Slashdot Mirror
NASA Employees Fight Invasive Background Check
Electron Barrage writes "Longtime JPL scientists, many of whom do not work on classified materials, including rover drivers and Apollo veterans, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce today to fight highly invasive background checks, which include financial information, any and all retail business transactions, and even sexual orientation."
Because the rover drivers might use the rover to suicide-bomb.... something. That crater over there, maybe?
Space Agency spies on YOU!
... they want to make sure you're not buying a box of Depends ...
The Dancing Adult Diapers Jokes of War!
How the hell asking those kind of things helps prevent terrorism?(which is the stated goal according to the article) And anyway, even if it did help I wouldn't agree.
http://www.hspd12jpl.org/press.html
What use is the background check if you cannot detect crazy women in your employ?
If you peruse my website and/or posting history you'll see that I'm against almost everything the government does. That said . . .
I held a TS with SBI once upon a time. The main reason for background checks, as I understand it, is to ferret out any levers that could be used against you by hostile agent. Too much debt? We'll get you out of trouble if you give us info. Cheating on your wife? With a man?! It would be a shame if we had to call her. Think of your kids.
It's not that they're morally judging you, its that they're making sure that you're not unduly susceptible to influence.
It's not fair, but it's not about fairness.
-Peter
If you work on the same floor as someone handling classified information, you obviously have more chance to steal it than an outsider. And if you have a large gambling debt or are having a clandestine gay (or straight) affair unknown to your spouse, you are more likely to be motivated to sell some of your knowledge or reveal it to avoid damaging exposure. Basically to work on - or around - government secrets you better not have too many secrets of your own.
Just tell the snoops "You show me yours and I'll show you mine". Make it mandatory that everyone touching an individuals information has to disclose to that individual the same and just see how fast they'll back off.
Works for me when the stupids ask for a name and address (eg returning stuff).
Would you want those guys trying to build a rover by trying to screw bolts together with bolts? Or nuts with nuts? It takes both folks... and our friends in Homeland Security know best.
is a question asked on the Lifestyle polygraph test for a top secret clearance.
I don't know what it's going to take to get people to understand the extent to which the US government is being destroyed by conservatives.
The conservative movement is, was, and always will be about destroying the US government, by any means necessary. The fact that their junta has seized control of the White House makes it all the easier to persue their anti-US agenda.
When you realize the extent that they hate America, everything they have done since Nixon (and especially since 2000) makes perfect sense.
It's a shame that eventually anyone who doesn't want to allow the FBI to open a dossier on them and start monitoring all their past and present communications will only be allowed to flip burgars or clean toilets for money to live in this society. This is exactly the kind of treatment by society that breeds radical islamists. If you treat someone like a radical islamist, then that's what they will become.
everyone who wants to be a government employee should have a background check done. but first every political figure, all their staff, families, pets(why not) go first. and all made public. a sound policy. i like it.
'Got any dragons you need killed?'
This is a BS excuse. Anyone wanting to blackmail someone can always either dig up a truth, or manufacture a lie, that is good enough to "get the job done."
Want to make someone look like they're on the take? Deposit 20k in their bank account in cash. Then, a week later, before they get their bank statement, meet and greet them, and tell them what you've done, and how "gee, its going to look like drug money - do this shit for us, and we'll "fix it"". Better yet, make a lump-sum payment on their mortgage for them, when they're swimming in debt over their heads.
Want to make someone look like they're cheating on their spouse? Photoshop to the rescue. Especially if you have some unshopped pictures of the victim and the "sex object" elsewhere - for example, approach them in a restaurant, sit at their table for a minute asking for directions, and getting them to make a sketch.
Want to make someone look like a pedophile? Dump pics on their computer at work. (boot off usb, copy pics to drive, mission accomplished. Worst-case scenario, you'll have to connect the drive's cable to another machine as a slave for a few minutes).
There are ALWAYS ways to blackmail someone. If NASA believes that these sorts of background checks really work, they've been breathing too much vacuum.
The American government has gone full out crazy. They have no idea what they're even fighting for any more. Is it any surprise things will get worse?
What is truly sad is that America has brilliant and hard working people keeping the country afloat even while bearing the burden of collapsing oppression. This is what the Romans must have felt. And the French. And the Russians. And the Chinese.
Well, if you say you've never used illegal drugs, and then later they find out you used to smoke the occasional jazz cigarette with your highschool buddies, they can nail you for signing a false statement when they decide they want you in jail. Perfect! Just like that green form I fill in when I go to the USofA on business that asks if I'm a spy for a foreign government, or if I'm entering the US with the intention of committing a crime - like anyone would ever answer "yes". It's just so you have one more thing to nail you for (i.e. you didn't just enter the US with the intention of committing a crime, you also signed a false declaration) if they need to.
The biggest problem with our current administration is they have never been after the "terorists" as the call them their real agenda is findling the "enemy". For them the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with them. That does include terrorists but it also includes many of their own people, Republicans that disagree on specific issues. NASA has been a thorn in their side lately because a few have complained about supressing facts and have spoken out in support of global warming. I think this is far more about towing the party line than about terrorists. They want dirt on everyone. There's an underlying paranoia in everything they do. Freedom isn't about free to think like they do but that's the interpretation. It's not whether potential terrorist can influence them but can the government yank their chain when they need to. We live in very scary times and it's not the country I grew up in. In some ways it was actually far more conservative but ironically there was far more freedom in the 60s. We're increasingly under a microscope and knowledge is power and it's always about power. The factions in Iraq claim it's about religion but even the factions are dividing into smallwer and smaller sub groups fighting among themselves but at it's heart it's about power and control.
