damn the man
a short while ago, i was interviewed for a job in some sort of operations-related department of lockheed-martin. the interview was quite a bit cryptic, as it was for some unnameable government program (working for an unnameable part of the government). but the two engineers who interviewed me seemed pretty interested, and i think they were about to offer me the job. not that i was about to take it, mind you. but that moral dilemma never presented itself fully to me, as i was denied the proper security clearance required for the position. lockheed's security clearance officer gave me an in-depth telephone interview covering everything from foreign nationals in my family to drug use to personal debt. and since i was told that the job would require a lie detector test, i figured i should tell the truth. in which the security clearance officer found something objectionable.

but this seemed a bit odd to me. i'm not a heavy drug user. i don't have an ungodly amount of personal debt. i know people who have gotten clearances which a much more sordid background than myself. so i just now looked up on the google what it was that i was denied -- which i was told was a "special access" clearance. and from the washington post's article getting a security clearance: "in addition, some clearances allow access to particularly sensitive information. known as special access programs, these clearances are defined by the defense security service as any program that is established to control access, distribution, and to provide protection for information beyond confidential, secret and top secret levels."

so there you have it. apparently, in order to get a special access clearance, which is this ungodly super-secret hush-hush thing, you must have lived your life on the straight and narrow. which, in my opinion, is just plain boring.