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Comment by leroy_masochist | Hacker News Reader

> Have you ever violated a software license, or streamed something with someone else's account? Those should technically be honor violations

They make a HUGE deal about this in lifestyle polygraphs. It's completely asinine and drives significant attrition of strong candidates for selective jobs in the IC/SOF world.

We need a complete overhaul of the puritanical mindset with which the powers-that-be judge prior behavior. Downloading porn from Limewire when you were a 19-year-old college sophomore should not be stopping people from advancing in selective processes; nor should a history of having used hard drugs, hallucinogens, or marijuana >10x (on the latter I gather they're evolving given current state laws).

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Downloading porn on lime wire doesn't stop you from advancing in the process with a polygraph.

Doing hard drugs doesn't stop you in advancing with the selection process, or even prevent you from getting a clearance.

LYING about it, hiding it, or attempting to cover it up or show ANY KIND of dishonesty is what prevents you from continuing in the process.

Nobody has ever been denied a clearance because they downloaded porn on limewire, or pirated movies or videos, assuming they admit to such, and do not indicate a desire or intent to continue in the behavior.

> LYING about it, hiding it, or attempting to cover it up or show ANY KIND of dishonesty is what prevents you from continuing in the process.

This is false. Polygraph tests do not detect lies.

The polygraph is pseudoscientific snake oil, used to perpetuate fear.

https://antipolygraph.org/

This is a bit of a non sequitor. Parent didn't mention polygraphs, and the lying is which prevents you from moving forward. At the same time, I concur that polygraphs are not fully accurate measures of lying.

Parent mentions polygraph in the first line.

Regardless of the argument that has long been going on over how accurate polygraphs are, that's kind of irrelevant. Dishonesty is what is prohibited. If you have some minor blemish, the government is typically okay with that as long as you admit it. You may not trust how they detect lying, but that's still what they're trying to find to base their decision on.

There isn't an argument. We know for a fact that polygraphs are not accurate at detecting lies.

They cannot effectively prohibit something they cannot detect. The polygraph being inaccurate pseudoscience means that they can't exercise the control that they pretend and purport to, as they simply cannot reliably determine if someone is being truthful or not.

Additionally, due to its inaccuracy, it makes the whole process wickedly unfair.

Who would want to work for an employer that gates your success as a team member on pseudoscientific nonsense?

Accurate or not, the government still uses polygraphs in the clearance process.

Of course it doesn't actually detect lies, there's no way it could.

What they do is use it as a tool against you to try to force a confession. It's absolutely a bluff on the part of the interviewer, and they know it.

What they'll do is sit you down after the "results" come in and say: "hey, we both know you weren't 100% truthful during the test, the results clearly indicate you lied during key parts of the interview. Is there anything you'd like to tell us?"

I cannot stress enough that the actual results of what the polygraph say are not factored in whatsoever.

> there's no way it could

This can't be asserted a priori.

Without judging the validity of the poly itself (I concur, it's garbage), it's also not the sole basis of any decision, and the actual people doing the investigation build a case to show that you have lied about something, because you an appeal their decisions to a judge. It's not just 'meh, the line wiggled so no clearance for you'.

You'll forgive me if I have no faith in a system that uses polygraphs as input, has inspired leakers like Snowden, and has come up "courts" like the FISA "court".

Being told by the IC it will be reviewed by a judge is not reassuring.

That’s nonsense. How are they going to know if you’re lying? Polygraphs are overpriced placebos.

> How are they going to know if you’re lying?

Your friends, and I'm not joking. Polygraphs themselves are poor indicators, but that's just one of many tools adjudicators use when judging people for clearances. The primary tool is documentation (you'd be amazed how many people lie about criminal offenses when it's a quick search away), and second is friends (2nd order ones especially), acquaintances, and neighbors.

If something is so problematic as to be worth lying about in the first place, why tell your friends? People generally don’t go around bragging about how much porn they’ve pirated.

I suppose I’m just reinforcing the “don’t get caught” mantra, but that’s really not a trait I like to see in people who are supposed to be cracking down on fraud.

I think you're focusing too much on the supposed infraction (they don't actually care whatsoever if you've smoked weed or downloaded something illegally). They're selecting for character judgement traits.

As SteveNuts said, you're too focused on the infraction. It's the lying part that's the problem because it shows lack of judgement. Which really just means it's something that can be used to blackmail you later.

No one cares if you like porn or had a DUI when you were younger, unless you're lying about it.

> Downloading porn on lime wire doesn't stop you from advancing in the process with a polygraph.

This is factually incorrect. I personally know two people who, already holding a TS/SCI, were denied further career opportunities due to the volume and duration of their downloading of pirated material while in college (which they were honest about due to thinking, as you erroneously assert, that it wasn't a big deal).

The "digital piracy" was specifically cited as the reason for not advancing in the process. Two different former colleagues, both proven performers.

Also, prior drug use ABSOLUTELY does disqualify you if there's enough of it, even if you've never been addicted to anything or if it's years in the past. They're especially tough on hallucinogens for some reason which is hilariously ironic because LSD...I mean....

It's not factually incorrect. The adjudication guidelines are pretty clear, and, baring continual ongoing mis-use, under Guideline M under EO 10865 and it's implementation by DOD Directive 5220.6p [1], it is considered a mitigation if the misuse of systems was 'not recent' and 'not ongoing'.

Same with drug use. It explicitly says under Guideline H that if it was not recent, not ongoing, if you seeked treatment, etc. that it is a mitigation to the security concern raised by use of illicit drugs.

If your contacts were denied based on those reasons, they either didn't tell you the whole story (other, unmitigated risks that compounded the total risk of their position), or they had substantive grounds for an appeal of the decision. You can see the evidence yourself of the appeals process, as every appeal record is public, and the govt has no problem with former drug addicts, etc. getting clearances.

[1]https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/DD/issuances/do...

[2] https://ogc.osd.mil/doha/industrial/2020.html for this years decisions, an example: "Applicant mitigated Guideline H (drug involvement and substance misuse) security concerns because his most recent marijuana use was in 2014".

I think we're talking past each other. I appreciate you taking the time to source citations to the chapter and verse regulations.

This isn't the right setting to discuss the details of individuals' past clearance adjudication processes but at a high level I can tell you that curating and trading a massive library of illegally downloaded music over a period of multiple years was sufficient to get two separate SAP clearances denied.

Without getting hung up on the technical details, would you agree that the national security community is far too puritanical in how it evaluates details of one's past personal life?

Merry Christmas.

SAPs are not a clearance, and that changes things. :). The rules for specific SAPs are highly varied, so who knows. The original posit was that it won't stop you from proceeding with a polygraph. But sure.

And I mean, no, I wouldn't. I think standards have gotten way too relaxed as they've pushed to over classify a ton of shit that wouldn't have been so crazily classified 40 years ago. When you relax standards, as has been done over the past few years, you end up with Reality Winner, Edward Snowden, Harold Martin, etc.

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