Comment by boothby
21 hours ago
Boggles the mind that the advice from the security was to lie on the form, which is almost certainly a felony.
21 hours ago
Boggles the mind that the advice from the security was to lie on the form, which is almost certainly a felony.
The thing that is missed in most efforts to replace people with machines is how often the people that are being replaced are on the fly fixing the system the machine is intended to crystallize and automate.
This is what a lot of people miss about "AI will replace" programmers narrative.
When converting from a traditional process to an electronic one, half my job is twisting people's arms and playing mind reader trying to determine what they ACTUALLY do day-to-day instead of the hypothetical offical, documented, process.
Some of the workarounds that people do instead of updating the process are damn right unhinged.
Without going into details, just recently I was able to get pretty decent business requirements from group manager, but it seems the only reason I was able to get somewhat decent idea of what they actually do, is because there was certain level of trust since we worked together previously so there was no need to bs one another. I openly stated what I thought is doable and he seemed to understand that I need to know actual use cases.
edit: Otoh, my boss is kinda giving up on automating another group's process, because he seems to be getting a lot of 'it depends' answers.
1 reply →
> how often the people that are being replaced are on the fly fixing the system the machine is intended to crystallize and automate.
If the system is broken, this is actually a good thing.
I have some experience doing automation work in small and large scale factories. When automating manufacturing work you almost always discover some flaws in the product or process that humans have been covering up as part of their job. These problems surface during the automation phase and get prioritized for fixes.
You might think you could accomplish the same thing by directly asking the people doing the work what could be improved, but in my experience they either don’t notice it any more because it’s part of their job or, in extreme cases, they like that the inefficiency exists because they think it provides extra job security.
> If the system is broken, this is actually a good thing.
And the system is always broken. Reality is messy, systems are rigid, there always has to be a permissive layer somewhere in the interface.
1 reply →
> If the system is broken, this is actually a good thing.
Sometimes when you reveal extensive noncompliance with dumb requirements, the requirements get less dumb. Other times, the organisation doubles down and starts punishing the noncompliance.
My employer's official security policies say everyone should kensington lock their laptop to their desk at all times, even though the office is behind two guards and three security doors. Nobody does. But if someone made a load of noise about it, there's no guarantee they'd remove the widely ignored rule; they might instead start enforcing it.
1 reply →
This is exactly why “automation” hasn’t taken _that_ many jobs. It is a totally overlooked detail. Thanks for the reminder.
Some industrial shipping docks can be managed by a very small crew. I think this is the metaphor for what's going to happen to a lot of industries.
5 replies →
And then, how often they aren't[0]
[0]: "Computer Says No" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YGZPycMEU
When I joined the Air Force, they helped us fill out the clearance forms. One question was related to marijuana use in the past. The NCO helping us told us “if you have used it before, be honest. They will know.” But then followed it up with “remember: you used it less than 5 times and you didn’t like it”.
I remember similar advice.
In Navy boot camp the person reviewing my security clearance application (which was filled out weeks before) was very helpful in the way he asked the critical question. “It says here you tried marijuana once. Is that true?”
"Well, some guy I didn't know very well said it was marijuana - but how would I know? All it seemed to do was make my eyes water, and give me a headache..."
It's easy to pass judgement on a decision like that when so far removed from the context where/when it took place.
It's likely that answering yes to that question meant an instant rejection for the clearance AND summer job. The FBI was probably not inclined to spend money looking into such an obviously trivial matter just so some kid could get some work experience. "Sorry, try the McDonald's down the street."
That security officer did the author an incredibly big favor.
Nitpick: it’s not like the FBI investigated a 12-year-old with a library card. That would be humiliating. They investigated an alarming new cipher and doggedly ran down any possibility of a West Coast sleeper cell during an era of Japanese internment.
The right answer was: the FBI was investigating the note.
It’s also odd, because usually, as long as you don’t lie on your security form, you’ll get your clearance.
The coverup is always worse than the original sin.
And there's good reason for that. Someone with a clearance once explained to me that they're mainly worried about things that make you vulnerable to exploitation by foreign agents. If you're covering something up, that's something they can use to blackmail you.
But maybe if the thing you're revealing is "I myself was suspected to be a spy," that changes the calculus a bit.
Clearance forms are weird in that they're not just legal documents, they're inputs into an investigative process
If it is plausible that you did not remember, it's not a felony. Something that happened for 12-years old is easy to forget.
