The fact is that even for (NATO) top secret security clearances, there are lots of people that lie through their teeth, and receive the clearance. Obviously on things that aren't in any records. The big ones being alcohol use, drug use, personal finances, foreign partners. Some are more forgiving than others, though.
The military is unfortunately chock full of functional alcoholics. As long as they don't get caught drunk on the job, seen partying too much, DIU, or admit anything to their doctor, they keep getting renewed their clearance.
Interestingly enough, if there's even the smallest suspicious that you smoke weed, they'll put you through the wringer. I've seen more people lose their clearance for pissing red, than those with six figure debts or drinking 5 days a week.
Boggles the mind that the advice from the security was to lie on the form, which is almost certainly a felony.
The thing that is missed in most efforts to replace people with machines is how often the people that are being replaced are on the fly fixing the system the machine is intended to crystallize and automate.
This is what a lot of people miss about "AI will replace" programmers narrative.
When converting from a traditional process to an electronic one, half my job is twisting people's arms and playing mind reader trying to determine what they ACTUALLY do day-to-day instead of the hypothetical offical, documented, process.
Some of the workarounds that people do instead of updating the process are damn right unhinged.
Without going into details, just recently I was able to get pretty decent business requirements from group manager, but it seems the only reason I was able to get somewhat decent idea of what they actually do, is because there was certain level of trust since we worked together previously so there was no need to bs one another. I openly stated what I thought is doable and he seemed to understand that I need to know actual use cases.
edit: Otoh, my boss is kinda giving up on automating another group's process, because he seems to be getting a lot of 'it depends' answers.
This is exactly why “automation” hasn’t taken _that_ many jobs. It is a totally overlooked detail. Thanks for the reminder.
Some industrial shipping docks can be managed by a very small crew. I think this is the metaphor for what's going to happen to a lot of industries.
I’m not so sure. They operate that way because of scale and economy (and tech that enables that). In a future where all industries are optimized in such way, very little will actually flow as most won’t have the money to buy goods, thus factories won’t make goods, thus shippers won’t ship, and the global economy grinds to a halt.
We need waste as much as we need investment. The trick is to find the value in between. I think the sweet spot will be augmenting work, not necessarily optimizing it.
dark factory
It's easy to pass judgement on a decision like that when so far removed from the context where/when it took place.
It's likely that answering yes to that question meant an instant rejection for the clearance AND summer job. The FBI was probably not inclined to spend money looking into such an obviously trivial matter just so some kid could get some work experience. "Sorry, try the McDonald's down the street."
That security officer did the author an incredibly big favor.
When I joined the Air Force, they helped us fill out the clearance forms. One question was related to marijuana use in the past. The NCO helping us told us “if you have used it before, be honest. They will know.” But then followed it up with “remember: you used it less than 5 times and you didn’t like it”.
It’s also odd, because usually, as long as you don’t lie on your security form, you’ll get your clearance.
The coverup is always worse than the original sin.
If it is plausible that you did not remember, it's not a felony. Something that happened for 12-years old is easy to forget.
There is nothing morally wrong in felonies like this, just don't get caught.
> There is nothing morally wrong in felonies like this, just don't get caught.
Highly debatable. If you believe in a categorical imperative that to intentionally deceive another person is wrong, then lying by omission is still an immoral act. A Christian might also interpret the words of Jesus “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” as an imperative to comply fully with the law of the land.
Probably thought he was joking around. This was for a summer internship after all.
The travel forms to visit the US ask if people have ever been involved in espionage, at least they did, I'm not aware that it's changed.
You can guarantee the many people who work for intelligence agencies of US allies aren't admitting to that when they travel to the US.
It's all a bit of a game.
The reasoning for some of these questions is that if you are caught, it’s sometimes easier to charge you with fraud (lying on the form) than the actual thing (such as espionage).
Wouldn't they need the be able to prove that you are a spy in order to argue that you lied ? In which case who cares about the form ?
But they're required by laws of their own country to lie, presumably. There are certainly game-like aspects.
Those forms also ask if you've ever been a member of a communist party, and basically everyone over 35 in all of Eastern Europe would have to check that one (they don't, if they want to enter the US)
Every statement in the above comment is wrong:
People born in the 90s wouldn’t have a chance to be old enough to belong to any group other than a preschool before the collapse of the Soviet and Soviet aligned regimes.
For those who were adults before 1990, while they may have been party members for reasons unrelated to political ideology, it wasn’t as common: in the late 80s, only ~10% of adults in Warsaw pact countries were communist party members. Far from “everyone”.
And even if you check that in the DS-160 visa application form, you are allowed to add an explanation. Consular visa officers are very well familiar with the political situation at the countries they are stationed in, and can grant visa even if the box is checked.
"Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?"
Quite.
He lied originally, kinda.
He made a cypher with a school friend, which cypher was handed by a stranger to the FBI and investigated. That one possible outcome of the investigation might be 'the subject is a Japanese spy' doesn't mean _he_ was suspected of that; not by the FBI at least.
