Ageism in the security clearance process – it might not look how you think it would. Age is a factor in the security clearance process, and that’s why young people can often mitigate issues that would trip up other applicants, all under the umbrella of ‘youthful indiscretion.’ Lindy Kyzer and Sean Bigley discuss juvenile mistakes and how they factor into a security clearance determination.
Sean Bigley:
Welcome to the conversation. I am Sean Bigley, and I’m here with Lindy Kyzer of clearancejobs.com. We’re talking this segment about juvenile histories. And the working title we sort of had for this one, Lindy, was ‘The Government Doesn’t Care About Your Childhood Antics Most of the Time’. And I think that’s true. Most people in my experience who have had some colorful juvenile pasts are concerned about those coming back to haunt them, and it’s somewhat common. Is this a question you get a lot on ClearanceJobs?
Lindy Kyzer:
We do. It comes up often over at ClearanceJobsBlog.com, which is our forum. That’s where we get folks on the applicant piece of it. We’ve had some student intern threads. They’re always exciting. I love to get those. Sometimes I wonder if they’re actually real people because the people are so honest. Then I remember, “Oh, there are people like that.” Especially when you look at the NSA applicant pool, some of those comments that we’ll get, where people are talking about that time that they cheated on their homework and then they stole the wifi password from their mom, and they just have all of these things that could be possibly bad that they’ve done.
And I always feel bad for those folks. I’m like, “You should never take a polygraph. You might be able to get in, but the polygraph is going to be really hard for you.” Because there’s just two people, people who do things that are wrong and can instantly forget them, and people who do one thing wrong and they will die with them in the bleeding heart of their soul. And, again, welcome to the world because we get both.
Sean Bigley:
Very true. The dwellers, I call them, they like to sort of dwell and ruminate on the one bad thing that they did 15 years ago. And on some level you sort of chuckle, but on other level you kind of feel for them because I think anxiety is a real thing and for some people it really is that bad.
I think hopefully there is some solace in this for most of the cleared population, and that is much like our working title for this segment, the government really doesn’t care most of the time. I remember very distinctly years ago, somebody asking me if the fact that they stole an action figure from a store when they were eight years old was going to be used against them in the security clearance process. And they were totally serious. And I sort of come back to that one often because the reality is most people who are applying for clearances are well out of the petty shoplifting phase and the juvenile antics phase. But there are some folks who had a rough childhood and some rough teenage years. and certainly if you were somebody who was in juvenile hall when you were 17 years old and now you’re 20 and you’re applying for a clearance, there may be some impediments potentially just given the recency. But for most folks who are kind of living life and coloring outside the lines a bit as juveniles, it’s, in my experience at least, not going to be a problem.
So why don’t we talk a little bit about some of the things that commonly come up, some of the specifics that people tend to get that anxiety about, pertains to juvenile history. I’ll start with one that I saw come up frequently, and that was obviously drug experimentation. Most of the time the government could care less about your drug experimentation when you were a minor. Unless, again, you’re 18 years old, you’re going into the military, and the last time you did something was six months ago. That may be an impediment. But is it a permanent impediment? No. You got to give yourself maybe a little bit of extra time, get yourself outside the window of what’s called the Bond Amendment, which requires a year of abstinence. And then chances are, as long as you’ve demonstrated that you’ve outgrown that, you’re probably going to be fine. Lindy, any others, frequent ones, that come to mind?
Lindy Kyzer:
Well, we’ve had a thread going so far of recent episodes, Sean, where you call me old, so I’m going to age myself again. Remember Napster?
Sean Bigley:
Oh, yes.
Lindy Kyzer:
Remember the audio. It’s been a while, Sean, it’s been a while. But we used to get those all the time. What are young people doing today that they don’t have pirated or bootlegged online media? I feel like we’ve gone full circle now. Everything is just up for consumption online. But it used to be a lot of the cyber digital, that was a common one for young people for a while. And I did see denials and revocations based on that for a while, because you had, especially people applying for some of these cyber roles, had just a ton of pirated content that they had. And that was one, it was funny, I think for a while the government was just trying to take a hard line stance on a little bit of that, of the theft of intellectual property piece of it. Might’ve been some kickback from the Manning days and having a Lady Gaga CD.
