On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 23:12:31 GMT, Ed Rasimus
wrote:

Well, although you may have good reason for what you say, in my
experience, both in the military and in industry, there was never any
problem in the statement that one possessed a security clearance. In
fact, in industry, your company ID badge displayed stars to quickly
identify the level of your clearance. Two stars = secret, three stars
= TS.

NASA stopped doing that a while back. We used colored borders on the
badges, so we all had to get new badges without that information.

And, your access to specific compartmentalized programs (i.e.
"black") was displayed with a letter and number code in an "egg crate"
at the bottom of your badge. It was easy to determine if someone had
access to a program by looking at your badge and theirs--same numbers
and in a cleared location, OK to discuss if they reasonably had "need
to know".

NASA uses lists of people briefed onto programs (i.e. having the need
to know for that program), rather than putting it on the badge. We
used to use badge coding, with a little YF-12 planform indicating
access to Senior Crown, for example. We stopped doing that when we
stopped coding clearance levels. I think we were told to stop.

Seriously, there's nothing magic about security clearances. The
security issue is not who has one, but what is accessible after the
fact. There is little to be gained in status by possession of a
clearance and nothing to be added by ascribing some sort of "bad juju"
to the system.

The status, such as there is, comes with the need to know, with being
cleared onto a program. Getting a clearance is a lot easier than
getting cleared onto a program.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer