated or grey about that.

It’s about disease prevention (mad cow, avian flus, etc)

The livestock question might have been added during the Foot and Mouth epidemic, which could be spread on footwear and necessitated the destruction of livestock in the millions in Ireland and the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_United_Kingdom_foot-and-m...

> destruction of livestock

Such a tragic, disgusting euphemism for the murder of millions, without them getting to devour their corpses.

Please don't equate the death of people with the death of non human animals. It's not useful and it's needlessly inflammatory. Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another. The term doesn't apply to deaths in battle, through negligence, or by execution, however distasteful we might find those things. It also doesn't apply to the killing of animals - whatever ones moral perspective on the matter.

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.

> Murder is defined as the unlawful premeditated killing of one human being by another.

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.

I got an immigration official very worried when I was asked whether I'd ever been convicted of any "crimes of moral turpitude" and asked whether they could tell me what that meant before I answered. They had to go print out a dictionary definition.

(I had never been convicted of any crimes, so admittedly I could have just said "no" without causing a scene.)

Yes, pest control. E.g. foot-and-mouth disease is eradicated from the U.S. and cattle here are no longer vaccinated, but it's common in Asia and Africa and there are occasional outbreaks in South America. Even a single outbreak imported from abroad could cost billions of dollars, mostly because it would trigger international embargos preventing exports. [https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/45980/12171_er...]

My father got caught at an agricultural inspection entering the U.S. with an apple he’d picked up in a business class lounge and forgotten about. He got special treatment every time he entered the U.S. for about the next five years.

> This form also has some bonkers checkboxes like "do you plan to commit any crimes in the US".

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 can say confidently that asking potential refugees--who were born and have lived in a refugee camp for their entire lives--if they intend to pirate software when they are in the US is hilarious to refugee officers, too. In some languages it takes a lot of explanation to even get to a yes or no.

It's exclusively asked as a, "turns out you lied, that's perjury" question to make deportation easier in criminal cases.

In the 90s we had to fill out a form when dealing with Apple to certify that we didn't plan to build nuclear weapons.

That’s still a thing. I know I signed pages and pages of stuff like that requesting a sample of 5 ancient TTL chips from Texas Instruments.

Part of it is liability (tho I like to think they send the most reliable parts on sample orders), but also ITAR.

Diseases. The livestock thing is related to diseases. Are you carrying the new strain of swine flu inside your body?

Foot and mouth disease (and others)

It also used to have a question "Are you a gunrunner", any computer person had to lie and answer "NO" to it. At the time, strong cryptographic algorithms on your laptop counted as a munition.

This response is a really bad idea, and I think the security office people that recommend this are actually compromising security by making value judgments about what is and isn't relevant to background investigators based on their own personal beliefs. If this came to light they might get fired, despite it being way too normalized.

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.

What would the ramifications be if they ever found out you lied? It’s an innocent lie, but still, I can imagine that lying on these types of forms could turn out badly.

I assume it’s to give you plenty of opportunities to lie.

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 an innocent lie

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.

And to find out of you have secrets that other people could use to get leverage over you.

Yes, but if you admit everything in your application process then no leverage! And if you're in the habit of admitting things then if some foreign agent get you to commit some indiscretion in the future you might also admit that rather than letting them blackmail you into treason.

Didn't the previous Executive Administration have a few issues with their SF-86 forms? The fact that I remember the form number leads me to believe it must have been in the news a bit. I think they just had to fill out some amended forms or something like that - didn't seem like a big deal.

OPM had a security breach back in 2015 and the data on these forms was stolen. https://news.clearancejobs.com/2015/06/13/sf-86-stolen-opm-h...

I don't know, likely at very least they would take away the clearance. That was all over thirty years ago now and I have nothing to do with anything that requires a clearance any longer so I'm not overly worried about it at this point.

They would revoke your clearance. You would lose the job which required the clearance. And you would never get cleared again (source: happened to a now-former coworker).

Perjury

Exactly. So what is the best approach here? Ignore it? Pretend to be of good faith?

The guidelines have changed in the last couple of years. With the exception of certain agencies(FBI and DEA), drug use is evaluated with the surrounding circumstances. They treat I smoked pot once in college or I dealt pot or I am currently addicted to heroin differently.

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.

Don’t apply

For the written form, I've always been told to be 100% truthful. During the polygraph though I've had several antagonistic interactions similar to yours. Its all part of the game though at that point. They are trying to get under your skin. My personality does not play well in that scenario. Glad to be out of that line of work now, and I generally say no to anyone asking if I'd be open to having a clearance again.

I got put in for a poly for one of my older job. Naturally being of a rational mindset, I started googling how to beat a poly.

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.

What if you're being recruited for a counterintelligence job for a 3-letter agency and part of the job definition is being intimately familiar with the details of how persons might attempt to beat a polygraph? That's definitely something a person in that specific field would spend a good deal of time studying.

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.

Polygraphs are very unreliable in general, so this was never anything other than security theater.

Hehe, plenty of very smart people work in the government. But theres definitely a slice of personalities that dont. You and I both seem to fall in that slice : )

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?

Hell, I never even had an interview like that (what an insane thing btw), and even I have looked up how to beat a poly at some point. What a silly question.

Over my years working for defense contractors, I've held clearences from multiple agencies and have gone through 5 or so polygraph tests. In everyone of them, the examiners were professional in every sense of the word. They clearly explained the procedure, went over what questions were to be asked, and ran the tests calmly and fairly. I never had a reason to complain about any one of them. Now, I didn't like to be tested but it was part of process to get and hold the clearance so I could do my job so I went through it. I never heard of any of my colleagues complain either. Still, every job has its assholes and you were unlucky to encounter one.

Thats.... the exact opposite of my experience lol. I was at a 3 letter agency for ~5 years and close to everyone I knew failed the first poly of every round. IMO its a ploy to raise the stakes and get you on edge.

Did they fail the polygraph? Or were they told they failed a sham polygraph in the hopes that they would confess their crimes afterwards? The police do this tactic often; if you are suspected of a crime, never consent to a polygraph not done by a neutral party no matter how not guilty you are, or you will probably "fail."

(Polygraphs are pseudoscientific BS in the first place, but I know there are some cases where you must undergo them for whatever reason.)

Yes, its all part of the game. The failures are real, but the reasons might be BS. In any case, you have to do another poly and now the stakes are higher. Its hard to understand the stress around the process without experiencing it. Passing the poly is a very important step in be able to get/keep your clearance so you can actually work. Otherwise you need a new profession. I miss the work itself but I dont miss the process.

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.

You may remember the Aldredge Ames spy case some years back. Supposedly, his CIA polys revealed some strange results but rather call him on it and investigate it further, they shuffled him off to the FBI, still holding his clearances and accesses where he continued to pass classified information to the russians for several more years.

Polys are not the end-all for detecting bad guys but if you choose to ignore it anyway, it certainly becomes useless.

I think thats basically an indictment of the system. They are so unreliable that even the practitioners dont believe what it says as a scientific tool.

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/

Actually I just found one of the primary sources on this [1]. Its pretty interesting and not what I said above.

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.

Interesting because I thought the exam had to follow a script, to the letter. I would have believed that "setting a proper psychological atmosphere" would have showed up at step #1 or #2. Apparently not.

I wonder if that's because you were working for the agency instead of as a contractor. Since the testing costs the company money, they might get pissed if too many of their employees kept failing and require a retest. For large contractors like LMSC or Raytheon, that can be a sizeable expense. Of course, it goes into the overhead charges when they bill but still, not something they want.

Well I was actually military (which is a non full-scope poly) then contractor (full-scope poly) : )

Bro, they brought the girl that talked to me on campus to confirm it was me at the polygraph.

It seems pretty common.

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.

On a life insurance form, I was asked "Has a doctor ever advised you to stop taking any drugs (including prescription medications)?"

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.

Interesting. About 10 years ago I got a job offer from a three letter federal agency that would've required a clearance. I ultimately declined so I never started the process, but I was told that past drug use (weed, at least) wasn't necessarily a deal breaker while being caught lying about past drug was an automatic fail.

Story I was told once was

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.

I still think about a question that used to be on customs forms when entering the United States: "Did you come into contact with any soil while abroad?"

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.

I had a different experience, when I was in front of a Defense Investigative Service agent, filling out my forms in 1989, for a TOP SECRET/SCI clearance required for the job I had accepted working for the Defense Information Systems Agency, in the basement of the Pentagon.

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.

My recruiter told me I had to fill out a pre-screening questionnaire. He said “I need all these answers to be NO at the end of this form if you want to join the military”

“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.

>"Here, fill it out again and don't mention that."

>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)

You got off easy. I once had to apply for a clearance for an admin assistant position, coming out of college (which was certainly overkill; I never once came into contact with classified material, with the closest I ever got being walking past the building's one-room SCIF while seeking signatures for textbook order authorizations). When I got to that question, I truthfully answered that my single brush with mind-altering substances had been an edible a peer had passed me, after he realized that I was having trouble relaxing during a particularly difficult time, senior year. Back in then-present day, my boss had gone over the application, tsked, asked why I'd mentioned it, tsked again, and said that it was too late to remove, since she'd already seen it. It was sent off without another word.

My reserved, nerdy self was replacing her bubbly English major bestie, so I don't think she liked me much from jump, anyway.

I was proactively instructed by an O-6 (full bird colonel) to lie on my application about drugs if I had ever used them. Without even asking me if I had ever used drugs, he said, "I don't care what the truth is, on the form you put no." This was probably 20 years ago; I was pretty young.

This is a common one. You try something in the same year you (unknowingly) need to apply for a clearance.

Sadly, the moral of the story seems to be that the 1943 FBI had loads of zealous (performative?) plods on staff, but ~zero law enforcement professionals. In '43, the US had plenty of highly competent professional cryptographers, who were quite experienced with current Japanese, German, Italian, British, etc. codes. Before an entire local FBI office spent even a day on this case (let alone 6 weeks), maybe they should have asked some of those professionals to look at the supposed "Japanese code key" page? If it turned out to be a known code that (say) Canada used for low-security consular messages, that'd quickly narrow down or close the case.

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.

> Before an entire local FBI office spent even a day on this case (let alone 6 weeks), maybe they should have asked some of those professionals to look at the supposed "Japanese code key" page?

That sounds far less exciting than scrambling to find a fifth columnist and potentially being hailed as a hero.

True. But most people, after they've been grown-ups for a while, figure out that "find the winning lotto ticket on the sidewalk and get rich" is not how life actually works. And with a war on...the FBI's kids, simpletons, day dreamers, and glory hounds should have been closely supervised by real grown-ups. Or transferred to lines of work better suited to their talents.

> most people, after they've been grown-ups for a while, figure out that "find the winning lotto ticket on the sidewalk and get rich"

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. :)

> True, but it's not completely bleak either. I once wanted to take out $40 from an ATM, and it gave me $60!

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.

Many ATM's can actually detect that too much was given and report it as part of their communications protocol, it's called a "mis-dispense". Some used to even be configured to not allow opening the door to get the money on mis-dispense, requiring someone from the bank to come out to clear it. Source: I used to work on the bank software side of this communication, on IBM AS/400's.

Guess: They screwed up in loading or configuring the ATM, so it believed it was (say) giving you $10 bills, when it was actually giving you $20 bills. I've seen that happen - as an insider, to hear more of the (dull) detail.

From what I recall, it gave me 4x $20 bills instead of 2x. I attempted the transaction, it made this “flipping bills” sound for an unusually long time, then gave me a “dispense” error message. But obviously the cash had partially made it through the machine and got stuck somewhere, because when I retried the transaction, it gave me both the cash from the successful transaction, and that from the earlier failed one. Only the successful transaction ever appeared on my bank statement as a proper ATM withdrawal, but obviously they somehow detected the previous one and processed it manually.

Your secret is safe with us ;)

Maybe the grown-ups were doing something else during the war.

It’s important not to fall into the trap of hindsight. At the time, they very well thought it was important, but it of course seems silly once you hear the full story.

Note my edit, above. If they suspected it really was important, then they should have passed it up to the code-breakers ASAP.

It was probably just a random key, one-time-pad type. No way of figuring out much out of a typewritten random number, especially if it was truly random (generated with dice, for example)

My reading was that the FBI ended up with a key not an encrypted message.

This is an important lesson I think. Much of the assumed professionalism we have now is built on the lessons these people learned from serious introspection of their own actions.

This was a code key, not a codified message, so there was nothing to break, but only the indication that messages could have been exchanged using this key.

Which is gold material for the code breakers. The people trying to decrypt messages having to do with the ongoing war at the time.

Yes but if the codebreakers also came across a (real!) coded message, wouldn't they want to have the key already to hand so that it can be decrypted?

I don't understand your point here. He lost the cypher itself, not an encrypted message. So the code breakers would have said: yep, that's a cypher alright, it can be used for anything by anyone.

Being at war, you want to make sure it's not an enemy using the code.

>If it turned out to be a known code that (say) Canada used for low-security consular messages, that'd quickly narrow down or close the case.

It was made up by the two kids, so maybe they did that but it didn’t narrow down their case…

That was Hoover's FBI, the peak of hunting for anyone suspected of being a communist, gay, dissident, or anti-segregationist.

True-ish. But in 1943, it sounds like they'd gotten badly distracted by some less-important "Japanese" stuff...

Also - "Working for the Evil Overlord" is no excuse for gross incompetence. By late 1943, there seem to have been at least 4 independent communist spies inside the uber-secret Manhattan Project. Most of them with communist connections which competent zealous plods, perhaps eager to be heroes, could have uncovered.

Well maybe the local office didnt have anything else to do. So they followed this lead as a top priority since they had no other leads.

Money would be spend on the wages of those agents anyway, even if they had nothing to do.

When I moved to Canada, at age 16-17 I initially failed a lot of job applications at places like Staples, Future Shop, Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc.

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 :-)

I can't pretend to know what the original test writers had in mind. However, I actually think this question serves a different purpose than to determine if you had actually considered stealing from an employer. These types of questions are better suited to determine if someone can walk the corporate walk and talk the corporate talk. They don't want a low level employee to go off on a customer, or make rude remarks, or otherwise say "between you and me, fuck this company lmaoooo", because that opens them up to litigation. On that front, I would say they achieved their goal.

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.

Yeah, seems like if you're hiring for a low-level retail employee, it's not necessarily a plus if they're the kind of person who deeply analyzes this sort of question instead of giving the superficially correct response. Particularly if this was in an employer-friendly time from a hiring perspective, and they had an endless supply of candidates.

> they're the kind of person who deeply analyzes this sort of question

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.

Some cultures, and strongly correlated thus nationalities, are more brutally honest than others. So it may just be a test to see if you're an apple pie white American, which could be unlawful discrimination.

I think you have this backwards - Apparently, Americans are considered more brutally honest and direct in negotiations than other cultures:

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-negotiate-around-the-...

That doesn't mean that Americans are more brutally honest in social interactions. In my experience, Americans commonly (admittedly, not always) avoid topics and observations which they think a listening party would find uncomfortable.

This actually reminds me of something I've been thinking about lately. What we call honesty is actually two different things: truthfulness and openness. Americans are probably truthful and not open.

Like Canadians are polite but not friendly

That's right.

They literally ask “How are you doing?” and expect a meaningless answer as a matter of course.

To me this sounds like an invitation to unload my worries.

No s**t, my g*d these Americans are really *****

(who would have thought it is so difficult to beep out words in HN, I had to escape each *)

Reminds me of the time I said the fuck word kinda loudly in public in Provo, Utah. Had people looking at me like I'd just grown a second head.

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.)

I am French and we are quite liberal with our swear words. This is interesting because the ones that are used in everyday conversation, due to the intonation, are not rude. Not poetry, but not vulgarity either.

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.

Reminds me of the scene in Cryptonimicon, again:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1866629

Many things remind me of scenes from the Cryptonomicon, especially things that rhyme with "torpedo."

It's common in most roles for employers to check if you are flexible, teachable, and ready for cool-aid.

*kool-aid

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid

*Flavor Aid

They didn't actually use Kool-aid in the Jonestown massacre, people just think they did.

Just because the saying is apocryphal doesn't mean the spelling "cool-aid" was correct. The saying is "drinking the Kool-Aid" regardless

Sounds like you're drinking their cool-aid.

"drinking the Flavor Aid" doesn't sound nearly as good. It sounds like a knockoff

I personally think Flavor Aid rolls right off the tongue and into the garbage.

So they are filtering for a ethic that accepts boldface lying to them is necessary to cover essentials.

I can not see how this paradigm could end well.

I mean - all ethical systems favor boldfaced lying in some situations? Even Kant's Categorical Imperative simply says that, if you lie, you should do so in a situation where anyone in that situation should lie (i.e. hiding Jews from the Nazis, etc). Even within a Kantian framework, you could argue that in this context (a formal job application) it is moral to lie because no one believes your answer represents your most deeply held beliefs - but rather represents your willingness (and ability) to perform a role (the role of the Good Employee). If you can't be a Good Employee you should reveal it by not lying - but if you can be you can reveal it by lying on the form (which reflects the lying you will be expected to do in the job).

Part of the problem is that normally you're also very explicitly instructed to not lie on such forms.

> ‘Isn’t learning fun? Oh, and here’s another one.’ > DO NOT FEED THE ELEPHANT. > ‘Now that,’ said Susan, ‘is good. You can’t obey it…’ > ‘… because there’s no elephant,’ said Lobsang. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of this…’ > ‘It’s an Auditor trap,’ said Susan, peering at a packing case.

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time

Part of life is learning when you'll be rewarded for following the rules v.s. breaking them. Employers will sometimes ask their employees to break the law. Will you break it for them? They want you "on their side" - meaning they want you to takes risks for them. So what you are describing as a problem with the form looks like a feature to me.

The expectation on this varies very widely across cultures, and sometimes even between classes or other social strata within a culture.

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.

For sure! I don't mean it's universal at all - I'm saying the question is setup to catch people who are nor primed with the right enculturation. It's not good! It just is a good filter that selects for the sorts of people the business wants to hire.

> My mind never stops and there's virtually nothing in the world I have not "considered"

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).

For those of you who are like I used to be and are just honest in an unfiltered way that sometimes caused you trouble: don’t think of it as lying, think of it as keeping secrets. You can also view it as maintaining a personal boundary, which is not something people of my generation were brought up with. We all keep secrets to some extent: shameful memories we do not readily recount; job confidentiality; things we only share with our doctor or therapist. Just be like that more, it’s okay to be a bit of a mystery to others, and you can do this while still divulging a ton of stuff about yourself. Lying just feels stupid and wrong. Pretend you are a spy in this life, and you can consciously choose what face to present to anyone.

Yes! Like I clarified in another comment, I didn't really meant "lying" but "not volunteering/selectively withholding information".

> You can also view it as maintaining a personal boundary, which is not something people of my generation were brought up with.

Which generation do you belong to, out of curiosity?

I am presently 46 years old.

I've watched that video several times; as somebody "largely" honest, I need it to pragmatically re-adjust my perspective every few years - because I TOTALLY am the person who would inherently monologue for 3 hours when asked a simple question by a cop :)

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.

Agreed about not outright lying. I think my mom's advice -- the way I interpret it, anyway -- is more "don't volunteer information". Sometimes you have to answer honestly if they ask you a direct question about a concrete fact they can doublecheck in alternative ways, but otherwise: don't volunteer information. Don't be a "completionist", if they ask you "have you ever considered [something naughty]" the truth is only for your therapist; for HR it's always "no, never!".

> I TOTALLY am the person who would inherently monologue for 3 hours when asked a simple question by a cop

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).

The video I linked to, which frequently makes the rounds, is essentially a defense attorney explaining that you should never speak to cops, even if you're innocent, and gives plenty of examples of innocent people that ended up convicted of something just because they thought they were safe (because they didn't do anything). For example, he explains even an innocent person making an innocent mistake while recollecting the facts to the cops can get screwed, whereas an innocent person who simply won't talk to them cannot get screwed as easily.

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!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

Yep.

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.

"he recommends that even innocent people never talk to cops!"

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?

I recommend you watch the video.

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.

I watched that video, but I refuse to see cops always as the enemy.

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.

To my other comment, let me add that this follow up video by Duane specifically addresses your scenario: the concerned parents of a missing girl unwisely spoke to the cops, without knowing they were suspects in the case (because the cops regularly suspect this, "9 out of 10 times, the caller is the one who committed the crime" as one cop put it).

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!").

And what about this scenario, I described above:

"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.

This is an interesting debate but one thing to correct, Duane (and many though probably not all other proponents of "don't speak to cops") are NOT saying that cops are bad, or corrupt. This is not a necessary condition for this advice.

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.

Exactly. I think Duane's point is that police corruption and ill-intent are not at all necessary for a miscarriage of justice to occur. The cops doing their job, using their tricks of the trade, or committing human mistakes, are enough for injustice to happen.

