Reliable people? The right people? I disagree, I know many many people with perfect credit, no issues with the law ever and are the most dishonest people I have ever met. dishonest, adulterers, embezzlers etc. A person needs to be evaluated during the coarse of their entire life, not a credit score or a run in with the law, or a mistake when young that they regret. I also know a lot of people with terrible credit, did time etc. that I would trust with my life. That meet the mule everyday to feed their children. Single parents that work so hard to give their children the best that they can, that cannot be cleared and miss opportunity.
Reliable people and the right people. Sometimes one should step back and see this.
Your reasoning may have merit in a limited amount of cases, but is exactly the reason why there are established criteria to evaluate facts without predisposed biases.
If the people are, as you say " many people with perfect credit, no issues with the law ever and are the most dishonest people I have ever met. dishonest, adulterers, embezzlers etc" then they are clearly not reliable, nor the right people. Taking a 10 year backwards looking picture of the whole person, or even multiple SF86’s filed over the course of their cleared lives does give a long range high architectural view of how a person conducts their life. Time is a major mitigation for most every item that would screen a person out. Credit is the hardest to revoke a clearance on and they have a very fair standard to get cleared: If you enter into a payment obligation, live up to the obligation and make the payments. Should catastrophe strike and wipe you out…how did you respond to this? That too counts for a lot. I certainly agree some folks need a hand up or a pathway to fix issues. This is why I participate in this forum. I truly want to help people fix what is in their control. None of us can change the past (yet anyway). If a person lived “in the life” and had multiple felonies, and is deep in arrears, and has been so for multiple years…the best they can do is get out of “the life.” Start living cleaner, pay the bills, clean up credit. All that is recognized as a mitigation. As is getting married, leaving a wild single life behind, stopping drinking, attending counseling, removing bad influences from your life etc. Do the wrong people still manage to get through? Yes. It rains on the just and the unjust as well.
What would you recommend to determine if a person is worthy of trust? Explain how you would vet these applicants and on what you base the trust. And how would you provide something to back up your assertion these people lived a demonstrable life indicating they should be trusted? In other words should one fail and the congress call you on the carpet in public what do you provide to back up your innate “feelings” they deserved trust?
Here’s the thing about statisics . . . I have pointed this out before . . . Financial issues are not the biggest reason for denying clearance because those issues carry more weight that others. Financial issues are the most common reason for denying clearance because more people HAVE those problems. If few people had financial issues and more people where using heroin, then heroin would be the most common reason.
I agree with Mr. Ed. So many people are having financial issues as part of our economic system. Kids having to get hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get an education that will not provide a job without the required experience. So they default. Astronomical medical bills, predatory lending, mass media etc.
Financial issues are the norm now and a new baseline should be established. People with financial issues should not be losing their jobs. Trust should not be measured based on finances period in the current environment.
I have financial issues and no one I have worked for in the last 40 years will question my trust, values, or my ability to the job done.
No . . . You are still twisting my words! No new standards are needed!
Predatory lending? Those who have been taken advantage of by predatory lenders should be questioned about their fitness for a clearance. If you have been taken in in the past, what have you done to make certain it doesn’t happen again? The same goes for those who default on student loans? It makes your future more uncertain and calls your judgement into question.
No kids “have to get hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt” . . . It just doesn’t have to happen. Not everybody should be at Harvard or even Penn State. Again, going tens of thousands of dollars into debt to get a degree that qualifies you for a job that pays $40K a year shows poor judgement.
I will say it AGAIN, finances don’t get any greater attention than any of the other factors. If a thousand people apply for clearance and 5 have potential foreign allegiance and 100 have financial issues, there are going to be far more denied for financial issues than other causes. This is just as it should be.
Sorry did not mean to twist your words, my understanding of what you wrote was incorrect. My opinion about this process and the BS it is leaves NO room for misinterpretation. The reality of the situation is that we are coming from two different life experiences and will not understand one another. Your perspective and to some degree most of the people here is not like mine. Show me an example where the cost of a degree these days is not in the tens of thousands? I should know as I am putting two kids through it now. Just the cost of a community college is 15k for two years! That is 30k for two kids that will transfer to a 4 year college costing twice that. That’s at least 60k. Then without having experience that gets them a 40k job in the feds. I think I’m done with posting on this forum. You people are not living in reality here. What about all the people here that got divorced? This clearly can be construed as poor judgement. Not doing your do diligence in selection of a partner then going bankrupt due to the divorce etc. Who is to say that you wont commit the same lack of judgement again? Based on stats people get married again and second marriages end in divorce more often. Oh by the way I have been happily married 31 years. When does it all end? We need to push back this is a very slippery slope here. Don’t be surprised if they start asking more personal questions about divorce and make it an “issue” that needs to be mitigated. The process needs to be removed and replaced by another process more in line with today’s societal norms. But you know it will not because it is on purpose to make money.
So . . . You are putting your kids through college? Then ALL of the debt shouldn’t be theirs. You have NO IDEA of my life experience . . . Recently separated after a 30 year relationship? One child just graduated from college, one in the middle and one still in high school. Several extended periods of unemployment over the last 15 years and an illness that prevented my wife from earning her full potential during that time.
$15k for a two year degree doesn’t translate to the “hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get an education that will not provide a job without the required experience”. Anybody getting a degree that will not pay for itself is going to have problems with or without the clearance process.
No, a new baseline shouldn’t be set because “financial issues are the norm now.” What if keeping classified information on your home computer became the norm? It’s simply foolish to ignore the problems that lead to security breeches while determining who gets a security clearance.
Finances MUST be used to measure trust because finances have been proven to be a factor in breaking that trust. We are talking about national security here. You, none of us, have a right to security clearance. The trust has to be earned.
Post here or don’t but do not come in and tell us that we are not living in reality. Every body here is pretty well grounded in reality. If you don’t like the reality, you’re free to work anywhere in private industry.