THREAD One of the weirder statistical consequences of the riot.

You can only be denied a security clearance (or have a current one revoked) if the allegations made against you fit within one of 13 adjudicative guidelines, numbered A-M.

Despite being ostensibly narrow, these guidelines are actually pretty broad in scope, & it can be argued that there's not really much of anything that a savvy adjudicator can't fit under their umbrella. But we're not going to talk about that today.
When the government denies or revokes a clearance, it has to issue you what is called a "Statement of Reasons" which sets forth the allegations made against you & explains which of the 13 guidelines they fit under. The most common ones tend to be B (foreign influence), C ...
(foreign preference), E (personal conduct), and F (financial issues). By far the least common one, at least in my experience, is Guidelines A: Allegiance to the United States.

That's because to fall under Guideline A, you can't just prefer another country over the US or be ...
subject to that country's influence, you have to actually do something hostile to the United States, like try to overthrow it by violence or advocate violence against it. I've never personally seen a Guideline A case & most clearance lawyers have probably only seen 1-2 max ...
in their careers; they're that rare.

Remember how broad I said the guidelines are? You can conceivably be thrown under A by being a member of a group that has participated in such activities.

The 1/6 riot featured pretty much every major alt-right group in existence. Which ...
means that it would be entirely reasonable for anyone belonging to such a group to be denied a clearance under Guideline A, whether they were in DC or not, simply because the group they're a member of was a part of it.

There's a recognized problem with members of the law ...
enforcement, military, & intelligence communities being affiliated with such groups. Until then, this was tolerated, likely because at least they hadn't tried to overthrow the government.
My prediction is, we're going to see a lot more Guideline A cases in the next couple of years. Probably more cases in 2021-22 than in the previous 20 years put together.

I'm actually ok with that.
Corollary: People with clearances have reporting requirements for when they do something which would raise an issue OR SEE SOMEONE ELSE WITH A CLEARANCE DOING SO. Not reporting can cost you your clearance.

In other words, if you know someone is one of these folks & you don't ...
tell Security, you might lose your clearance as a result of your silence. Snitches might get stitches, but confidantes don't get clearances.
Want a taste of how agencies view reporting requirements? Watch this epic tour de force of counterintelligence panic propaganda. https://t.co/Toutwg9UFq

I have numerous concerns with this & make my students watch it for discussion purposes, but the bottom line today is, ...
this is how the folks in the Security Office expect you to behave if you have a clearance.

More from For later read

Daily Bookmarks to GAVNet 02/12/2021

Quantum causal loops

https://t.co/emX8OxKPl0

#loops #quantum

Large-scale commodity farming accelerating climate change in the Amazon

https://t.co/v3gA7OTP9E

#ClimateChange #forest #farm

Collapsed glaciers increase Third Pole uncertainties: Downstream lakes may merge within a decade

https://t.co/huAma56KeB

#glacier #lakes #ClimateChange

From trash to treasure: Silicon waste finds new use in Li-ion batteries

https://t.co/TkxKFDQMC6

#batteries #treasure #silicon #trash

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The entire discussion around Facebook’s disclosures of what happened in 2016 is very frustrating. No exec stopped any investigations, but there were a lot of heated discussions about what to publish and when.


In the spring and summer of 2016, as reported by the Times, activity we traced to GRU was reported to the FBI. This was the standard model of interaction companies used for nation-state attacks against likely US targeted.

In the Spring of 2017, after a deep dive into the Fake News phenomena, the security team wanted to publish an update that covered what we had learned. At this point, we didn’t have any advertising content or the big IRA cluster, but we did know about the GRU model.

This report when through dozens of edits as different equities were represented. I did not have any meetings with Sheryl on the paper, but I can’t speak to whether she was in the loop with my higher-ups.

In the end, the difficult question of attribution was settled by us pointing to the DNI report instead of saying Russia or GRU directly. In my pre-briefs with members of Congress, I made it clear that we believed this action was GRU.
1. Project 1742 (EcoHealth/DTRA)
Risks of bat-borne zoonotic diseases in Western Asia

Duration: 24/10/2018-23 /10/2019

Funding: $71,500
@dgaytandzhieva
https://t.co/680CdD8uug


2. Bat Virus Database
Access to the database is limited only to those scientists participating in our ‘Bats and Coronaviruses’ project
Our intention is to eventually open up this database to the larger scientific community
https://t.co/mPn7b9HM48


3. EcoHealth Alliance & DTRA Asking for Trouble
One Health research project focused on characterizing bat diversity, bat coronavirus diversity and the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in the region.
https://t.co/u6aUeWBGEN


4. Phelps, Olival, Epstein, Karesh - EcoHealth/DTRA


5, Methods and Expected Outcomes
(Unexpected Outcome = New Coronavirus Pandemic)