DHS Announces Expansion of Cyber Student Volunteer Initiative | Hacker News Reader

DHS Announces Expansion of Cyber Student Volunteer Initiative

dhs.gov

16 points_bfhp13 comments

It seems people are already downplaying this because it's volunteer. However, this is actually an awesome opportunity. First thing I see in the job posting [1] is "Security Clearance: Secret". That Secret is worth quite a bit, especially for technical positions at government contractors. That's money in the bank in the long term and can almost always guarantee a job.

Secondly, the best way to get a technical government position (it's pretty competitive), whether it's at a federal laboratory or DHS, is to get to know the right people. Yes, it's more about who you know than what you know.

[1] https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/356670600

A Secret clearance also comes with a cost. You will have to accept a level of control from the government. You will have to agree that you will be subject to harsher penalties than a typical citizen, if you pass on ANY classified information to an authorised person. For example, reading or passing on a Snowden document, without authorisation, will become a crime for you. An individual can't revoke the clearance once granted, so the obligations last a lifetime.

A Secret clearance isn't a romantic carte blanche to read secret documents of your choosing. That world is compartmentalised and you will be fed information on a "need to know" basis. In a computer analogy, a clearance isn't a loosening of permissions, but a tightening, in that you are agreeing to harsher penalties if you stray outside the boundaries of what others decide you "need to know".

The world is now compartmentalized, since Bradley Manning. We appear to have had a stretch there where they just ran a Secret Clearance wiki and document dump, and a separate TS/SCI wiki and document dump, and that was it except for the genuinely sensitive things.

Even the federal government evades having to pay their interns. The DHS is looking for 100 unpaid student volunteer assignments. Oh please, having to take a free internship in one of the highest paying fields, cyber security, is ridiculous. And then having the audacity to call it an Honor's program is just abusive.

The government has no business circumventing minimum wage laws.

Nor does anyone else that gets work for free and calls it an "internship".

Reading deeper, it appears as though these interns will primarily be doing menial IT support.

The TSA job description also contains this nugget, "Assisting with Digital Forensics, e-Discovery, and cyber threat/intelligence." I would be curious to know what cyber threats/intelligence are going to be discovered via the TSA.

https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/356670600

> The TSA job description also contains this nugget, "Assisting with Digital Forensics, e-Discovery, and cyber threat/intelligence." I would be curious to know what cyber threats/intelligence are going to be discovered via the TSA.

The airport screeners aren't the whole of the TSA, just the most visible part of it.

I was under the impression that it was illegal to work for the federal government for free. It came up during the USG Shutdown hoopla, where workers had to expressly forbidden from anything work related.

The issue during the shutdown was that it was illegal for them to create a financial obligation for the government during the shutdown by working a job that was supposed to be paid.

Does it make a legal difference that it's not called an 'internship'?

That's something I wondered after I had already submitted the story; I apologize if winds up being misleading. I feel the page is noteworthy either way.

Edit: the title's been changed

What an incredibly misleading title.

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