> I see no downside with providing that information. Only lots of downsides of not providing it.

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.

"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"

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.

> Or you can be responsible for the death of a child

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.

I'm not from the US either, and this is about their legal system I think. Whether they need to change this is up to them. I think your intuition from another country doesn't apply to the US. If you ever live in the US, ignore his advice at your own peril.

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.

Then you have to ask yourself whether helping with something like that is worth sticking your neck out. But make no mistake that you're doing exactly that.

That's a very unfortunate side effect of a legal system and style of policing that, instead of being carried out reasonably by building trust and respecting rights of citizens, violates rapport and human rights at every step of the way with no repercussions for people in power.

I believe you should have the same attitude when giving an interview e.g. to a member of the media. They will make it feel like a personal conversation which is intended to get you to share your story and views, but in the end they are really telling their story and their views, and will use what you say to support that whether you agree with what they are saying or not.

And if you've ever applied for life insurance, you may also know that consultations with your doctor should also be treated similarly, lest they use a casual mention of smoking a cigar 17 years ago as grounds to increase your rate or deny coverage altogether.

> There's no need to be truthful here, this isn't a consultation with your doctor.

Even then, depending on your demographic, being honest about things like pain might get you labelled as a drug seeker.

I'm like you. An ex of mine claimed that most people never even think about committing suicide. It's hard for me to understand how anyone could avoid such an obvious thought, but I have since seen a lot of evidence that some people's minds really don't explore the possibility space, and when they do it's only along prescribed paths... So I guess it's possible?

It boils down to a semantic argument. People have differing definitions of what it means to "think about committing suicide". If you're up on top of a tall object and happen to imagine yourself plummeting over the edge even without any intention to do so, some people will consider that "thinking about it", and some people won't.

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.

It's impractical for everyone and impossible for some people to interpret every question through the lens of the person asking the question. The use of American euphemisms is constantly changing and it is unreasonable to expect non-native English speakers or neurodivergent people to keep up.

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.

https://sneak.berlin/20191201/american-communication/

> if you speak directly, what will be heard by your listeners is whatever your statements are presumed to imply, not what is actually stated—regardless of whether or not those implications are intended or not.

This pretty well sums up my experience of the HN comments section.

I agree that one should attempt to answer the /intended/ question.

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.

FWIW, this sort of issue is a serious problem for many people with severe OCD. Basically a thought comes into their minds, about something disturbing or taboo, and they start obsessing over the fact they had the thought, because they're so distraught about the idea it would even come into their mind. In most cases, they are so far from actually doing anything related to the thought, and that's why they are so distraught. This leads to penitential behavior, and compulsions, etc.

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 actually feel like this is a good argument for normalizing the fact that probably everyone has thoughts about suicide (as OP said, thinking about the implications versus considering).

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.

Interesting; that makes a lot of sense. This insight makes me think there's a continuum between brains set to "control all thoughts" and brains set to "autmatically explore all possibilities."

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.

That's the main difference between OCD and not.

That might be related to why it's such a taboo subject - people fear that even mentioning the word 'suicide' will cause some people to starting making deliberate plans to end their own life. (It's certainly a rather depressing topic, not suitable for small talk or dinner conversation, and people who are always bringing it up probably could use some therapist time.)

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.

I think it is possible and I think it helps to explore what you don't think about. Everyone has things that never/rarely occur to them to consider performing as an action, even people with significantly broader consideration-spheres than others. For example, I've considered suicide but never going pro in ballet. I've considered stealing from my employer but never becoming an opera influencer. I'm less athletic than a sibling of mine, so things like vaulting over fences/climbing trees aren't things I that would even occur to me to perform but my sibling is always thinking of ways they can get over and around physical obstacles with their body.

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.

Unfortunately, now I have considered going pro in ballet (result: not going to happen), becoming an opera influencer (result: highly unlikely but not absolutely impossible; can I reasonably work towards the return of the comic operetta? Probably not without writing one. I could manage the book but not the music. Who do I know who might want to write the music?) and I have frequently considered but discarded the likelihood of vaulting over most fences and climbing most trees.

Thanks.

But that's the thing, right, you didn't consider those things before. There's no difference between not having considered suicide and not having considered pro ballet and it doesn't reflect anything about you in particular. That's why I'm saying I don't think it's incomprehensible that some people just haven't thought of things you've considered before. Because obviously you also haven't thought of things to consider until someone else (myself) brought them up.

I find this concept fascinating, where can I read more?

[Fox News joke removed since upon further reflection it wasn't funny]

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!

I'm sad that Slava_Propanei's comment below is dead. I'm stoked to learned the word "keyfabe."

You can vouch for [dead] comments. When enough users do that, it will come back to life. See https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch.

Ah yes, Fox News. The source of all bad thought is not the global liberal hegemony, but rather its kayfabe opposition.

Vouching for this. It's off-topic and a little inflammatory but I started that, and it taught me the word kayfabe. Thanks to dang for introducing me to the vouch feature.

I would think that you have been using the word "considered" rather lightly. To me, it means careful thought and deliberation, not just "the thought crossed my mind at some point".

Yes and No.

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.

Yup. "Considered" is certainly ambiguous enough to be a failure in the context of a job application.

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.

> but this is an absolute fail on the job application, unless the goal is to filter out intelligent people who have naturally curious minds.

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.

>>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.

Found this because I was curious (and this was the first non-paywall link that I knew the domain from, sorry if there are other, more reputable sources): https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/st...

Looks like the reason is: we refuse all smart people equally and it's a means to reduce turnover...

What a joke.

Don't underestimate how stupid criminals can be. It's not like the prisons are empty because no one ever gets caught.

My hunch is that this is a third of the reason why politicians give “politician answers” to things that most people believe are straightforward yes-or-no questions.

Nitpicking that thinking about a vulnerability is not the same as considering exploiting that vulnerability.

exactly the point — that nit falls well within the ambiguity of the wording

(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)

In this context, I think “considered,” here, is best understood as:

“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?”

Yes, more like, "wanted" (to do) it.

I'm not so sure about that. If you spend a lot of time mentally disengaged, (walking, exercising, commuting, etc.) you have lots of opportunities to deeply consider many things that you have no intention of doing.

And there are many who do use “considered” to mean that a thought crossed their mind. Surely this does not shock you.

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.

Perhaps filtering out stupid people is the goal of the question.

No one is completely honest. Courtesy is the art of lying.

When I was in the security clearance process, the first step in the process was a 500 question multiple choice psychological exam (randomized order). The test is designed to have some level of error checking to make sure participants are taking it seriously (e.g. questions that would be expected to correlate). Near the start of the exam was a question "do you have back pain", I answered "no". Near the end was the same question phrased slightly differently, I answered "yes". When in my subsequent interview to discuss the results, the interviewer questioned why I didn't answer consistently. She seemed to accept my answer of "I had been sitting in an uncomfortable chair for 2.5 hours by the time I got to the second question".

In a similar vein... while driving down the road, have you ever "considered" just pulling into the opposing lane? I'd never ever do that, but I've considered others driving into my lane, which leads me to consider myself doing that to their lane.