It's not just government agencies, and not after 9/11 either. This kind of practice happened even before 9/11 in corporate world.
.... yada yada. Whatever you can name it, it's on that piece of paper. The whole piece of paper is filled with these items. And the funny part was, for some checking, I had to foot up the expenses too, although it didn't say which ones.
In early 2001 (pre-9/11), the investors pulled out of our company and we went belly up. Two weeks later, I got an offer from a new startup, developing high-end IDS. I would be the second software engineer there. The offer was really good, with a good amount of stock options, and 3 weeks vacation. Except one thing: the background check.
The wording of that agreement was amazingly terrible. It is more than invasive. I kept that page until two years ago, finally threw it away with other junks. Basically, it stated that the company could do any background check, any time, on any thing, including but not just my previous and future phone logs (including personal phone), email log (including personal email), bank accounts, trading accounts, 401K, IRA, credit card expenses, credit check, newsgroup, web postings,
I didn't sign, and went to the president, had a nice and polite discussion with him. I told him that I understood their concern about security, but this agreement obviously went overboard. I don't mind "normal" background check, but not those mentioned there. He also agreed that it went a little too far. So he asked me to re-word it so that I could accept. I rewrote the agreement, using standard background check format and wordings from other companies which I could accept. The president thought it was fine with him.
But the corporate attorney, with the support of the investors, didn't want to hear about it. He said that engineers and technical people had too easy an access to implement backdoors in the system. It is this way, or the highway.
I chose the highway. The company recruiter (external hired recruiter, actually) kept calling me for two months, but I already started working at other place for almost two months by then.
Dear Astronauts and all other staff,
The NASA administration and the department of Homeland Security is deeply committed to the security and well being of all NASA property. This includes our bases, buildings, general infrastructure and experimental vehicles, as well as the people necessary* to operate them. (we will address the term necessary* later)
Regarding the strict security measures put in place recently, we would like to make a strong statement regarding the discomfort that these measures may have created within some members of our community.
These measures have been enforced to address three things mainly:
-no more suicide rovers on mars
-no more (potentially deadly) love triangles
-and as an IQ test to see whether all NASA staff can properly id the location of uranus
These procedures are now a part of company policy...
"COMPRENDE?"
thank you for your understanding and cooperation,
(I agree)
sign here
NASA.
P.D. The "taking your pants off for rectal examination" is not an official NASA policy (anymore) so please report any incident or abuse of this kind to your immediate supervisor.
They want to make sure they know what kind of people, past and present, the space program attracts. If you get a big enough sample, you can profile wanted vs. unwanted by the numbers. Corner cases are risky, so you don't have to be exact. Profiling makes sure you get the type of population that you want.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Then they came for the government employees.
Then they came for employees of government contractors and vendors.
And now that the only jobs I can have or transactions I can conduct are with the 1% of the population and market that refuses business with the government, I'm too broke to pay my property tax on my supposedly private property. So now they're coming for me.
For a Top Secret, you have to undergo a "lifestyle polygram". Nobody who has done this has told me exactly what the questions are, but they have suggested that they are extremely invasive.
Even for lesser clearances, they can (and will) interview neighbors, family and childhood friends.
This goes far beyond the public records and credit reports that private sector employers are demanding.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
a certain intelligence report that came out a few years ago saying that the greatest threat to U.S. security is internal?
When you keep that little morsel in mind, it's quite easy to see why the government is so rabidly trying to compartmentalize everyone.
Ron Paul is the cure.
He licked my bag last night pre-flight
Queero hour for a trans
And I'm gonna be high as a kite by then
I urinate so much I'll need depends
My ass is dressed in lace
On such a shameless flight
And I think we're gonna screw for a long time
Till touch down brings me round again to find
I'm not the girl they think I am at home
Oh no no no I'm a rocket girl
Rocket girl burning out her fuse up here alone
Mars ain't the kind of place to fondle kids
My dick is cold as hell
And there's nothing like Uranus if you did
And all these morals I don't understand
Just a blow job for a freak
A rocket girl, a rocket girl
And I think we're gonna screw for a long time...
&, we have no secrets, we tell each other everything....
4 646406827 [google.com]
previously, we told each other:
mynuts won 'off t(r)opic'???
(Score:-1, Offtopic)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 30, @10:22AM (#20411119)
eye gas you could call this 'weather'?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=800488111
be careful, the whack(off)job in the next compartment may be a high RANKing corepirate nazi official.
previous post:
whoreabull corepirate nazi felons planning trips
(Score: mynuts won, robbIE's 'secret' censorship score)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 01, @12:13PM (#20072457)
in orbit perhaps? we wouldn't want to be within 500 miles of the naykid furor at this power point.
better days ahead?
as in payper liesense hypenosys stock markup FraUD felons are on their way out? what a revolutionary concept.
from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
Bottom line is that any prohibitive approach will fail.
IF you screen to exclude, say, gay employees because they are a security risk that will not stop many getting through the screen where they will be even more prone to being blackmailed.
It is far easier, and more effective, to be accepting of gay employees. That removes the blackmail pressure... and means that you don't exclude people that might be great for the job.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have a masters in public administration, so I'd say I have some insight into these checks. The main problem with them is that both the Government Accountability Office and the Office of Management and Budget have failed to define clear standards and/or monitor these programs.