We used to see that one come up. So for me, when I think about it, I think drugs, theft and then again, the piracy piece of it for digital content. But again, I’m old now, so I can’t remember the last time I saw a good Napster digital theft. What are the young people doing with themselves? I don’t know.
Sean Bigley:
Well, I have a very important question that I must ask you then, since you brought up Napster. Were you on MySpace?
Lindy Kyzer:
I mean, briefly, briefly.
Sean Bigley:
Okay. Well now you are dating yourself.
Lindy Kyzer:
I remember MySpace.
Sean Bigley:
So that’s on you, Lindy.
Lindy Kyzer:
Yes. Facebook, then quickly, Facebook was good back when you had to have a .edu. Now I’m also dating myself. It’s also how you know I’m old because I still mention Facebook.
Sean Bigley:
Yes.
Lindy Kyzer:
I tried to get on Snapchat. I’m way too old for Snapchat. Sean’s younger than me, so he’s probably snapping it up. You can find Sean on Snapchat.
Don’t find me on Snapchat. I’m way too old for that stuff.
But that is an interesting, you think about the things young people do online, and there is so much more content out there. And the social media piece of it, I think that’s why you probably can get more anxiety around it. But I don’t think it’s catching people yet, for good, bad, or otherwise. I’m not sure how I feel about that. But I think the social media piece of it is one that I think young people, if they think about it, it certainly has career ramifications. A lot of crazy antics on the social sites. Oh, it’s like a trip down memory lane thinking about my MySpace and my Napster.
Sean Bigley:
I bet it is. I bet it is. No, I am 100% with you. The social media stuff and the online activities, that’s definitely become an issue. The downloading stuff, we saw that a lot. Although ironically, the times that I would see it was typically limited to one agency, and that was NSA. For whatever reason, we would just get case after case after case when we were representing federal employees and contractors in security clearance denials at NSA, where they were just going really hard on people for, “You downloaded this and that,” and they would include the amounts and, “it’s estimated at this dollar amount,” and on and on and on. And then we’d get other agencies where they wouldn’t even bat an eye. And so it’s very confusing for people navigate them their way through that kind of discrepancy in that sort of territory.
But yes, I 100% agree. The other one I will add, somewhat similar to that, sexting, actually. This is a big one. We have seen come up or I saw come up in my law practice in sort of the closing years before I retired, and that was younger people, typically teenagers who were engaging in sexting activity and then they were applying for security clearances. And I would get inquiries from people saying, “I’m really scared. I think there’s videos out there of me in compromising positions, doing things that could potentially be used against me for blackmail. What do I do?” And that’s an uncomfortable conversation to have because, yeah, in many cases it could be used for blackmail if it gets in the wrong hands. Granted, we have kind of this added layer to the onion that’s starting to develop with things like AI where people are raising questions about that and I sort of half jokingly would tell people like, “Well, the irony is you can always just blame it on AI and say, ‘It wasn’t me. It’s not me in the video.'”
But I mean, truthfully, that’s something that does tend to come up more with the younger crowd and particularly teenagers. And so if there are videos out there of folks applying for clearances that are floating around of them engaged in sexual related behavior, yeah, it could potentially be a problem. So the bottom line, from my perspective at least, is most of this stuff kind of dissipates with time. The passage of time, as you well know, is obviously one of the biggest mitigating factors in security clearance adjudications. In theory at least, everything is mitigatable with the passage of time. Your minor drug use when you were a minor is probably not a problem now that you are an adult, as long as it’s been at least a year and you’ve demonstrated some life changes and moved away from bad influences and done some of the basic things that people do as they grow up activities.
Activities as a juvenile on the internet with downloading and pirated content and stuff, music, probably not an issue as an adult. Maybe with the singular exception of NSA, if you’re still in your 20s and that one you may want to be careful of. The sexting, that one I think is probably the only one that maybe there’s a little bit more of a delayed lingering concern because the blackmail potential on that may not quite dissipate just as the concerns about judgment and maturity would with the other issues. So I always tell folks, “Be careful with that stuff.”
This article is intended as general information only and should not be construed as legal advice. Although the information is believed to be accurate as of the publication date, no guarantee or warranty is offered or implied. Laws and government policies are subject to change, and the information provided herein may not provide a complete or current analysis of the topic or other pertinent considerations. Consult an attorney regarding your specific situation.
