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Comment by njharman | Hacker News Reader

I met IT worker with security clearance that worked someplace that you needed security clearance.

They were unable to discuss salary (or any personal financial matter) because of that security. The reasoning being it potentially opened them up to being "turned" by foreign state actors either via financial bribes or financial blackmail.

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I don't buy it -- I've held clearances from that required a NAC to ones that required an SSBI, and got my first US National Security clearance when I was 16 and continuously held a clearance for about 20 years, as both a federal civil servant and a contractor, and never once was asked not to discuss my pay.

I buy it. It is fairly well known that too much or the wrong kind of debt can cost you even secret clearance. So for other compartments to require pay secrecy is well in line with that concern.

You can have high salary and still be indebted. Also you don't have to discuss salary to negotiate how much they would like to earn as an extra (and that may not even be money). I don't buy it, that doesn't make sense.

Nor were you likely given a W-2 that came with (S/NF) in front of the gross earnings field.

IOW, IT worker in the GP’s post was making something up.

As someone who works in IT, with a security clearance, I am pretty sure this is a lie. We talk about salary all the time. Some people are weird about it, but that has been true every place I have worked at.

"We pay you so little it makes you a liability for blackmail"

I think there's a very narrow window where the value of information or control you have access to is worth less than the value a bad actor can extract from it.

Sounds more like an excuse. It would make some sense if it was financial problems, but even then it crossing the line of free speech.

Sounds like a load of nonsense to me.

I think the background check for these jobs _does_ check if you have debts etc. and I think probes into your financial history to see behaviour - they won't take you on if you're a risk.

The salary thing is nonsense though, a motivated foreign state actor will find ways of bribing if they detect you can be corrupted.

Nah, this is probably BS.

If I had the resources of a government, I could bribe just about anyone who works for a living.

Many government civilian roles have very well documented compensation: https://www.federalpay.org/gs/2021

I have held a clearance while a private contractor and worked with many who held clearances, both as contractors and government civilians. There were many restrictions on what we could talk about because of security. Salary was not one of them. Some of us were under direction from our private contractor companies to not discuss salary. That had nothing to do with security. It was about maximizing profit and leverage for the company.

Contractors don't follow the government scale, the can make different amounts. Government people typically have better benefits and job security, so contractor's salary can be a fair bit higher.

It is a point of reference though, you can know how much many of the people that work with you make.

Consider only the GS scale. There are many with security clearances. We know what they make. I was replying to the person who said that security clearances required that compensation be secret. That is obviously not true.

That's unlikely but he was probably told that. I contracted in IT for a Federal agency with a Secret clearance and encouraging us not to talk numbers was a key part of the company's negotiating tactics.

I suspect it’s much more mundane: If you want to know how much money your adversary is spending on $PROGRAM, you can get part of this with some salary info and head count.

Simple data points like these can tell you a lot. See, for example, the German Tank Problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

Agree: This program isn't paying enough per head to be employing security architects, this project is employing lots of juniors, ... sounds useful if you're targeting projects to exploit?

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