Social Media Accounts Now Part Of Federal Background Checks

Megalith

Megalith

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Ah, if only there was a way to dig up all of the vitriol that people post and then hide or recant.

Accounts on sites like Facebook and Twitter will be reviewed as part of the process for gaining security clearance, such as applying for a federal job or contractor work. This practice will be used by a variety of government agencies, and in a number of situations where employees may be tasked with handling sensitive information. "Social media has become an integral—and very public—part of the fabric of most Americans’ daily lives," Bill Evanina, director of ODNI’s National Counterintelligence and Security Center said to the Wall Street Journal. "We cannot afford to ignore this important open source in our effort to safeguard our secrets—and our nation’s security."
 
"We cannot afford to ignore this important open source in our effort to..."

....prevent anyone other than a private contractor from doing this job.

The key to rigging a new hire, while presenting the illusion that the process is fair and open, is to frame the requirements such that nobody qualifies for the position (except the person you secretly wanted to hire in the first place)

Mining social media connections allows them to disqualify anyone of their choosing, on a six-degrees-of-seperation-from-a-terrorist basis. "We can't hire you, because you are friends with someone, who is friends with someone, who is friends with someone who clicked 'like' on an ISIS post 3 years ago."
 
While the government often times, or even most of the time, overreaches it's boundaries, this is not really one of those times. If you are going for a job that requires a clearance, social media has just given them a tool to disqualify unsuitable candidates b4 spending the big bucks on interviewing real people. Interviewing family, friends, former employers/teachers, or whoever else they interview depending on the clearance level, is not cheap..

Freedom of speech is not freedom of the consequences of that speech. Modern technology has simply given us all a better means to get our speech heard, for good or ill. Accept that there are consequences to that.
 
DustMite said:
So what happens if you don't use social media? You don't qualify?
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I think, going forward, not having a Facebook and/or Twitter account, will be viewed as antisocial, and counted against you.
I personally think it means you just want nothing to do with sites that have data mining as their primary means of generating revenue, and/or perhaps simply find those sites and the drama found their boring and/or stupid.
 
Gorankar said:
I think, going forward, not having a Facebook and/or Twitter account, will be viewed as antisocial, and counted against you.
I personally think it means you just want nothing to do with sites that have data mining as their primary means of generating revenue, and/or perhaps simply find those sites and the drama found their boring and/or stupid.
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Seeking sheep is easy.

I don't use social media outside of a few forums. It's not because I'm anti-social either - I have lots of contact with people... human contact. If you are important in my life I make the time to interact with you face to face. Quire honestly I could give less than a crap what someone that I spoke to 10 times from my college graduating class is doing while they live across the country, it's inconsequential in my life and has zero importance. I also disagree with the data mining, etc., but ultimately it's the fact that their product that doesn't do anything of value for me that keeps me from using it.
 
The sad part is, people overshare way too much on social media. People flashing money from a robbery, posting a rape on Periscope, taking selfies after escaping prison - the list goes on and on. I know people who have been fired over social media.
Call in sick, then post pictures of you at the pool or playing golf. Not a good idea when your boss is a Facebook friend!
Heck, we do lightweight checking of social media accounts to see who we will be working with. You learn a lot and helps us weed people out.
 
All I can say is: San Bernadino. THEY WILL NOT USE SOCIAL MEDIA TO VET DANGEROUS PEOPLE WE HAVE NO BACKGROUND ON AND WANT TO POTENTIALLY HURT US, and yet will do this.
 
I think it's a no brainer. It's publicly available information, that the user decided to make public. The article states that they are not gaining access to content marked private, nor do they have access to private messages. There is concern about Facebook and government interactions behind the scenes, but that is outside the context of this article and possibly just tinfoil hat stuff, possibly.

I am very careful about what I post publicly on Facebook. Very ambiguous stuff that doesn't give away anything, because yes people are watching you. In fact, I believe some of my co-workers check out my profile because people in my building will show up on my "recommended" list, yet these people have zero interaction/relationship with me outside of just being a co-worker. And I find it incredibly odd that of all the people with the same work address as me, that it would choose the person(s) who happens to be my co-workers......

Don't want people to think your a drunk, don't park your car in the lawn every Friday night.....same practice with Facebook.
 
As long as my Google search history isn't, I'll be ok.

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Duh. If someone posted "Kill all white people" on a social media site I'm thinking maybe that's something any potential employer wouldn't want to deal with if it ever become public knowledge.
 
If they're looking at publicly available information I see nothing wrong with it. People choose what to put out in the public and if it comes back to bite them in the ass then that's their fault. People need to learn some personal responsibility and they need to learn what is and is not acceptable to post on social media. I have no pity for idiots that don't learn those two lessons.
 
It's a thing where people go and just write random shit from their life on a website. Often seeking validation, acceptance, and/or justification. Kind of like a diary, and a confessional, except it is public.
 