Lots of other similar "I'd never do that" situations I've definitely considered.

I admire your honesty though. 99% of people would lie.

The call of the void is a natural instinct evolved to help judge possibly (dis)advantageous choices.

As long as you label it as an "intrusive thought," and it isn't incredibly (daily) common, that is perfectly normal.

I always figured that the "call of the void" was to illustrate to us what a careless movement could lead to. So that we will shy away from the edge or constantly second guess our movements for danger while we remain.

"Uh-uh-uh - Turning the car into oncoming traffic ... is counter productive!" has been a Jim Carrey tag-line for decades: https://youtu.be/4YnslaUd4VY

L'appel du vide in one of its more commonly manifested forms.

At a family gathering we were all sharing we've considered this while driving. Not specifically veering into oncoming traffic but "what if" things like letting go of the wheel, intentionally driving into a ditch at high speed, etc.

One person in my family claims they've never had this thought ever, and it truly baffles me.

I had to write a letter in support of my immigration application, explaining my situation and circumstances.

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."

Many people use "considered" to actually mean "seriously considered acting upon", rather than "idly considered hypothetically" in this context.

Plus when screening many applicants with few differentiators, this might be an easy question to reject on.

On the word “consider”: A friend of mine tells a story about his dad and his appreciation for the practicality of a brick house.

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.”

Bricks have bad failure modes in earthquake prone areas.

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.

Tangent: Some historic brick-built structurer in Cali are reinforced by apply fiberglass resin (just the resin, no fibers) to the surface of the bricks. This usually manifests as a glossy clear layer completely covering brickwork of the ground floor, followed by narrower and narrower strips of resin for the next floors. It can be applied to interior, exterior, or both surfaces, depending on assessment of the structure.

> 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?).

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.

> 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 think people block their minds. I think they just lie on forms more. I also sometimes struggle with which lies are expected.

This gave me a good chuckle, and definitely speaks to the imprecision of language and how shared cultural context and understanding does a lot of heavy lifting. Context and understanding that everyone takes for granted but may not be apparent to some, even those in the culture.

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.

Instead, the companies want people willing to lie on forms.

5+ years experience in a language/technology that only appeared 2 years ago!

Congratulations, you will only hire liars. Which I think describes 90% of hiring these days.

No, that actually means they want a specific person, indeed not mentioned in the listing. When the right person applies, all those unsatisfiable requirements are suddenly ignored.

Indeed. If you insist on only hiring people who answer the question a certain way, don't be surprised when you hire a bunch of liars.

> "Have you ever considered stealing from your employer?" to which I would cheerfully answer "Yes".

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.

that's how i knew 'voice stress analysis' tests were trash. when i was a teenager, it was all the rage for companies to put candidates through these and i'd sit there lying all the way through it and still get the job every time.

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.

One book that describes these tests, and how they've come to dominate low-level jobs is titled Punching In [0]. The philosophy is that what sort of personality that would be successful at, say, Home Depot, would be completely different from American Eagle. At many retail companies, you cannot get into the payroll system unless the personality test system approves your application.

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...

There's a difference between thinking about something and seriously entertaining it. Like you, I think about a lot of things, but I'd take "considering" to mean more than that. I've thought about all kinds of ways to commit fraud, but I'd never consider doing it. I think you've misunderstood the word in context.

A retail company that I worked for (I worked in the general office and we got a bit of a chuckle talking about the test) had a test that was very much in the same vein - though it wasn't a "have you ever considered" but rather put on a "agree to disagree" spectrum.

    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."

just be very careful with how you respond to questions from a therapist. they're "legally" required to report certain things. You have to know, what you're allowed to say and what you're not, if you don't want govt institutions getting involved.

Personality tests aren't about a test of your personality, but your ability to project the ideal personality for an employee. That has some value because it shows you'll know how you're supposed to act on the job.

I think the question is used to weed out those people who do not want the job. It is a synonym for “so you want this job?” What mental fences do you have that prevented you from interpreting the question correctly, or that encourage you to self-sabotage (assuming you needed the job; if you knew you didn’t want the job, the question provides an easy out)? Or not, I dunno you nor what the test designer intended.

People are using a different version of 'considered' where it's not just a passing fancy, but something you would be likely to do.

Did you methodically weigh the pros and cons of stealing from your employer? Was there a real possibility that you would have emerged from the consideration having decided to go ahead with the theft?

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.

I think you're misunderstanding the difference between answering questions truthfully and how your answers are received.

I mean, there's a whole book that's popular dedicated to saying "yes" to every opportunity you're offered to improve your "luck"...

Probably because you were overthinking it.

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.

Mindfulness meditation may help calm the racing mind.

I did that while taking a polygraph administered by a representative of a three letter agency. He said I was being deceptive.

Did you explain that you were just pretending to be deceptive, b it were in fact fully cooperating?

It was clear the examiner had no sense of humor. So no. But when he said I was being deceptive I asked "In what way?" And he said "You tell me." And so we ended in a standoff.

Thanks, I've heard that over time; I've tried a bit of mindfulness over the years and I see the value in it, I just haven't been able to harness it yet. I've tried some guided audio body focus mindfulness/meditation and 1. Most of it tries too hard and loses me with "Third Eye" and "Spirit world" "and chakra energy frequency balance" 2. Most of it starts from toes and turns out I need to start from center (ridiculous preference but apparently true for me:) and 3. Most importantly, unsurprisingly, I suck at it. I keep trying every now and then; maybe I'll give it another go :)

Abandon guided meditations and audio-based meditations, and focus to a simple programme of breath-focus. You just:

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.

This is basically the idea. Exact techniques vary, but the point is to keep gently re-focusing on something minor and physical. It doesn't really matter what it is, scan direction vs breath flow vs something else, none of it matters, just pick one and work on focusing.

When you sit you may feel discomfort of a kind that makes you want to move. Sit for a bit longer. The discomfort will move rapidly from place to place, since it is an artifact of the revolutions of the mind stuff.

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 app “Balance” is decent, and they give a year free on it (or gave, anyway). I primarily use it to go to sleep when my mind is racing (I fall asleep within 10 minutes every time, even if I’ve been laying and thinking for an hour or two), but I’ve listened to a few here and there, and I haven’t heard any mysticism.

"Lady, this case has cost the government thousands of dollars. It has been the top priority in our office for the last six weeks. We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of nearly every optometrist in San Diego." It apparently didn't occur to them that if I were a real Japanese spy, I might have brought the glasses with me from headquarters.

First of all, absolutely hilarious - second of all, pretty intrigued by the old-school, brute-force method that actually ended up working.

"It apparently didn't occur to them that if I were a real Japanese spy, I might have brought the glasses with me from headquarters."

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.

Also, it's plausible that a Japanese spy would buy new glasses in the US. It would probably be smart. Why take a chance that someone will notice your slightly unusual-looking glasses? Just get new ones that look normal.

What makes you think that type of thing is old school? This kind of brute forcing is still very much in use [1], but usually we are better at having computers do a lot of the filtering these days.

[1] - https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/white-sedan-police-found...

