Comment by 0xTJ
12 hours ago
I was chatting with an old classmate at a homecoming a few months ago, and he mentioned that, during the polygraph top get Canadian Top Secret clearance for a co-op job, he had to say how many drinks he had each week. Being a university student, it got brushed aside, but the answer was considered to be alcoholism-level.
In a weird way, that's almost a positive sign, if you view the security-clearance process as mostly being about quickly clearing away secrets that could be used for blackmail down the line, when the person has more authority and more to lose.
P.S.: Further musing: There's a system-design tension between granting access to people that are "perfect" versus "flawed in ways we are aware of and can manage." Where a process ought to land on that spectrum depends on certain assumptions about baseline applicant quality, an estimate of the organization's accuracy at [false/true] [negatives/positives], and the impacts.
If you auto-reject the people who admit to something sub-criminal like cheating on their spouse, that means no applicant will ever admit to it, so you'll end up with more people hid it. In the long run, that means a higher proportion of employees who have something an adversary can use for blackmail, and the blackmail is more-effective because the repercussions are large.
You can get co-op/internship that requires a Top Secret clearance?
There are co-operatives in manufacturing which would need their staff to be security-cleared in order to win government contacts (such as assembling weapons). Perhaps this is what parent is referring to. Co-ops aren't just for groceries :)
In the Canadian university lingo, co-op refers to a (usually paid) internship that you complete as part of your degree. You usually have a couple co-op terms/semesters along with your traditional terms. For example, you may start your degree with two semesters of classes, then a semester of co-op, then one of classes, then another two co-ops, more classes, etc. until you complete the degree requirements. Degrees with a co-op requirement usually will make mention of it (e.g. Software Engineering with co-op).