I agree. I've had Secret clearances at two different companies (aerospace/defence contractors). One of my lessons is that anyone who gets a clearance draws a lot of people into the process with them. It's a bad and creepy side effect, and even though this mostly involved college friends getting grilled by Federal Agents, I wouldn't do it again.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that "clearances" are a symptom of the pathology of the security state. Lots and lots of highly cleared people have gone wrong (Pollard, Ames, Hansen, I'm sure there's more), so the process isn't really all that helpful. For a corporation, having "cleared" employees does two things:

1. It raises a huge barrier to entry for competitors. A smaller company just can't afford the specialized record keeping and record keepers, so only lumbering dinosaurs have cleared employees.

2. It means that the corporation can say, just like my kids, "I didn't do it!" as an excuse. An employee goes bad? The corporation didn't do it, because the Defense Investigative Security Clearance Organization cleared that traitor. It's yet another excuse to not have a relationship with employees, just like drug tests. Managers can just fill out forms, they don't have to know or like or have meaningful conversations with employees.

OP here.

You don't list "random people" of any kind.

You list relatives, roommates, long term relationships, places you've lived, schools you've attended, and jobs you've had and then people who can confirm and validate those. Further - in regard to foreign nationals - you have to list and describe ongoing relationships and any foreign officials you've met.

This not "I was standing next to this guy at Starbucks" and closer to "I lived with, worked with, or dated with this person for X months."

> This not "I was standing next to this guy at Starbucks" and closer to "I lived with, worked with, or dated with this person for X months."

Yes, exactly. Those people that you randomly meet on your walk of life and who take on a role of some significance, and who clearly were NOT consulted about being included in some foreign country's databases on contacts with someone who is now part of the intelligence apparatus of one of their enemies.

What could possibly go wrong?

That person that you dated for X months is now potentially a target for a foreign intelligence service, just like that person that you lived with or worked with. And if they are as paranoid as your country and one of them happens to also be employed in their intelligence services and forgot or intentionally withheld similar information they are quite possibly in trouble.

I completely agree with you in regard to the implications as I wrote the post.

My only criticism is your use of the word "random" to describe the people listed.

Only they weren't random people, they were people he knew. And if you knew anything about getting a Clearance in the States a lot of it is based on how truthful you are on your SF-86 - List you use to be addicted to methamphetamine and you might still get a clearance, lie about that one time you smoked pot and you lose any hope of getting a clearance. It's done to smoke out any "snowdens" and "mannings" who are trying to get a clearance for things other than wanting a job. (Not that manning or snowden joined to leak intelligence, but many have tried and many have been rejected).

It's also a way to gauge if you can be black-mailed to leak secrets. If you are open about your dark secrets (e.g., addicted to meth), then the chances of a foreign agency using that information to turn you into an asset are lower so there is still a chance you might get that clearance. If they dig something like that up on their own (which there is a fair chance they will), then you are guaranteed denial since it means you are a higher risk to black-mail as you were not willing to divulge such information.

Way to go to mis-interpret that: random people as in 'people that you simply come in contact with during everyday life'.

It's not as if any of those people had a way of controlling who they came in contact with. Life is built up out of tons of coincidences and who you know is rarely a matter of deliberation, far more often it is random chance that causes you to know one person and not to know another.

Random is the Russian I sat next to on a flight to NYC and never talked to / connected with again.

Random is NOT the guy I went to school with in Moscow and would fly back to russia for a wedding for.

The OP didn't say which group he'd classify his friends in, but if he thought it was pertinent enough to list them, than he had a close enough relationship to warrant listing them. Cause when OPM/FBI find out that you went to school for a year in Moscow and you didn't list any acquiescence's, they'll raise some flags and find what you are hiding.

The form actually asks uses terms like close, personal relationship so it not just listing random people. And to put the shoe on the other foot, what if it were your job to vet a person working on plans for a new nuclear reactor. Don't you think you'd like to know if the person had a college roommate from [insert hostile country here] and continues to maintain the relationship with visits, phone calls, etc? Maybe relevant, maybe not, but you'd be negligent not to check it out.

If you rely for your security on having people who do not maintain relationships with the people from their past then your security has already failed.

I see the red scare is still alive and well, which 'hostile countries' would those be? How does what someone does in their time off impact your ability to let them work on the plans for your nuclear reactor?

Do you really believe any of the leaks from the past 40 years or so were because someone had a college roommate from a hostile country (whatever that is) and who maintained their relationship?

On the other hand: If all the decent people refuse to work for broadly 'evil' organisations, the organisations are going to stay that way without there being anyone within them who might resist bad things.

I participated in a conversation a few years ago, where one person said "I've quit gmail, so I'm not worried about them collecting my data." Another person said "Yeah, but you correspond with a lot people who use gmail. So they're collecting your data anyway."

This is pretty standard for even the most trivial of national security related background checks. They want to know that your associates are also legitimate.

This comment is over the top. The vast majority of people wouldn't think twice about listing foreign nationals they have had contact with. Maybe It shouldn't be like that, but it isn't like he turned their names over to the gestapo.

You have to stop thinking about it from the point of view of the party they voluntarily turned that data over to and start thinking about it from the point of view of the people whose names were turned over to parties currently un-identified.

And then the Gestapo may be closer to home than you might like, for instance the FSB or the Chinese equivalent.

And for those people the consequences are well outside of the sphere of influence of the people that initially reported contact with them.

Databases like these on internet connected computers should not even exist, to see them fall in the wrong hands is absolutely in-excusable and to voluntarily aid in their creation is irresponsible at best.

I've been living abroad for years, in multiple countries. I've had close relationships with scores of foreign nationals. I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Not sure whether you're aware, but "foreign national" has a specific meaning in this context.

It means a representative -- military, ambassadorial, intelligence etc. Not sure whether it includes any public / civil servant. There's often a bit of judgement call required.