Just the other day Italian police announced they found some old mafia boss who was hiding for 30 years because they got a tip he was sick, so they scoured the national health records for clinics treating someone around the right age with the same conditions.

As you mention, these days we use computers to filter; lacking those is what made it old school, as I assumed (perhaps incorrectly) that they were manually reviewing paper records.

Third of all, it's the government's own fault they lost their mind over a child's toy.

Bit of an aside story but I'm in the process of renewing a US work Visa (travel into the US for work often from Canada). I was reminded going through the online form last week that there are 3 full pages of questions like: "Have you ever participated in child trafficing?", "Have you participated in terrorist activities?", "Have you participated in overthrowing a government?", etc. etc. All of the most extreme international crimes you could think of.

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.

> "Have you participated in overthrowing a government?"

This must be an awkward question for Iraq War veterans.

Yep that's a favorite US government method. They do the same with the form you have to fill out to buy a gun.

4473 doesn't ask most those. Attempting to overthrow a government doesn't make a prohibited possessor.

I never understood the legal justifications for that. If i answer a visa-related question now, the context for me is the present and past. How can laws cover retroactive lies that were not lies at the time?

I should have noted that their intent is to cover your past and present, so that if in future they find out that in your youth you trafficed/postituted humans and farmed drugs to fund over throwing a goverment through terrorist activities.... even if all of those were outside the US jursidiction, they can still yank your Visa for having lied.

Coming from Australia, you have to answer a small selection of those questions (including those ones) on the visa waiver application just to travel to the US for a holiday or business trip.

I'm so that guy. Not for security clearance, but medical questionaires. I always fill them in with total honesty, listing the most minor and irrelevant details if they fit the question. My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere, even when I think: "but shouldn't you mention that thing?"

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.

Sometimes you just can't win, though.

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 had the same problem with something so much more benign than that.

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.

My understanding is that the passport is not actually required at the CBP checkpoint if you present a valid unexpired green card. But yeah, there's no way different officers should be yelling contradictory things at you.

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.

Is it? I've been yelled about doing or not doing it so much that I can't keep track anymore.

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.

That one is clearer, at least. TL;DR for the easiest experience - bring both passports, enter and leave each country on the respective passport, and if anyone is confused, show both passports and explain that you're 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.

Yeah I think the lesson I took out of the story was DO put that you have been investigated by the FBI and let the guy you give the form to tell you to leave it off…

Last time I was at the doctor, I answered “not that I know of” when asked if I had any allergies.

Afterwards at the pharmacy, it turns out my prescription included a box of antihistamine.

What a weird doctor you have.

You don't discuss about your actual medical condition and he doesn't tell you why he prescribe each drug and for which purpose?

I have a very obscure allergy to some specific compounds in some medication. It gives me a rash, nothing serious. I'm always very diligent in mentioning what little I still remember about that allergy.

I've spent thirty years telling doctors I'm allergic to amoxicillin; I'm not sure if I am, but that's how my parents started every doctor visit when I was small so I carry on the tradition. I think I might have thrown up after taking it as a small child, but I have no recollection myself.

I have something similar with epinephrine. Every visit I'm asked "allergy to epinephrine?" and I have to, again, clarify "no, but I'm sensitive to it, and it makes me really jittery, so I prefer to not have it unless there's no choice". It makes me feel like I've had way too much caffeine and is just generally unpleasant.

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.

I’m pretty sure it’s not actually possible to be allergic to epinephrine. After all, it is commonly known as adrenaline. You’d probably die if you were allergic to it.

Yeah, that's what's weird about it. It's very much NOT an allergy, but I don't like how it makes me feel. So, optionally, if it can be avoided I prefer to. But it seems to be listed as an allergy and is stuck in my medical records forever. :\

That's kinda what epinephrine does..

it's common to have childhood allergies to penicillin-class drugs which go away in adulthood; i had to have major surgery (as an adult) but had a similar childhood reaction. I was advised to do an allergy 'challenge test'. It turned out the allergy was either never really there or had gone away, which gives doctors more options when antibiotics are needed. It might be worth looking into.

But only “look into it” in a carefully supervised medical center. Don’t go rolling the dice on a severe allergic reaction to an antibiotic at home or outside of that supervision.

Many people get a rash when a viral illness (epstein barr comes to mind) is treated with amoxicillin. This is not an amoxcicillin allergy.

It can be important.

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.

Next time just ask for an allergy test. These days they just draw a bit of blood and send you the results in a few days. Then its on your records for good.

I'm not sure how to interpret this. Were the antihistamines in case you had a drug allergy? Or were they for the other kind of allergy (pollen, pet danger, dust, etc.)?

Antihistamines are for any kind of allergy. They don't care if it's from breathing in something, touching something, or eating something. Allergy is an allergy.

Right, but what was the doctor's intent?

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."

> My wife keeps telling me not to fill that stuff in, and she's quite the opposite, giving the preferred answer everywhere

This might literally kill her.

I did a tour of IT distributors & resellers around Johannesburg back in the early '00s. I was the tame tech, the sales guy was a good dude. It was standard issue for all visitors to fill out a paper form with name, company, occupation, and car registration details as a lot of parking lots were secure compounds, given the atmosphere in South Africa. As the week went by, and the sunshine got to us, we ended up providing our occupations with increasing absurdity: serial killer, axe murderer, escaped drug lords, etc. The only one that raised any response – from a very burly Afrikaner – was me stating I was a "6ft invisible bumblebee".

It's a great story, but didn't the author confess to a felony by publishing it? He lied on an official document, even if directed to do so by the person across him.

I know this is pedantic, but that's exactly what I would expect from a security clearance vetting process.

He wasn't investigated by the FBI. The FBI was investigating a hypothetical Japanese spy; since he wasn't a Japanese spy, any follow-up that led to him was merely incidental.

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".

This isn't a case of a mistaken identity, the FBI found exactly the person they were looking for. It just turned out that said person wasn't a threat, after all.

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.

It is true that the FBI found the person they were looking for, and that person was the terminus of their investigation. It is not true that the article author was investigated by the FBI. He was nothing more than a MacGuffin in the overall plot.

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.

> It is true that the FBI found the person they were looking for, and that person was the terminus of their investigation. It is not true that the article author was investigated by the FBI; he wasn't

To me, these are the same, so I guess that's probably just my layman's view then.

They aren’t the same. There is a legal distinction. They were attempting to identify the source of a document.

After they found and identified who created it, the investigation was dropped before they investigated any particular person.

That’s what the word means. If they mean convicted, they should ask that instead.

I don't buy it. The FBI found his code sheet that he made, and tracked him down, and asked people about him. This is an investigation, and it's about him. The fact that they thought he was a Japanese spy simply means that they made the wrong assumption about the person they were investigating.

The investigation was about the document, not the person. If, after they had met with the guy, they started interviewing family, friends, and digging into his life - THAT would constitute an affirmative answer to the question.

I kind of _hope_ any statutes of limitations would have expired 35 years ago for events then 45 years ago. There's not much point in retaining liability for events that long ago; it's not like you'll ever catch the "crooks", nor likely have the ability to really judge events reasonably anymore by that time.