Below is my analysis of the issue, but my recommendations are simple:
1) A list of excluding conditions should be posted/linked in any and all federal hiring postings in the same section they state full mental/health record release is required. A link to an exceptions and appeals process should also be included. There is no security risk in posting this information since if you're requiring the records be disclosed, then you're probably doing a full background check and maybe even a lie detector -- "but i dont have any records" isn't going to work.
2) Credit check usage should be linked and explained with CLEAR EXEMPTIONS for disabilities, workforce transition, college students...wait...this list goes on and on. How about they just state what the fuck disqualifies someone and provide an appeals process? After all, if you have poor credit due to external circumstance and a perfect criminal record, doesn't that make you less of a risk?
3) Lie detector requirement should be stated (they usually aren't) and general areas of inquiry should be explained up front. Currently they provide you no information...so you could get hired and could be fired 6 months later for doing pot 4 years ago. Making the general questions public is important to guarantee oversite and avoid racial/class bias in questioning. I would LOVE to see how quick the process changed if someone changed the questioning on theft to include "digital property or works."
-----------
Security check effectiveness is difficult to measure, but that does not excuse the lack of clear guidelines and the near universal requirement for investigations. As a result of the lack of guidance, many of these "security" checks may, amusingly, provide cover for discrimination against the disabled and racial minorities. There is a reason why people are advised against doing credit checks on non-financial positions -- they may lead to a pattern of discrimination that is in violation of federal law. For the uninformed, federal law prohibits any system that _tends_ to discriminate against people based on race.
The problem with these checks is thus that they discourage qualified people from applying and also allow hiring managers significant wiggle room on who to hire/fire. They provide three areas of problems--credit checks, lie detectors, and mental health disclosures.
1) In terms of hiring, most agencies state that they require a credit check--even those that don't do an FBI background. And amusingly, it's usually placed right under the non-discrimination clause. I have never seen any information on how the credit information is used -- How do you deal with persons with disabilities? Persons with no insurance? Poor people that were victims of predatory lending? Anyone with a sudden family calamity? Most importantly, is a credit check relevant at all for someone that has been under or unemployed and is trying to get a job??!
Simply put, the agency provides no information on why the check is necessary, what the appeals process is, or how it will be used. In addition, the agency puts the rating decision in the hands of private companies that have a history of discriminating based on location (redlining, oooo check cashing stores, predatory credit "deals" targeted at the lower class). In addition, a credit check is problematic because lower income people are less likely to watch or contest incorrect information.
2) Lie detector tests. NOTHING is disclosed about what these cover, how far they go back, or what the appeals process is. Grow up in the ghetto? Try crack when you were 15? Are you really going to apply that secret clearance job at 26? Guidelines should be clearly stated to make certain that everyone is on the same level an
Dear NASA Scientists,
I know you like the collegial atmosphere out at JPL. I know you like being able to have your work peer-reviewed. In short, I know that you like the lives that some of you have lead for the last several decades. Unfortunately, you and I both know that things are changing, largely at the request of your own government.
I know you don't like the new security checks. No matter how squeaky-clean your lives are, or how much you love your country, there are always some skeletons in the closet that can come back to haunt you. Also, the rules are always changing - what was unacceptable twenty years ago but acceptable ten years ago is now unacceptable again. Nobody should have to live like that.
My organisation already knows all your secrets. They weren't that hard to find - as you've probably already realised, money talks. And you know what? We don't care. That's right, we don't give a shit that you cross-dress, have sex with livestock, eat your own boogers or have a gambling problem. (Actually, on that last point, we do - and treat it as a medical problem with treatment covered entirely under our health plan, and our financial planners can help you get your life back together too. Same deal with drugs.)
From our secret base of operations somewhere south-east of Florida we plan World Domination. Our Weather Machine and Death Ray divisions are approaching the deployment phase, but there's still a pressing need for talent in the Heavy Launch, Orbital Habitat and Orbital Weapons Platform divisions.
Our employees receive world-class free health care, six weeks paid vacation each year and a pension plan that makes the GDP of many small countries look pitiful - and there's lots of room for advancement, so your pension payout could actually *be* Lichtenstein or Peru. We also pay all re-location expenses, and have great schools a short submarine ride away. We have a wide range of recreational and sporting facilities. We are family-friendly, with common-sense and generous carers leave provisions. On the subject of family-friendly, we have a petting zoo. We also have a less family-oriented heavy-petting zoo, but we don't usually like to talk about it.
If you think it's time for a change and that you can make a difference, reply here - don't worry, although your government will find you we've paid their operatives enough to make sure we get to you first. No pressure - we won't tell your dirty little secrets, but then, we don't have to. The choice is entirely yours.
Sincerely,
Xavier F. Megalomaniac
Supervillain
P.S.
We have administrative, support and security
roles available too - and leather and spandex
are only required on formal occasions.
Filling out a security clearance comes with a nice disclaimer that if you lie at all on the 50 pages that follow, they can prosecute you and send you to PMITA prison. And yeah you have to sign the sheet acknowledging that. And you have to acknowledge it to the investigator who gives you the nice face to face interview as well.
Checking "yes, I have" does not automatically remove you from the clearance pool. Answering "Yes, I currently do" likely will though. I know several people with TS that answered yes. Not as huge of a deal as you might think.
Anyone need a Jr. Business Analyst in the SF area?