There is nothing morally wrong in felonies like this, just don't get caught.
Not remembering is one thing, but if they find out during the vetting process, and then they ask you about it, your answers had better be forthright.
> There is nothing morally wrong in felonies like this, just don't get caught.
Highly debatable. If you believe in a categorical imperative that to intentionally deceive another person is wrong, then lying by omission is still an immoral act. A Christian might also interpret the words of Jesus “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” as an imperative to comply fully with the law of the land.
Mala in se vs. mala prohibita.
I don't think it's all that debatable to say that deceiving people is categorically wrong, nor is it to say that it's immoral not to follow the laws of the land -- both are obviously untrue as absolute statements.
For extreme examples, would it be immoral to lie to the Gestapo about harboring Jews? Were people illegally helping slaves escape the American South being immoral?
3 replies →
There are many laws in many jurisdictions that are immoral. Following those laws would be an immoral act. Legality and morality should be aligned, but in the real world they often aren't.
If Jesus (assuming he existed, even, regardless of any sort of divinity) tells us that following the law is always the moral thing to do, then he was wrong.
Cool, you do that then. I bet you'll get a gold star at the end of the year
Probably thought he was joking around. This was for a summer internship after all.
In this particular case I think it has more to do with the times than anything else. Discovering the records of that investigation from when he was 12 in the 40’s would have likely been a massive undertaking if not impossible. The investigator likely recognized this and just had him remove it.
These days I don’t think that happens with digital records. Omitting that incident would almost certainly cause more issues than not now as I’m sure they’d turn up in the investigation. If not included on your sf86 you’d likely be grilled about it.
Investigators are usually reasonable in my experience. If you omitted it because you earnestly forgot because it happened when you were 12, they’d likely understand if you were forthcoming about it during your interview. Investigators are human though so it depends on how they feel.
What they really care about is stuff to try to purposely hide.
The word investigated is a lot bigger than some simple inquiry someone makes. Investigation is actually a complete tear down of someone's past in a search for clues. He was not investigated. He played a part in an investigation of a lost cipher. His cipher was investigated.
He wasn't investigated though. His missing glasses and hobby were. Once they found out the owner was not worth investigation, it was dropped.
He was TWELVE at the time the "investigation" happened, and he clearly wasn't engaged as a suspect. His mother was.
He had no obligation to put that on security clearance form whatsoever.
He lied originally, kinda.
He made a cypher with a school friend, which cypher was handed by a stranger to the FBI and investigated. That one possible outcome of the investigation might be 'the subject is a Japanese spy' doesn't mean _he_ was suspected of that; not by the FBI at least.
If he said, "I made a cypher in school", then likely the form would have been considered fine? Presumably his record clearly showed the FBI incident, so I'm surprised that lying in the second form didn't cause concern sufficient to question him. But there you go; I've never had any associations with TLAs, what would I know.
The travel forms to visit the US ask if people have ever been involved in espionage, at least they did, I'm not aware that it's changed.
You can guarantee the many people who work for intelligence agencies of US allies aren't admitting to that when they travel to the US.
It's all a bit of a game.
The reasoning for some of these questions is that if you are caught, it’s sometimes easier to charge you with fraud (lying on the form) than the actual thing (such as espionage).
Wouldn't they need the be able to prove that you are a spy in order to argue that you lied ? In which case who cares about the form ?
4 replies →
But they're required by laws of their own country to lie, presumably. There are certainly game-like aspects.
"Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?"
Quite.
Those forms also ask if you've ever been a member of a communist party, and basically everyone over 35 in all of Eastern Europe would have to check that one (they don't, if they want to enter the US)
Every statement in the above comment is wrong:
People born in the 90s wouldn’t have a chance to be old enough to belong to any group other than a preschool before the collapse of the Soviet and Soviet aligned regimes.
For those who were adults before 1990, while they may have been party members for reasons unrelated to political ideology, it wasn’t as common: in the late 80s, only ~10% of adults in Warsaw pact countries were communist party members. Far from “everyone”.
And even if you check that in the DS-160 visa application form, you are allowed to add an explanation. Consular visa officers are very well familiar with the political situation at the countries they are stationed in, and can grant visa even if the box is checked.
Do you mean everyone who was 18 by 1989, or 55 today?
1 reply →
I mean, his name is Les Earnest, they should expect it.
The advice was from the 1949-1952 period. I imagine that was the prevailing wisdom developed getting literal former Nazis jobs in our space program, etc.