'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.

i felt like it might be an embellishment. mostly because i interviewed so many infosec people in the early 2000's and like a quarter of them had some similar story from when they were 10-12 about contact with 3-letter agencies or other nonsense that "got me started on this path at an early age".

The event happened 80 years ago. I don't know what the statute of limitations is here, but I would guess that it's passed by now.

Edit: it's a story from 1988, so at the time it was only 45 years ago.

True. I admit that I just assumed that the statute of limitations for these national security-related kinds of things were indefinite.

It might be - for an actual spy. For omitting that detail on a security clearance form? After 45 years, no, nobody cares.

Or maybe get a life and go catch actual spies. When the law makes innocent suffer fuck it.

Determining whether you're dealing with an actual spy or an innocent person is the entire point of such investigations.

The investigation was already concluded. Why should person suffer in the future when nothing wrong was done ?

The person wasn't really suffering though, this was just about getting a security clearance. Most people don't have one.

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable for a special vetting process to have stricter standards.

Not getting a job and clearance in general over some stupid stuff is "suffering" and if he was not advised to lie he would've left without job / clearance. Basically paying for some stupid course of events. In my opinion shit like this should be automatically wiped out in normal society.

Two points this brought up for me. One, I'd love to hear about the provocative information that would speed up clearance approval. I bet there's a story or two there.

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"

I often answer the doctor office intake questionnaires with a glaring mistake just to see if anyone checks. Where it says “have you ever been pregnant?” I answer yes. I also mark that I am a male. No doctor’s office has ever mentioned this to me after I turn in the forms.

Why would you think someone would check ? This information is only consulted if it's needed, or for later cross checks.

Nobody cares if it's correct or not until your health is in the line.

When I go to a new doctor, they read the intake form information.

Realistically what's gonna happen is that the doctor will ignore it and the insurance company or some other bureaucracy (insurance, state regulator, etc) will use your errant answer as a pretext to do something that is advantageous for them at the expense of some other party (you, your doctor, etc).

These are fun. I got told very clearly to not check any of the boxes related to mental health shortly after being diagnosed bipolar.

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.

The pregnancy is usually the one thing that is promptly checked when a young man fills a form as a blood donor where I live. The form is a table, most questions are yes/no with a separate column you mark with X. The pregnancy row has a twist, it's "fill if you are a women" type.

Thankfully nurses know that well, check it instantly and ask to actually read the form. Blood donations are usually fun.

Alternative explanation is that they do check it and after reconciling the checkbox and gender inputs against your (presumably) obvious appearance, choose to attribute it to a mistake and ignore it.

But which entry then is mistaken?

Those aren't actually considered to necessarily be in conflict these days. I think sex assigned at birth or something like that would probably be the relevant medical question.

modern medical forms do indeed ask for sex assigned at birth (or some variation on that) rather than gender, unless gender is specifically what they're after. And there really is very little variation since almost everyone is part of a hospital system nowadays and literally everyone does state/insurance interactions that require specific questions/etc.

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.

This exactly: gender and possession of a uterus are two very different things.

Medical forms tend to ask for sex, not gender.

> I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.

Did he ever write about what that trick is?

https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html

Other poster posted the same link but is getting downvoted so might get overlooked.

Tremendous essay. As someone else pointed out, this was back when Virginia was still an apartheid state, in the process of getting desegregation imposed on it; racial categorization was an important weapon of the state against some of its citizens, and not one they were going to give up easily in the face of some guy (correctly) declaring it nonsensical.

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.

My former boss has similar experience with TSA and customs. His father in law runs a farm back in his home country, and he usually goes once to visit whenever he is there. So, technically, he visited a farm which is one of the questions on most immigration forms. As a resident alien without a green card, he usually gets the 9th degree from TSA and customs. He has found, however, that if he checks this box they immediately start grilling him about the "farm" he says he stayed at. Once he explains "Oh no, it's a farmhouse. I visited my father in law for dinner one night. I didn't do any farm work or walk in the fields." they stamp his form and let him go. They never ask (or even check, as far as he can tell) anything else.

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.

On the declaration when entering Canada there’s the same question, along with this similar one: “ Meat, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, plants, flowers, wood, animals, birds, insects, and any parts, products or by-products of any of the foregoing.”

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.

From that article:

> 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".

By way of context, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia would not be settled until 1967.

(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

Virginia still required you to answer a race question to get a marriage license until 2019[1]. "Decline to Answer" wasn't an option, though in some counties "Octoroon" (meaning 7/8 white, 1/8 black), "Mulato" and "Aryan" were options[2].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/virginia-...

[2] https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/couples-sue-over-vi...

I never understood that obsession and unwillingless to give up that broken concept of race/ethnicity in the USA.

Large areas of the US were, in a very literal sense, built out of racism. While the most overt racism has mostly been pushed out of the public, legal and media spheres, large quantities remain as a sort of Superfund site just below the surface.

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.

This one actually has a programming related lesson at the end!

> The security people apparently found it impractical to obtain the hour or two of a programmer's time that would have been needed to fix the code

I laughed so hard.

> I will probably never know.

I wonder if the author got his answer through modern DNA ancestry.

Richard Feynman had a similar anecdote involving "skin tone".

This is an interesting point. I once had to fill out a security clearance form for a job at NASA detailing every individual I had had contact with outside of the US in the last 10 years. Since I've traveled extensively internationally, and couldn't even begin to mention all the people I've been in contact with, I just wrote an essay explaining my lifestyle. I expected to get denied, but I got security clearance faster than anyone else in the department had ever heard of.

I’ve always wondered, as an immigrant, how they would expect someone like me to answer that question.

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.

Probably because you didn't give them names to check!

> After about three months it stopped and a month later I was suddenly informed that the clearance had been granted. The other two people whose investigations were begun at the same time did not receive their clearances until several months later.

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")

Well, we do have "Nafri" (North AFRIcans), "Ausländer" (foreigners, but only used for "problematic" foreigners somehow), "Migrationshintergrund" (migration background, meaning everyone who is an immigrant, and anyone related to them for two generations, regardless of nationality), "Südländer" (initially people from the south, such as Italians, Greeks, Jugoslavians, but nowadays "people coming from the middle east"), and - now that the latter has become a charged term - "West-Asians", officially sanctioned by the Berlin police HQ as a non-racially-loaded term, but meaning the same.

The euphenism treadmill is strong over here as well.

I'm a White American living in Berlin, what word would the Berlin police put in my file??

Sozialflüchtling

... which translates to "refugee for healthcare/unemployment benefits/social benefits reasons", implying that they never paid a dime in, but happily take out of the pot nontheless.

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).

Well, if you get in contact with the police for any reason, you obviously are a problematic person, so "Ausländer".

These stories date from the 40s and 50s, and the author notes in one of them that the American forms now use ethnicity too. I suspect that at some point in the 40s Germany would have had a very extensive racial classification system.

reminds me of an old story where the development team was convinced they had a good product, but feared about management intermingling, so they intentionally put a not so good feature front and center for the manager to "remove", so that the rest of the program could pass the demo unchanged.