If he said, "I made a cypher in school", then likely the form would have been considered fine? Presumably his record clearly showed the FBI incident, so I'm surprised that lying in the second form didn't cause concern sufficient to question him. But there you go; I've never had any associations with TLAs, what would I know.
I mean, his name is Les Earnest, they should expect it.
(1988) and real cute
From an OG computer scientist [0], about antics at age 12 which might strike some of us as familiar :)
I got distracted by how incredible owning milk.com is
Also the server header is "lactoserv"
The FAQ is super informative!
I miss the Grate book of MOO lore from Usenet
Is it allowed to lol on HN?
purple.com had a similar page for years, and eventually the mattress company rolled up with a dumptruck load of cash
He used to (maybe still does) have a page where he talked about turning down millions of dollars for it.
See the link above. He’s willing to part with it for 10 million
Almost as cool as owning ai.com!!
Buying AI.com for an AI company just shows they have more money than imagination. Many such cases during the dot-com era (pets.com, mp3.com).
The real flex would be for AI.com to have nothing to do with AI whatsoever.
Not on the same scale as AI, but my first ever AirBnB host still owns harley.com. He made his money writing "The Yellow Pages of the Internet" physical books and had turned down numerous lucrative offers from Harley Davidson.
Really fascinating and quirky guy as you can probably infer from the site.
Similarly, the guy who owned nissan.com never sold out and continues to spite Nissan Motors even in death.
You've got to actually use a trademark-adjacent domain in good faith though, otherwise you might end up like this guy.
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a69634055/75-million-dolla...
> The real flex would be for AI.com to have nothing to do with AI whatsoever
Apple Intelligence?
Apple Inc. was right there man.
Talk about missing the low hanging fruit!
;)
In an incredible coincidence, I just yesterday listened to a podcast episode that discussed milk.com.
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/03/nx-s1-5526903/domain-name-val...
This story was written in another text also and discussed on HN. It was longer and the author also described how later in life he introduced a standard to wear hemlets on bicycle competitions. (Sorry, I dont have a link handy)
Not related to this story, but this one https://milk.com/true-stories/stupid_computer_users.txt was hilarious :)
When I was 15, a couple months short of 16, I ended up working as a student intern at a research facility. They required a clearance to badge into and out of the building, but I never worked on anything that directly needed the clearance.
So I was given the form to fill in and read the question: Since you were 16, or in the last 7 seven years, have you ever smoked weed?
So I thought, I guess I better think back to when I was 8!
> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.
Presumably this is the famous (?) story of him listing his race as “mongrel” whenever asked?
I find it a little funny how much the government spends on these dead end investigations. We never will know precisely how much is wasted.
It's not funny. It's a dag-gone jobs program. ICE, TSA, and more throw away billions to effect little but a heavy burden on the population. These organizations, FBI and other law enforcement included, invent crises and problems so as to secure even more funding.
Maybe the individual investigator in the story is excepted considering it seems he took it seriously, perhaps, but yes, a lot of money is intentionally thrown into these organizations for security theater, jobs programs, and padding the pockets of political friends and cronies.
What we should be worried about is how many legitimate threats fly under the radar because time and again these organizations have been proven to be highly ineffective at actually preventing what their charters mandate, but they can appear to be very visibly effective by incarcerating thousands of innocent people.
Investigating a cryptographic key found near a major military installation during war time doesn’t strike me as a waste of money. We have the full information about the outcome, but the San Diego FBI field office did not.
I think that’s what makes this story so funny- the FBI was acting appropriately and rationally, but ended up with a relatively absurd result.
And then when something big happens, everybody and their dog starts screaming “how could this happen?!?”
You can’t have it both ways… (not specifically directed at you.)
I mean, in this case the government spent thousands because there was a small amount of circumstantial evidence that suggested there was clandestine communication happening during wartime.
What was the immediate government spending on Japanese American internment, where there was no evidence or investigation into the ~120k people whose lives were disrupted, and who were transported, housed, fed and guarded for multiple years?
Arguably, spending thousands on investigating something specific is less wasteful than the alternatives the government was willing to take at that time.
You think it was a waste of money to try to track down a cipher during World War II, when we'd been at war with Japan for over a year?
Remember, hindsight is always 20/20.
It's obvious the real spy was Bob.
Wonder if author name is Alice
I have a somewhat similar story involving the death of an extremely elderly neighbor by an accident on his farm, and the suspicion by the state police that I at 12 years old had murdered him, based solely on someone saying they thought they saw me messing with his mailbox from a car that was similar to the one parked in our driveway. The mailbox which stood directly next to ours at the end of an easily walkable driveway. So yes, Mr. SF-86, I had once been investigated for a felony. Oh, you're only supposed to tell the truth if the truth will help the government catch to a bad guy? Very impressive system, sir. Top notch.
> On another occasion much later, I learned by chance that putting certain provocative information on a security clearance form can greatly speed up the clearance process. But that is another story.
I have to know this now...
Here you go: https://yarchive.net/risks/mongrel.html
What a wholesome guy. Thanks for the read