I so have no interest in working for lazy bureaucrats. Just point me toward a hard-working team that is honest (i.e. out for the money). And yeah, I know I should have gotten an MBA.
Once the good sheeple are the only ones left, there won't be anything intelligent coming out of the organization anyway. Learning new things often involves thinking outside the current bounds, and people that can do that don't always restrict it their professional lives. Think about how few of the team at Los Alamos would have qualified to work for the new regime (for example, Dr. Feynman's admitted reaching beyond his "compartment" for information).
On top of which, many of the "pressure points" only exist because the thugs in the security services are perturbed about them. Homosexuality is one of the prime examples. It is only a "problem" because the asshats who invent the rules have made it one. If you weren't in danger of losing your job because you've "been there, done that", then it wouldn't be something that the "other guys" could threaten to expose.
I should note that the US gov't is exempt from the civil rights act. It basically says the president should do what he can using methods he chooses within the federal work force. Regardless, it doesn't absolve the bureaucracy of equity issues.
Anyway, that's why the lawyer is taking the privacy/search tack.
Perhaps the ESA needs some good rocket scientists, clearly NASA has decided it doesn't.
This sort of thing is affecting a lot more than NASA. I know of a few researchers who have gone to the private sector because over the top security took more of their time than research did or they simply didn't want everything short of a colonoscopy every day just to get to their office.
That on top of driving stem cell researchers out of the U.S. to drive a political agenda.
In the case of the JPL scientists, if 40 years of service including the Apollo program (which I'm sure the USSR would have liked to infiltrate and sabotage) hasn't proven their loyalty, nothing will.
This is an application of all the government collected and cross-referenced data (including Echelon, Carnivore, Poindexter's MATRIX and TIA, Gonzales' TSP, and all the rest we never heard about) plus all the "accidentally" leaked personal info, data mined to determine by association whether someone is a reliable Republican voter droid. They get your "background check" info, and then you stop getting promoted and eventually leave if you're not a "loyal Republican".
Hello, Karl! Go Cheney yourself!
--
make install -not war
The current background check (on everybody who works at a federal facility - not just JPL) are pretty lenient:
http://editthis.info/images/jpl_rebadging/a/ab/S uitability_Matrix_mods.pdf
You have nothing to worry even if you are a regular pot-smoker, or were convicted of not paying your taxes, or committing any car-related offense short of vehicular manslaughter. I mean - Assault, Harassment, Forgery -- none get you into column "C"....
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
My friend went through this kind of invasive background check when she was a plaintiff in a drug-company malpractice lawsuit. The drug company went all the way back to her childhood, interviewing old next-door neighbors and her elementary school teachers, looking for any dirt they could find on her. Her twenty-year military records were also subpoenaed.
The only reason it didn't bother her was that she's one person in this world who has absolutely no dark secrets, and the drug company eventually settled out of court, because they couldn't find anything to use against her.
It seems that NASA is implementing PIV-II. Those smart cards mentioned in TFA look like those mentioned in the FIPS-201 standard.
Basically, everyone getting a PIV card has to pass a background check. However, it seems that asking those scientists and engineers about all that data mentioned in TFA is a bit excessive. The standard has an informational appendix (appendix C) that specifies what sort of checks should be done. It even specifies two levels of checks for different security levels. Looks like someone got a little bit too anal when deciding what checks to do. The checks mentioned in FIPS-201 seem reasonable, though. Can anyone that knows about background checks explain what they are exactly?
The cards themselves seem pretty good. It is pretty clear that the designers of FIPS-201 cards do not trust the wireless interface, making all biometric/sensitive information available only on the wired interface, unlike those e-passports every government is promoting. Pretty interesting reading material.
GPG 0x1B479C78
Seriously, have you ever been on the hiring side of the table? Posted a really desirable, salary- and benefits-heavy, mid-career type of job? There's this phenomenon where you get 4000 applicants for two positions. In that situation, anything that can be legally done to narrow that field, can conceivably be approved by the board. Doesn't make it right, but it's really no mystery.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I lucked out by not having to do it this time. Yeah it's invasive, but unlike them I work at the Johnson Space Center, I myself don't have access to classified data, but I'm just the other side of a wall from it. To me getting the background check and the low security clearance I have is sort of a mark of prestige and reliability. Honestly I wouldn't mind having a few more background checks if it means promotions, better pay, and more prestige. I'm at NASA for crying out loud, I'm glad they don't let just any schmuck off the street work here without some kind of clearance.
On another note, I don't recall my 85P form asking me if I was a homo or not, and I also don't recall retail transaction request. They did ask how much of what kind of debt I was in, I'm guessing to see if I was desperate for money or not. Yes they did ask about illegal drug use, but there was a time limit on it. I don't recall, but it wasn't to many years, four or so. All in all, I don't think much of the form was unreasonable, sure it was a pain in the ass to fill out, but it wasn't unreasonable.
If you want to see the form for yourself, here it is.
As for being at the JPL instead of the Cape or Johnson? Suck it up. This is for every federal position. Expect your postal carrier to be grouching about the form to.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
... and put Burt Rutan in charge! :o)
The poster obviously read TFA, and noticed that the objection these people have is that they don't have clearances, don't want clearances, but are being expected to grant access to the same level of information about their lives as if they DID have clearances.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
I see this as a simple issue of psychology.... human psychology.
