I always get a giggle out of discussions about clearances. I’ve held several different clearances with different degrees of access over my career. One of the big things they tell you, the one that many people forget or choose to ignore, is to not discuss it. I wish I could impress that upon my sister - she’s got a Top Secret clearance because she works the front security desk at a gov’t office. In reality, it means nothing - she has no “need to know” about the work they do - but she loves telling people about her clearance. :rolleyes:
Also the assumption that if you’re evasive about your job, you must be a spy. My experience is that those who drop hints have very low-level clearances for menial jobs. Heck, the last place I worked, the janitorial crew had Top Secret clearances so they could come into our offices to empty the trash. Common sense dictates that if you’re a spy and someone suspects you’re a spy, you’ve failed as a spy, right?
Finally, classified information is most likely boring. Working with it can be largely boring and tedious, with the added burden of not being able to go home and bitch about the boring work you did all day. The reports you write or the slides you make are most likely dry and dull and full of bullet points. And worst of all, you turn on the news one night and you see a story and realize that it’s what you were working on and maybe something you wrote influenced the outcome…
,… and you can’t talk about it. You learn to give yourself your own covert pats on the back. And you tell everyone you’re into Amway - and they stop asking about your work.
I had for a short period of time a fairly high security clearance because of my involvement in litigation involving various government departments. The stuff that I saw… I could have read about in the papers, the internet or just guessed. Which made the while thing thing farcical really. Who they hell decides on classifications?
Point being, simply having access to classified information does not make you James Bond.
What, they work with you but they can’t tell you what they do? That must be quite frustrating at management meetings. “Bob, what have you been working on this week?” “Can’t tell you.”
Mind you, you could be frustrating too: “What’s your name?” “Don’t ask.”
Anyway, I too have been vetted to a small degree and signed the Official Secrets Act. If I had learned anything sensitive I wouldn’t tell you - but I didn’t. It was just yawn-fests like government departmental budgets.
Can’t is often a substitute for “don’t choose to.” Don’t choose to leaves the door open for argument - can’t shuts it down.
She’s probably a desktop support engineer who does want to come over to your house and eradicate that stubborn virus. Or a dermatologist who really does not want to see your rash right now. Or she does something most people find interesting and want to bug her about - driver for movie stars, can tell you want the features of the new iPhone are. So she could tell you in the most general sense, but you’d have a lot more questions she couldn’t say.
I’m guessing that lies in the final *A *- Administration. Contractors do all the classified work. NASA takes their little classified packages and shoots them into space. At least that’s what I understand about the Goddard Space Flight Center from when my husband worked there. Contractors did all the cool stuff and NASA managed the paperwork.
Of course, it could have been his skewed point of view as a contractor.
I was actually assigned to a project once that my boss didn’t have the “need to know” - all he knew was I was working on that project.
There are a lot of things that are classified that just didn’t make sense to me, and some struck me as flat-out paranoia. On the other hand, knowing whether Evil Dictator X wears boxers or briefs may not be earth-shattering info, but if that info could only have come from his trusted laundress, then it would be obvious who the mole in his organization is, and that’s info you want to protect.
In reality, an intelligent person with situational awareness and common sense can figure out a lot from fragments of seemingly unimportant information, and that’s why some otherwise inane things are classified. Don’t ask me how I know…
Sometimes, I have to say “I’m sorry but I can’t talk about it.” but there is no mystery about it. I’m a home health nurse. Frequently, my patients’ neighbors will ask me how my patient is doing or who I am coming to see and I really, really can’t talk about it. I’m fairly sure no one thinks I am a spy!
Back in the early 1980’s, I worked for Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
My team were contracted by NASA to work on the guidance systems for the Hubble Space Telescope.
Because we were privy to top-level military technology, we all had Top Secret clearances.
We were not allowed to tell anyone what we did, just that we worked ‘for the government’.
As an aside, the amount of folks who actually have ‘Top Secret’ clearance is astounding high.
You’d guess it would be just a few thousand folks, right?
According to this article What’s your security clearance? 854,000 Americans have Top Secret clearance.
When I worked for Apple, subcontracted through another company, we theoretically were not even supposed to tell our own family who we worked for or what we did. Obviously that was completely ignored by everyone. You don’t work for those kinds of wages (not the best) and play “Oo! It’s a secret!”
I am pretty sure there are lots of files which are classified because people have forgotten about them and or no one wants to go over a dusty pile of files to acertain that yes, communiques from the 1930’s from embassies requesting more wine glasses can be safely declassified.
Its probably far easier just to give someone a Top Secret classification. Cheaper too.
I met a youngish FBI forensic expert last year at a party. The guy told me he couldn’t discuss what he did, although after some strategic prodding I think I pieced it together that he analyses material from overseas bombings.
I actually felt quite bad for the guy. Keeping so much of what you do a secret must take a toll…
I grew up in Huntsville, AL, where NASA and Defense Contractors are the dominant industry–especially twenty years ago. If your parent worked in an office, there was a good chance they couldn’t really talk about what they did. There, saying “I can’t talk about what I do” wouldn’t have seemed coy or like stealth bragging, just a simple statement of fact. Everyone was aware that those jobs were most likely boring.
