[CALUG] [JOB OPENING] System Administrator at Intelesys Corp

junekis at comcast.net junekis at comcast.net
Fri Mar 17 17:06:13 CST 2006


I have a beef myself, but not with companies that hire "cleared" people.

A clearance is a legitimate job skill requirement - like a degree. You wouldn't expect employers to get you a BS in Computer Science if you didn't know how to program just so you could be hired as a programmer. 

Or would you?

No, my beef is with the whole concept of "cleared" people

The clearance process focuses on screening out "sleeper" agents by making sure you didn't sneak into the country and assume someone elses ID. And incidentally they screen for commies, nuts and felons.

But once a person is "cleared" there is little continued attention. 

Yet every major spy scandal in the last 40 years has involved employees who had compartmentalized clearances who simply were bribed to sell out. No one thought to question GS-13s driving mercedes and living in $2m homes because conspicuous consumption is a celebrated virtue in our society.

The KBG never had any trouble discovering the technical details of our fighters or bombers  - they just bough the plans.

One begins to suspec that the *real* target of security clearances is the American public. 

DHS and the DoD classify programs primarily to keep the public from discovering how incompetently our defenses are managed, and especially how outrageously expensive all that custom-built but technically obsolete equipment is.

Of all government agencies, the DHS got the lowest marks from the GAO on computer security last year, in spite of all those employee clearances.

All they are hiding is their own mismanagement and malfeasance.
IMHO of course...

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Janos Gaspar" <janos at transquest.com>
> John,
> 
> I have to admire you for your defense of the flame.  I'm with a defense 
> contractor and we do a lot of work at the NSA and CIA clearance levels so 
> TS/SCI is not a big deal to us.  We also clear people, although we're a 
> small company.  It does involve cost and effort.  And it is true that 
> programs out there are not willing to wait a year for their resource to get 
> through the clearance process.  It's very difficult and most applicants 
> understand and are actually grateful.  They would get forgotten by the big 
> contractors.  Small businesses that do cleared work also take more care with 
> their employees.  Being in a small business and knowing what's involved in 
> working with the department of defense and knowing the high-level of 
> security we are dealing with and the end objectives, I can appreciate 
> everything you've said and don't appreciate James' insinuations at all.  But 
> all in all, this is a good group of guys and gals on this list, even though 
> James appears to be bitter towards you.  Maybe you should suggest you talk 
> about the cleared environment in relation to Linux and career development 
> etc. at their next meeting?  That would be interesting, don't you think?
> 
> And by the way... there are plenty of cleared sys admins who are looking for 
> work... just remember - they don't always get the best treatment at the big 
> companies.  If I can help, let me know.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John Szakmeister" <jszakmeister-calug at intelesyscorp.com>
> To: "James Ewing Cottrell 3rd" <JECottrell3 at Comcast.NET>
> Cc: <lug at calug.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 2:52 AM
> Subject: Re: [CALUG] [JOB OPENING] System Administrator at Intelesys Corp
> 
> 
> > James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
> >> Yeah, right! Like there are actually TS/SI cleared people out there
> >> without jobs.
> >
> > There are some out there who may not be happy with their current position.
> >
> >> <flame>
> >>
> >> Any company doing cleared word had better be willing to clear everybody.
> >> Otherwise, that company is not qualified to be doing cleared work.
> >
> > That was useful.  I'm glad you judged our company like that based off of
> > one line in one job requirement that we have. :-/  We do clear people.
> > However, for this job, we'd rather have someone *this year*. :-)  You
> > can't always predict a need in advance.  Waiting a year for something
> > you need today is just bad business sense.
> >
> >> Finding someone who already has a clearance is just gravy. You cannot
> >> expect it. Otherwise, there will be no people left with clearances.
> >
> > ...which is the current situation. :-)  We're always on the lookout for
> > good people, whether they're cleared or not.
> >
> >> Companies who will not spend the time, effort, and money to clear people
> >> are just Stealing from the companies that are willing to do it.
> >>
> >> Yes, we all know that it takes lots of time, money and effort to clear
> >> someone. This is why traditionally only the bigger companies could
> >> afford to do it, or they had non-cleared contracts as well.
> >
> > If a company had to clear every person themselves, then a small business
> > could not exist.  Also, dealing with government contracts is
> > fundamentally different than dealing with commercial entities.  A
> > company geared towards doing commercial contracts--which they'd have to
> > be in order to be competitive and still meet your requirement of
> > clearing people themselves--would have to change their business model
> > entirely to cope with the government (not an easy feat, and it's hard to
> > be competitive if you have to incur all that overhead of changing
> > business models).  In the commercial world, you don't have to deal with
> > fiscal years, and the fact that the budget doesn't get approved on time.
> > And, you'd expect a commercial entity to be responsive when it comes to
> > changing the terms of the agreement because their requirements have
> > changed.  The government doesn't operate nearly that efficiently.  It's
> > hard enough on small business without throwing the fact that we need to
> > clear every person ourselves as a requirement on top of everything else.
> >
> > I'll submit that large companies put out a lot of requirements where
> > they need someone already cleared.  It's not like small businesses are
> > the only ones in town hiring already cleared people.  And from what I've
> > seen, big business is just as likely to "Steal" people as anyone else.
> >
> >> </flame>
> >
> > Not everyone is out to be malicious. :-)  I've grown tired of
> > administering the networks myself, and I see plenty of opportunity for
> > someone else to come in, help us out, and learn a lot of new stuff along
> > the way.  I'm not trying to commit theft, but rather offer an
> > opportunity to someone interested in learning more about administration,
> > Linux, networking and even web development, that a person wouldn't
> > otherwise have.  I can't say that there are too many companies out there
> > in the cleared community who are willing to teach and train people, much
> > less have opportunities that allow you to make use of the world's best
> > OS: Linux. :-)
> >
> > Let's get back to the regularly scheduled program. :-)  Speaking of
> > which, I've just set up a couple of servers as a high-availability pair
> > using heartbeat and drbd.  Looking at the past events, no one has done
> > such a talk... would people be interested in a talk on that?
> >
> > -John
> > _______________________________________________
> > Columbia, Maryland Linux User's Group (CALUG) mailing list
> > CALUG Website: http://www.calug.com
> > Email postings to: lug at calug.com
> > Change your list subscription options: 
> > http://calug.com/mailman/listinfo/lug
> >
> > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Columbia, Maryland Linux User's Group (CALUG) mailing list
> CALUG Website: http://www.calug.com
> Email postings to: lug at calug.com
> Change your list subscription options: http://calug.com/mailman/listinfo/lug




More information about the lug mailing list