If it’s anything like real government clearances, lots of paperwork, interviews of friends/family, polygraphs (which contrary to popular belief do get some people), simple analysis of travel records, etc. etc. etc. They tend to be less about detecting past “bad behavior” than detecting lies about bad behavior, which imply you might be lying about the other things.
I ask because neither the Closure nor Ops-Sec section talk much about how to actually teach and/or vet the skill of confidentiality, and I wasn’t sure if government-security-clearance-style-screening actually included that.
I’m afraid the clearances themselves won’t be much help for vetting something like that. Their biggest job is to filter against people likeliest to become deliberate spies. Mostly they do that by performing the much easier job of making sure someone isn’t thrill-seeking, is risk-intolerant, and is unlikely to break rules in general.
But teaching the skill of confidentiality can be done; governments have been doing that job passably for decades. You can even test it effectively every once in a while by red-teaming your own guys. Tell Paul from section A he’ll get a bonus if he can get someone from section B to give him information that should be siloed there. Then see if section B manages to report Paul’s suspicious questions (yay!), if Paul fails but isn’t detected (meh), or if Paul actually succeeds at getting someone to reveal something confidential (oh no).
What does that actually involve?
If it’s anything like real government clearances, lots of paperwork, interviews of friends/family, polygraphs (which contrary to popular belief do get some people), simple analysis of travel records, etc. etc. etc. They tend to be less about detecting past “bad behavior” than detecting lies about bad behavior, which imply you might be lying about the other things.
Honestly we could do better.
I ask because neither the Closure nor Ops-Sec section talk much about how to actually teach and/or vet the skill of confidentiality, and I wasn’t sure if government-security-clearance-style-screening actually included that.
I’m afraid the clearances themselves won’t be much help for vetting something like that. Their biggest job is to filter against people likeliest to become deliberate spies. Mostly they do that by performing the much easier job of making sure someone isn’t thrill-seeking, is risk-intolerant, and is unlikely to break rules in general.
But teaching the skill of confidentiality can be done; governments have been doing that job passably for decades. You can even test it effectively every once in a while by red-teaming your own guys. Tell Paul from section A he’ll get a bonus if he can get someone from section B to give him information that should be siloed there. Then see if section B manages to report Paul’s suspicious questions (yay!), if Paul fails but isn’t detected (meh), or if Paul actually succeeds at getting someone to reveal something confidential (oh no).
Yeah. I don’t have a strong sense that this is that hard, but I do think you need to be actually trying to succeed at it.