...because one parent happened to be born KING? ...and because the previous king was able to bribe a lot of civil servants to support him? ...and because the civil servants want the next king to carry on the cushy lifestyle they have managed to attain by supporting the system?
...regardless of the fact that it is the government that became an agent of the terrorist and starts to terrorize sectors of the population through things like background checks and personal attacks? Do we have McCarthyism all over again?
As I see it - various jobs attract people of certain character.
Science for instance will attract people who are naturally curious.
Computer programming should be expected to attract people who like games and puzzles and are good at dealing with detail.
Administration should be expected to attract people who like to tell other people what to do. One would expect to see a lot of control freaks in managment and administration.
If so, then how would one gain and excersize control? How would one keep control. Would it be expected that a great deal of paranoia might build up in people of this nature? I think so.
When one combines paranoia with a desire to control other people it is perfectly natural to expect that they might like to dig up any dirt they can on others.
Police states are known for this.
One could extrapolate and suggest the USA is turning itself into a police state. If so then it isn't the worst known in human history - far from it. But all forms of police states are bad and I think we are seeing evidence of these bad traits as people strive to gain power over others by using totally unnecessary, possibly dirty, and definitely abhorant tactics. These overzealous background checks certainly fall into this characterization.
Its an abuse of power. But then this is what police states do. They abuse their power and when they get challenged they abuse people's rights in order to retain power.
One way to look at this is when a group of babies are born - what law of nature or God says that one or more has a god given right to control the other babies? How would one measure and determine at the outset who should be that alpha baby? What of when they grow up? At what point in time did it become ok for the alpha baby to step forth and declare that everyone has to listen to what he says - that he has the right to order others around? Did it occur when he became a cop? Did it occur when he became a lawyer or a judge?
Should it happen by birth?
IMHO people are NOT born with the right to control other's lives. Sometimes they gain this power during life. If so then usually its because they covent power and those who gain the most power are the ones willing to spend all their days and nights politicing to get it. IE. They are control freaks.
Next we have the political and administrative systems which have been designed first to accomodate the control of the majority by sometimes a fanatical minority. What we see by these ruthless and totally unnecessary background checks is merely an extension of this.
Its an ugly situation and I see it as a symptom of the USA becoming more of a police state which flogs threats of terrorism as a justification for what they do. If so then the terrorists are winning because this is exactly what they want to happen. Would it be true to observe that if the terrorists create a situation where the average Joe and Josephene in middle class America loses his and her freedoms, that the terrorist has succeeded
Combine this with the apparent fact that government jobs at all levels are filled with people who seek security first and are willing to kiss ass like it never gets kissed in private industry. When you have a large number of administrative people who love to follow rules just for the sake of rules and are too concerned about job security to stand up for what's right... then you have a receipe for exactly what we have taking place now.
They work for Caltech, or are contractors. When I worked at JPL my paycheck (back when we had such) said "California Institute of Technology."
Well, if you think about it, it makes sense.
You cannot deport somebody for being a communist or a nazi once they are inside the US, because of our Freedoms. So the only way to get rid of them is to either deny them their visa to enter beforehand (if they say they were a commie/nazi), or deport them for lying on their immigration paperwork (if they said 'no' but lied).
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
You are correct, and this is a subtilety 99.99% of people are missing (and this is old news, its been public for a month or more now) ... however, they are funded by NASA money, so they play with NASA's ball or they go home. In my opinion (I too work at NASA, MSFC, and no, I didn't have to do half the shit this site mentions, I think a lot of it is hyperbole ... but what do I know?)
and here they told us we won the cold war
Everything you mentioned is traced:
Deposits are traced and surveillance photos taken at all deposit points and ATMs. Getting mortgage account information is not trivial; unusual payments are noted and the presumed payer questioned. Photoshopping is trivially obvious; any attempt would not correspond to reality and would most likely be held up for laughter. To put pedophilia on someone's computer you must first possess pedophelia(a crime). How do you gain access to their office computer? Most internet access is logged, so how did the pics get there? (Ans., someone put them there, i.e., you)
Your suggestions are laughably adolescent. There's not always a way to blackmail someone. Possibly embarrass, but not blackmail. To blackmail someone, you must find something that really happened that the victim really, truly doesn't want revealed.
And it is dangerous to attempt blackmail. Almost everyone has a "friend" or "acquaintance" who could be counted on to remove a blackmail threat permanently. Only a tightly-knit organization can effectively blackmail. Even that is iffy and more a matter of nerves and a question of the willingness to risk and endure harm than anything else.
Blackmailers get little sympathy from law enforcement, living as they do near the bottom rung of crime, below pedophiles, just under identity thieves.
At least where jobs in the government are concerned, if you were going to be discriminated against, you wouldn't be filling out the clearance questionnaire-- you would have been stopped loooong before that point, especially considering that the lowest clearance, the NAC (National Agency Check), costs about $10,000 to complete. Colleges, contractors, and vendors foot the bill to clear their employees; direct government employee clearances are on the taxpayer.
Every government position that has access to dangerous materials, sensitive/proprietary information, or responsibility of human life requires such checks, and rightly so to protect the public and the Union. Anyone who has worked in the government is quite used to the clearance process. To make matters "worse" for you privacy doom and gloomers, it occurs at regular intervals-- every 10 years for Secret, 7 years for Top Secret, and 5 years for clearances beyond that.