He did not put the concept of race under scrutiny. He used different and much more detailed classification of races.

I very much enjoyed the reading, but at the end... oh boy this person knows how to end a tale with a good cliffhanger!

> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process.

Gotta know this piece!

I have an example of the opposite: When I was quite young, I got into model rocketry as a hobby. Buying engines required a pyrotechnician's license, and I was too young to get one, so I talked both of my parents into applying for licenses. My dad had been in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos in WWII, so when he got to a question on the form that asked if he had any previous experience with explosives, he put something like "Yes, conventional and nuclear." His application took significantly longer than my mom's to process.

I was about to post the same.

Is this person still alive to tell the other story?

Les Earnest's original 1986 "bboard" posting of this story, and other related ones, are to be found in the dump of the Sail backup tapes archived at https://www.saildart.org/BB.MSG[MSG,LES]

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).

Yep, still alive. He plans on being shot in the back while fleeing from a jealous husband in 2043, according to his Stanford bio[1]

1 - https://web.stanford.edu/~learnest/

This is great. From one of those pages:

> 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.

During a very warm part of the Cold War, a relative in service in Germany got a visit from the services security agency. They put him in a room and grilled him and eventually asked “why didn’t you tell us you had relatives on the other side of the wall?”

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.

Been there, made this mistake. Recently pursued an SF-85 public trust for work and under the "have you ever accessed or attempted to access a computer system without prior authorization" question I detailed at length my exploratory research into penetration testing, including how I discovered (and reported) that a school computer system had _domain admin_ credentials of admin:password, among other privilege escalation bugs I had found and reported.

Yeah, that did _not_ get approved.

Some of the advice in the other comments is dead wrong ('don't mention it', 'lie', 'fudge things').

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).

I went through the process of getting TS clearance the summer after my senior year of college, and I made the mistake of mentioning on my form that I drank alcohol with friends every weekend, and that I sometimes drank more than a few drinks in one night. At the time I figured this was the norm for people my age and thought nothing of it.

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.

Off-topic, but:

> 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!

i was once sitting in coach class (never again) flying from heathrow to chicago when they handed out the visa waiver forms. for those of you that don't know, this enables people from the uk to enter the us on business or holiday, without a visa, and asks all sorts of incredibly inane questions, such as "have you ever attempted to overthrow the government of the usa by violence?", with yes/no checkboxes. the correct answer to all of them is "no".

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.

This quote...

> 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...

https://youtu.be/Le-uDcNlJO4?t=118

This sort of thing happened a lot with East Germans in the 90s etc. After unification, we of course all became Western Germans, with the right to travel to the US on the visa waiver program. You just had to fill out the I-90 form (and pay 6$ when crossing a land border). It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party. Well, most East Germans had to be member of the party, just in order to participate in society, so of course some would later put a mark there when travelling to the US. Border agents would usually just hand them a new form and tell them „you’re supposed to leave this blank“.

> It’s a relatively small form, but it does ask whether you’re criminal, used to be a nazi, terrorist… or member of a communist party.

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

> 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".

Nowadays there's the question "Have you ever violated any law related to possessing, using, or distributing illegal drugs?" [1].

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...

The earliest i94 I could find is from perhaps 2004 [1], and it doesn’t ask about membership of a communist party. It’s funny, I feel like I remember answering that question, and my first trip was 2002. it’s not an easy thing to search for nowadays when Google doesn’t quite work anymore and the old web is very hidden.

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20040708201659/http://immihelp.c...

Seems similar to me, people perceive questions differently I guess

This is not about subjective perception. This is literally about what words mean. You being performatively against communist party does not make "member of a communist party in eastern block" the same situation as "islamic terrorist".

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.

It's also commonly faced by Chinese immigrants to the U.S.

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.

I browsed the website and found this gem https://milk.com/wall-o-shame/body_odor.html

My email sig for years:

  > This electronic communication has been processed by the United 
  > States National Security Agency.

Avalanche rescue dogs are rewarded for their accurate reports, whether they find bodies or not.

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.)

I had a TS/SCI clearance when I was in the military, and I don't even recall being interviewed. I filled out some background information form and months later I was unceremoniously informed I had received it. Maybe it's just more stringent for civilians?

They will investigate your background, whether you have any ties to family abroad by which you could be blackmailed etc.

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.

How did she know the call was from an unknown number as a normal person in East Germany in the 80s or earlier? (Ie when it was still called East Germany)

I should have written Eastern Germany, it was long after unification and there were smart phones involved (but in the US security apparatus, Eastern Germany may still be suspect).

I don't think East Germany ever had caller ID

From what I remember many kids go through the stage devise various codes for "secret" communications. I "invented" one and used it to send messages to my school buddy when we were like 10-12 years old, do not remember exactly. And I was not alone.

my first "real" job was managing the public computer lab at college, and doing misc IT type tasks. Also part of my job was managing the workstudies that attended the lab and helped students. It was a pretty lightweight job and the workstudy positions had a fair amount of turn over as students moved on.

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.)

It's an ironic anti-aptonym that someone named "Les Earnest" was exceptionally truthful when filling out his security clearance.

Related:

What Not To Write On Your Security Clearance Form - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 - June 2010 (98 comments)

The illegals drugs question never made sense to me. It’s asking you to admit to something that won’t necessarily show up on a criminal background check if you haven’t ever been caught. Assuming you have been caught or are still using, other preemployment screens will catch that. So why not ask other questions like: “Have you ever murdered someone?” “Have you ever stolen?”

a) they want to know if you lie b) they dig far deeper than criminal background checks. They'll interview your friends and family and if all the stories don't align, you fail

pretty sure there is indeed a "are there any felonies you've committed for which you've never been convicted/indicted" question to cover that base

It's been awhile since I read it but I believe they ask you about all felony convictions whereas the use / non-convicted felonious activities itself only goes back like 7 years (perhaps not coincidentally is also statute of limitation for many federal crimes).

Did he ever publish the juicy sequel alluded to in the last paragraph?

This is the first of three stories available at https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html

* Successfully hacked US citizen on US soil, from US soil, without a warrant. All hops were domestic. SIGINT then provided to celebrity's hired PI's.

* 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

> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.

Wait, I want to hear THIS! (not interested in the security clearance, and not even a US person for that matter; just super curious!)

Previously (2010): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653

His hijinks remind me of Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, which I happen to be re-reading right now.

> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.

ok, now I want to binge-read the second story!

> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.

Talk about burying the lede!

Charming story nonetheless.

Long story short: it's perfectly OK to lie on governmental forms, provided you don't get caught.

Forms also lack any nuance, so mild funny things appear to be "serious transgressions worthy of the state apparatus".

Also discussed back in 2010:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1444653 (99 comments)

What is the provocative information you can put on your form to speed up the security clearance process?

Not exactly an encouraging story about the reliability of security clearance at the time!

I'm curious of the next article that describes the speed up process.

Ironically the webpage is not encrypted.

Ironically the page is not encrypted.

The date of the post is April 1st.

what not to write:

* successfully gaslighted target during the death of a parent using hacked iMessages

[dead]

[dead]