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Gorankar said:
While the government often times, or even most of the time, overreaches it's boundaries, this is not really one of those times. If you are going for a job that requires a clearance, social media has just given them a tool to disqualify unsuitable candidates b4 spending the big bucks on interviewing real people. Interviewing family, friends, former employers/teachers, or whoever else they interview depending on the clearance level, is not cheap..

Freedom of speech is not freedom of the consequences of that speech. Modern technology has simply given us all a better means to get our speech heard, for good or ill. Accept that there are consequences to that.
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Its an easy way to guarantee politically motivated exclusion/inclusion in a job position that should be free of such practices. But when your ideology likely aligns with the bureaucracy that will abuse that aspect, its all about the 'owning up to the consequences'. Except when 'owning up to the consequences' works against you.
 
Private_Ops said:
I'm gonna say those it'll be something similar to sir-golds post. I'm glad to be part of the small group that doesn't have social media accounts.
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Ummm, Not that it will change what any of you think, but Security Clearance Investigations are not passed on to employers.

In other words;

When it comes to cleared jobs, it's sort of like having a college degree, you have it, or you don't. If you have an active clearance, no problem, but if you don't, the cost and risks of hiring someone to sit around for potentially over a year waiting for a favorable outcome are generally thought of as too high. Specially for a Top Secret. Some businesses, the ones that are higher technical engineers, they'll take the risks on a Secret because the talent is important enough to warrant the risk and the risk is presumed less.

But regardless of a company's willingness to take risks, the people doing the investigation do not pass anything but the results of the investigation on to the employer, even if the employer is a government agency. It's thumbs up, or thumbs down. And Sir Gold's post has nothing at all to do with the way the real world works regarding Security Clearances.

So Sir-Gold, let's get started. Please explain what a "private contractor" is, I have never heard of such a thing?

See, the government defines the businesses that do contract work as the actual contractor. The people who work for such businesses are sometimes mistakenly referred to as contractors, but they are in fact, Contractor Employees. Furthermore, there are only two forms of contract, General Services and Personal Services. General Service contracts are by far the norm and specify pretty directly what work must be performed under the contract. But there are personal services contracts and sometimes these are used, and in those cases the work to be performed is a lot less specifically defined and the personal services contractor is much more like a true employee then a contracted business in practice.

Now Sir-Gold, you are correct, sometimes job positions are written in such a way that they already have someone earmarked for the job and they know they only want that guy. They will tailor the job posting to fit the person. In defense of the practice, they already know exactly who they want for the job and it is not always about who's who's buddy. Frequently a Customer is dumping a contracting company but there is that one guy who has been awesome and was keeping everything going despite how bad the contracting company was screwing up. In those cases, sometimes they decide to create a special position just for this guy and if you were in their shoes you would do it as well.

Can it be unfair? Yes, yes it can. But if you were them, would you care about fair when your mission depends on someone you are about to lose?
 
Ahh, you guys are putting too much emphasis in this anyway. It's just part of the Snowden fallout, the government's reaction to it all.

Of course, because they will see what I am posting they are going to get you guys right along with me soooo.

Good 'ol Digital Typhoid Mary, that's me.

I should change my nickname from lcpiper to DTM :rolleyes:
 
LOL, anyway, having received a clearance while in the military certainly made getting a high paying job after I got out easy.
 
Gorankar said:
LOL, anyway, having received a clearance while in the military certainly made getting a high paying job after I got out easy.
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Yes well, it does tend to move your team to a different division doesn't it.
 
People that laugh saying 'I don't have a social network account'......You realize that you are posting on a searchable forum and techincally any comment like dislike you do on youtube video, pornhub, reddit, xbox, psn, steam networks, tinder, etc all create profiles that can be easily searched. Just because one does not have a facebook or twitter specific account, does not make one near invisible in this world. People more invisible than you, didn't post on this topic lol. :) And often it isn't even what you post, it is friends you hang out with that post on such networks. Don't think no one will peek if they find you have no main accounts for such things.
 
Darunion said:
People that laugh saying 'I don't have a social network account'......You realize that you are posting on a searchable forum and techincally any comment like dislike you do on youtube video, pornhub, reddit, xbox, psn, steam networks, tinder, etc all create profiles that can be easily searched. Just because one does not have a facebook or twitter specific account, does not make one near invisible in this world. People more invisible than you, didn't post on this topic lol. :) And often it isn't even what you post, it is friends you hang out with that post on such networks. Don't think no one will peek if they find you have no main accounts for such things.
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You are correct. I would only offer that as in all things, there is the low hanging fruit and then there is the rest.

For instance, this article says that public social media information will be subject to searches for background checks, but that in the case of an actual investigation that they would go to the private data as well. Therefor my public posts are open season, but if they find a need to investigate me then my private messages to individuals and any data on a site that I have left restricted would all be accessed presumably with a warrant or some such court order. Heck, it's possible that under the terms of being granted access that I have in effect gave them permission to access such data, private or otherwise. I may just not be aware since they haven't had me sign new documents or agreements since this new program was announced.
 
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