Sure, its uncomfortable to have a stranger rummage through your life as everyone has skeletons they'd prefer to hide, but its not worth sweating bullets about. Considering that the goal is to exclude obvious risks to the public, I'm more or less okay with the occasional privacy reinvasion to maintain my clearance knowing that the same process is going to hopefully keep John Q. Smackhead from becoming a reactor safety manager at the nuke plant in the next county.
Maybe if people understood the process...
After completing the encyclopedic questionnaire, a team of investigators is sent to verify your answers-- very often these will be local people that have retired from law enforcement who are contracted by DSS. If its your first clearance, an upgrade, or if clarifications are needed after the precursory review, you'll also sit down with an investigator for an interview where the two of you go over the questionnaire. They'll proceed scour PUBLIC record and talk to your references, neighbors, and acquaintances (heck, during my first TS clearance, the investigator spoke to my 2nd grade teacher!) Once all of the information is assembled, you are assessed as a whole person by DSS. Adjudicators (employed directly by DSS) look at the following in order of importance:
-Honesty in answers versus the investigative findings (you didn't report that you had declared Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in 1997? Whoops!)
-Accuracy of your answers versus the investigative findings (correct addresses, date ranges, employment history, account numbers, etc. mostly to determine if there's a deliberate attempt to misdirect or hide aspects of your history)
-Immediate red flags (habitual substance abuse, uncontrollable debt, felony convictions, etc)
-Travel/residence for the scope of the investigation (frequent visits to a 'non-friendly' foreign country not of your origin or without familial association)
Its the adjudicator's job to generate a mean risk assignment to your case based on these criteria. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to have a spotless history to obtain a clearance. As long as you are HONEST and UPFRONT about your history, there's little that will stop you from obtaining it. 75% of clearance requests that are rejected are due to that alone. Many of those rejections get a second chance to come clean, as it were, and ultimately receive a clearance assignment.
Regardless of rejection, you are entitled to appeal the final decision. ALWAYS. In that event, I believe a team of 3 adjudicators (not including the original) independently assess the package with the majority ruling.
Its a rough approximation of how trustworthy a person you are. That's all.
Now, that's all fine and dandy for the government sector, but what about the corporate world?
I don't necessarily agree with some of the extensive garbage that is foisted upon corporate folk, especially for positions that don't justify such extensive checking, but it comes down a point that I mentioned earlier.
Investigations are EXPENSIVE. A potential employer isn't going to i
The crazy astronaut who attempted to abduct and do who knows what with rubber gloves, mallet, hunting knife, tarp, duct tape etc. embarrassed the heck out of NASA.
Embarrassed as in having Congress threaten to cut funding embarrass.
When you have a person on your staff drive 500 miles in diapers to do something to her romantic rival, you have a problem.
Management solution: intrusive background checks!
The real reason this is what NASA Administrators want is that it's perfect CYA! "Why of course we had no indication they were crazy! We checked everything out!"
NASA has had VERY bad pub -- "drunken astronauts at launch" (they weren't btw but no one will remember that). Or the bizarre diaper wearing Astronaut driving to "talk to" or what ever it was she wanted to do to her romantic rival.
No NASA Administrator faces any consequences for not getting the best people, for making working life at NASA hell, or doing something that has no meaningful relationship to winnowing out nutcases who bring bad pub to the organization.
Meanwhile they face SERIOUS (as in Congress presses NASA to fire them) consequences for not following a CYA procedure.
Once you understand the incentives of the system (recall that Congress reacts badly to any media firestorm, no matter how inaccurate, and Congress funds and therefore effectively fires and hires NASA Administrators) you'll understand the otherwise incomprehensible measures folks take.
[As a sidenote, most folks don't understand the sheer power that Congress has. Presidents have unless they have LARGE Congressional majorities (think FDR) astonishingly little power over the permanent bureaucracy. Presidents may come and go, but Teddy Kennedy has been a Senator for example since the mid Sixties, around 40 years, and Orrin Hatch since 1977, around 30 years. NASA, the Pentagon, most other agencies ignore the President and follow Congress -- regardless of Party btw. Congress of course is risk-averse to the extreme and remarkably uninformed about who they oversee and fund.]
When everyone was paranoid about communism, JPL ran background checks on all of the members of the "suicide squad", the scientists who started the rocketry program at Cal Tech, basically the first people in America to get anywhere with rocketry. They didn't like what they found (some members were actually communists (Weinbaum, Summerfield), others just too into the occult(Jack Parsons, friend of Alister Crowley)), so they took away their clearances(revoking clearances:rocket scientist::excommunication:Catholic), and lost their experts.
One of the people who had their clearances revoked was the first "Robbert Goddard Professor of Jet Propulsion" at Cal Tech, Dr Tsien. I'm sure I don't have to explicitly mention that he was a total genius. They arrested him and then wouldn't let him leave the country for five years so that his scientific knowledge would be obsolete. As soon as he was allowed to, he moved back to China.
In China Tsien was very well respected (respecting intelligence is an archaic custom of some Asian cultures), he became Chairman Mao's tutor in science, and went on to supervise the development of China's ICBM program. So when the US gets nuked by the China, we'll have American paranoia to thank.
That's one thing that the US can make better than the Chinese ever will. We are great at making enemies out of friends.
"The biggest problem with our current administration is they have never been after the "terorists" as the call them their real agenda is findling the "enemy". For them the enemy is anyone who doesn't agree with them. That does include terrorists.."
not true. bush and bin laden agree on gay rights, abortion, the death penalty and the place of religion in society to name a few things.
