Background investigations

FINANCIAL COST OF CORONAVIRUS LEADS TOP COUNTERINTELLIGENCE OFFICIAL TO RELAX TOP-SECRET CLEARANCE RULES

The government's top counterintelligence official is telling security officers across the Executive Branch to relax rules for vetting workers with Top Secret clearances, citing financial hardships that may hit as a result of the coronavirus. William R. Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said Monday that workers with financial problems needed to be reconsidered in a new context, not as security risks or disqualified to hold a clearance.

The new directive is needed because a little known program called "continuous evaluation" now constantly scrutinizes the activities of some 1.7 million security clearance holders—military servicemembers, civil service employees and even private industry workers—matching crime reports, court records, property transactions, and credit scores to workers and flagging activities that indicate possible wrongdoing or deception. This Big Brother automated system is used to verify and uncover facts about individuals as well as look for anomalous activity that might reveal spying for a foreign government but also provides early warning of "insider threats": the next Edward Snowden-type individual who uses their access to government secrets to make public revelations.

The program, instituted government-wide in 2018, is described by its operators as a good government measure and a money-saving blessing, an improvement over old shoe-leather methods of doing background investigations. Part of the what the federal government is calling Trusted Workforce 2.0, continuous evaluation is said to be less intrusive, cheaper and more accurate.