Friday, September 20, 2013
Shoddy mass production...
What so many recent incidents reveal is a need for a revamp of the very concept of secrecy and security clearances in the .mil/.gov world from the ground up.
By declaring so many things to be secret, we have created a need for legions of people with clearances. In order to process those legions of clearances for less than the GDP of Bolivia and before the heat death of the universe, we wind up subcontracting out to mass producers what should be an in-house cottage industry done by dedicated craftsmen.
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21 comments:
Half the guys in my platoon had a Secret clearance. And that was 20+ years ago in a light infantry unit.
One of our guys had something above Top Secret, because he was in charge of drawing some sensitive ammo. As a 20 year old E-4.
The military hands them out like candy. Mostly because someone somewhere got scared about just anyone getting access to stuff like radio codes and that. Stuff that even the lowest ranked person might need, so you end up with 17 year old Pv2s with clearances they can't even really understand, just because they are an RTO.
When I had my first clearance some years back, I was put through the wringer for it.
My neighbors were interviewed, my Father and sister were interviewed (Are you in trouble? The FBI was here!), several of my friends and former employers were interviewed, my at-the-time wife's parents ( ! ) were interviewed, there was a huge pile of paperwork, and it took 6 months.
The last time I had a clearance, about 3 years ago, I did the paperwork online, nobody was interviewed, and I had my new badge the next week.
The last interview I had was for a USNR O-5 who worked here a few years ago. It was a very boiler plate, the whole thing taking less time than it took me to finding out exactly who Agent X worked for. He was a contractor.
His company followed up maybe a week later and asked questions solely about how professional the interviewer was and if in fact he had come concerning CDR Doe.
+1 on the security clearances. Add the DHS sensitive malarkey on top of that morass.
Gerry
I don't think it's fair to condemn the whole system just because of 1 slip up. - General Jack D. Ripper
I would note that the shooter, to my knowledge, did not divulge any sensitive information. That's a win as far as the classification system is concerned.
But how are we supposed to have a service based economy without excuses to have legions of service providers to draw big, fat contracts?
"Well, I, uh, don't think it's quite fair to condemn a whole program because of a single slip-up, sir." -Gen. 'Buck' Turgidson
FIFY
This whole affair is now my go-to example for "oh, please tell me more about how background checks fix everything".
It sounds like the army's having similar trouble with the encryption on their digital radios and GPS; it's super duper important to keep secret, but everyone needs access.
I guess if what resides in the Oval Office is the product of how we the electorate do our vetting, we can't complain about contractors rubberstamping theirs.
-chaz-
Tou to tha motherf#@&ing che!
On a somewhat related note, Jeff Goldstein received an email from a gun grabbing wannabe congress critter, and hilarity ensued.
http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=51018
"Tou to tha motherf#@&ing che!"
I know, right?
The system is broken. Far beyond broken. Projects are paralyzed while some worthless contractor asks questions dating from the 1960's about a guy you know damn well is good to go and you needed him to start yesterday. When everything is secret, nothing is secret.
It used to be a cottage industry run by experts who knew who was good and who wasn't. The post-9/11 security state leviathan has gotten so out of control that USIS could just phone it in (literally) and nobody noticed until some obvious DBag did what obvious DBags do.
Anonymous for obvious reasons. Dear Fusion Center - pressure cooker mosque the chain is against the door, you worthless bastards.
Chair, not chain. -1 for proofreading. And interm clearances are just as big an abuse as phoning it in, but since that's hw anything gets done, we'll keep that our dirty little secret. Har-har.
Who did Precious Princess Bradley Manning's clearance? I'm really hoping this company can claim the trifecta.
Though to be fair, while Manning might have looked okay from the distance of a security questionnaire, the people working with him ought to have known he was a bag of nuts and not trusted him with anything more sensitive than the coffee mess supply.
Same for Alexis - he appears to have displayed signs of instability which nobody thought worth mentioning at the time.
Wild Bill Donovan and George Smiley must be shaking their heads in abject dispair.
"what should be an in-house cottage industry done by dedicated craftsmen." That's it, in a nutshell. The Walmarting of the vetting of national security assets by mere hobbyists probably isn't the smart play.
Steve Skubinna said...
Same for Alexis - he appears to have displayed signs of instability which nobody thought worth mentioning at the time.
7:40 PM, September 20, 2013
Given the politically correct filters that block a lot of reporting because being right will harm your own career, I can understand why his instability was carefully NOT mentioned. q.v. Major Hassan.
Subotai Bahadur
Steve is correct, and 'anybody' can get a secret clearance. It's not till you get a couple above that they really start getting 'serious' about stuff... Just sayin...
I heard once that Bill Donovan's secretary was specifically picked because she had an unforgeable signature. That is a level of detail in the vetting process that has certainly gone by the wayside.
Hey, they even let me have a Secret clearance, back in 1971 or so. They did try to do it right back then, and FBI interviewed all the neighbors. Even then, there was such a backlog that the clearance was only provisional and never got complete before I left NASA.
Nonetheless, I was able to look up any secret document I wanted at the Redstone Arsenal library. My boss had checked every box on the "need to know" form. I tellya, that Orion spaceship of Freeman Dyson's was a really cool machine.
I programmed scientific software for 17 years, including for some government contracts. I noticed a real change, when Bill Clinton took office. Where clearances took an average six months before the election, that next spring it was 30 days or less. That was somewhat before the Chinese started making news, with their people on our projects sending their work home. Funny thing, that.
I still do not understand why BJ Clintoon and Jummah "Wild Rabbit" Cahtah have not been stood before a wall and shot. And why the management and reporters of the Noo Yawk Slimes are not serving life terms in a particularly loathsome Turkish prison.
Can someone give me a GOOD reason?
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