This challenge and response session going on in this /. posting frenzy is a veritable "How-To" manual for blackmailing people.
There are ideas on how to actually beat background checks and blackmail an honest person into doing what you want, then people pointing out the holes in THOSE ideas, and then more refining and paring down, etc...
I'm sure that there would be claims of "Oh, everyone already knows all this stuff"... except, if everyone already knows all this stuff, why go through the trouble of repeating what you know to be common knowledge? If everyone already knows it, why is it being refined down? How can one person be wrong, if everyone already knows what he is saying is true? If you are correcting him, and everyone alrady knows your correction, why wasn't he included in that "everyone" part of "everyone already knows what I'm saying"... doesn't that prove that everyone doesn't already know these things?
Does everyone here already know how to make a landmine with household materials? Should I describe in detail that procedure so we can hash out the particulars of exactly what kind of shrapnel would do the most damage, and what thickness of plastic would be mot likely to stand up over time? Anyone want to argue about Freedom of Information, and how I should Indeed be posting these instructions so we can discuss them at length?
I noticed the sig in there, that ACs are not worth reading, because they are hiding their identities. I also noticed an AC post by an employee of a company involved in these background checks. He said he was posting AC because of these checks. Because posting here cou ld have a detrimental affect on his employment. Especially if I post about how to make a landmine. Especially because of posts on exactly how to successfully blackmail an innocent person.
Ignorance is universal. Especially among those of us who think we know it all. It is ignorant to think that there is responsible, intelligent discussion going on in this thread, when it is an instruction manual being built post by post that would screw over the people that are the target of the initial article that started the discussion. You might try to argue that in this case that being warned is being armed. I say that is ignorance. Noone can protect themselves against everything, even and especially if, what they are attempting to protect themselves against cannot be defended against.
Face it. If it could be proven that someone took place in this thread or even spent time reading it, and then something happened to them where they were being blackmailed with false information, it could and WOULD look like they were guilty, due to the same forewarning that we might now be claiming was a good thing.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
However, being a practising homosexual, or just enjoying anal with your girlfriend gets you into "C". Nice intolerant culture you have.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"Good evening. We are going to make Plutonium from household materials"
- Crazy Professor introducing that night's cooking show on Weird Al's TV station (professor is actually an alien), from an Al Yankovich movie.
Maybe they are digging nasa personnel to find out if there are any aliens among them ?
Read radical news here
it was a "privilege to work within the federal system, not a right
A privilege the best and brightest will be passing to some sucker who's willing to put up with the anal probe background check. I've dropped customers because they tried to layer all kinds of process on top of just getting in the door. When I can bill my time without jumping through those hoops, what's my incentive to stick around? Because I get to do cool stuff working for NASA? That might give them an edge all things being equal but running your own company is pretty cool, too. And you get your own parking space.
And just why does someone's sexual orientation make them unfit to compute satellite orbits? Because they might be in the bathroom tapping their foot while the rover goes over a cliff? Grow up already.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I hope they mean:
[ ] Male
[ ] Female
Hello Mr Griffin. It is a privilege to employ these exceptional engineers, not a right. If you make their lives difficult, they will leave.
Employees are not sheep to be slaughtered. They are stakeholders of your organisation and you have to take their views into account when you draw new policies.
oh well, it was of course Tribune, not Tribute. I made a typo.
I recently was on a plane coming from a trade show and I got into a long conversation with the guy next to me, who worked for this company at about the same level as I was applying for, and also in engineering. I told him I had turned down a job offer and that the IP clauses in the employment were one of my main concerns. His response was "But isn't that the industry standard?"
This is a phrase I hear from most people when I tell them this story. Yes, it may be the industry standard. But it's an industry standard because no one complains about it, or protests it, or turns down jobs because of it. The thing is, it mostly affects the most talented, energetic, and entrepreneurial engineers - who might actually create something of value outside of normal business hours.
I applaud these people for pushing back. Sure, working in the federal system is a "privilege". But the employers have an obligation to run the federal system in a way that produces the best results for the country. If you treat your employees like mechanical cogs, to be inspected and tuned and replaced, your not going to get those kinds of results.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Your best and brightest are different from the general population. They can be a little fringe, and that's OK. If they're too fringe, then they have to work at Ames.
Lets have these sort of investigated rules for ANY job, because you 'never know'.
That way we can have even more people out of work for the government to support ( with our tax dollars ) as few people can pass a deep enough probe into their personal life. Hell, why not even toss in DNA 'predispositions' too.
phfft.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As you stated, to ensure you cannot easily be influenced to divulge classified information.
Laws and social rules have side effects in addition to their state purposes. Sometimes these side effects are more significant than the original explicit reason for the rule.
The clearance process has some other side effects I think are useful to the powers that be:
1. They acclimate people to the nation that highly invasive reviews of personal habits by the government are not only acceptable, but are a good thing
2. They make folks with a clearance think twice about their private behavior, for concern that it might affect their clearance. Example was the case made elsewhere, where someone bought a truck "over their salary grade" and lost his clearance, being forced to play janitor. Suddenly "am I going too much in debt" or "should I befriend this non-US citizen" become concerns, even though these are both perfectly legal things to do.
This is similar in effect to much airline security - it slowly acclimates people to invasions of privacy, and discourages behavior and attitudes that may be perfectly legal but are considered "troublesome"
In short, it is creating a populace that is willing to accept diminishing privacy and is willing to curtain their private behavior for fear it will reflect badly on them in the future.
This is why clearances have been (and should be) restricted to cases where there is provable (not speculative) harm to national security from mishandling information.
This is why requiring clearances from increasing groups of individuals who do not handle this (explicitly labeled) information is bad.
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
How long before you need these background checks simply to work. After all, EVERY job out there has the potential to be used by "terrorists" for something or other.
Cleaning toilets? Toilet bomb! Poisoning the water system! Removing posters from telephone poles? Telephone pole bomb! Possibility of destroying communications infrastructure! Oh my god, the twin telephone poles! Mailman? Anthrax risk! Cleaning gum off public sidewalks? Sidewalk slime bomb! Call hazmat and close off a 5 mile radius! Oh no! What's that, a light-bright thingy on the sidewalk! Increase the radius to 10 miles and call in the national guard.
Personally, I give it maybe 10-20 years, then the control will be complete.
The astronauts are only complaining because they've either A) given up on the invasive advances of their peers (read love affair) or B) gotten bored of hooking up with other people from space camp.
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
By the nature of thier handling classified information they have known this is a part of the job.
... and if you are a politician then your life is an open book in all areas like if you are soliciting sex in a bathroom... ... and if you are someone who handles classified information you know your will have occassional checks on if that trust is well placed.
If you are a hollywood star then you know you will deal with camera weilding stalkers...
There are costs to every job and if they didn't want to deal with it then they should work solely in the private sector without classified documents.
The URL "http://editthis.info/images/jpl_rebadging/a/ab/S uitability_Matrix_mods.pdf" returns a 404, not found, error.
Yikes! Saw the error, there was a gratuitous space. http://editthis.info/images/jpl_rebadging/a/ab/Sui tability_Matrix_mods.pdf works.
I always thought that for clearance-related background checks, youthful indiscretions were not a concern as long is they are all currently water under the bridge.
Q: Ever do anything sexually deviant?
A: Well, when I was in college I participated in the occasional gangbang.
Q: Jumpin' Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick! Your wife know about this?
A: She was the woman.
Q: Oh. Well, all right then.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Gee...I guess I'm unfit as an employee because I've never taken out a bank loan or had a credit card. "Sorry...we only hire people who compromise their financial security by spending money they don't have."
The bad part of this is not that they are giving them background checks, and as for the level of invasiveness, well, if you don't like it, don't apply. There isn't anything you can do about it, and just because it's wrong won't stop the government, especially not this administration (as if he was smart enough to understand the problem, anyway). First of all, they have no right whatsoever to look into their sexual orientation. I don't know how that helps things, anyway. Are we saying that if they are gay they aren't welcome, or that we have no evidence of gay terrorists, so welcome aboard? More to the point, exactly who cares? Even more to the point, why does the government care? Second of all, is there any reason to do checks on those that have already been part of the program for decades, or on those that have been retired for decades? Now, the article didn't say that definatively, however, if the employees being checked out worked on the Apollo program, which was in the 1960s, then they would have already blown the place to hell if that was what they were inclined to do. This is not for security purposes, okay? Normal background checks are. This is the government (or agents thereof) using it's clout to dig up dirt on people that they don't have any right to know. It goes along with the ability to illegally wiretap, take phone records without subpeona, detain you indefinately on suspicion of subversion while they gather (or plant) evidence to support their theory. We are losing our freedoms, and this should illustrate the point nicely. There is no security gained in doing a background check on the dude in the corner office that has been working for the company for 50 years, okay? Anyone who believes that there is is either totally deluded or has way too much faith in the government and those they associate with.
Wasn't implying anything other than, in order to get NASA funding you gotta meet NASA regs. Don't like it, get funded and provide services to someone else. He who has the gold...
(and you can keep the people with 'lifestyle preferences', thanks...)
Might want to doublecheck your facts on the speed limits. Yes a national speed limit was imposed in 1974 to bring it down to 55MPH. This was put into effect by Nixon, not Carter. In 1987 it was raised to 65MPH and in 1995 was repealed all together. So currently there is no national speed limit. I do not know where your getting a 40MPH limit, unless it is on a local road and not a highway or expressway. Currently in the US, speed limits are imposed by each state government not the federal governmnet.
e d_Law and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_U nited_States
In reference I found the following, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Maximum_Spe
that they keep having to arrest/un-cuff/whatever that's always in a compromising position and saying not to judge him because they don't know him and as a US American it is his right to do whatever he wants in private with other US Americans if they so choose to and such. Thank you.
Someone hates these cans.
How timely. I'm on contract to the government and have a clearance, though not high enough to require a polygraph. My questionnaire asked about past drug use, but I was not required to submit to drug screening. My corporate employer also did not require drug testing. I've been with them several years.
Now my employer is under a subcontract with a much larger, very well-known IT company, and they say all their employees and contractors (and subcontractors) must be proven drug-free. So suddenly it's "take the drug test or you can't work for us".
I'm curious as to which IT companies require drug screening. I'm not really sure why the requirement rankles me so - I never was much of a drug user, and what I did do was over 15 years ago. It's just that it seems demeaning and invasive. I was a trusted employee for years, suddenly I have to remove myself from some cloud of suspicion?
And what does it benefit the IT company to be able to say they drug-screen their contractors, if the government who uses them in classified situations doesn't care enough to require it?
If all the biggies in IT doing government/military work require this, I may as well resign myself to it, but it sucks.