background investigations

[Ray Chen]

Groan...  If you move from one site to another, provided that the site
your moving to is a "secure facility" and is authorized to hold
clearances of your level/type, the clearance can follow you around, be
it a Confidential or a Top Secret Pick-your-favorite-classification.
The actual procedure is a little complicated.  You get debriefed at
your old site, your clearance gets deactivated, the security officers
of both sites get together, magic mumbling occurs, your clearance
credentials get transferred, and your clearance gets reactivated at
your new site.  It's a bit of hassle, but it's nothing major.

Also, you don't have to move directly from one job/site to another.
There's a time period during which your clearance can be reactivated with
a miminal amount of hassle (assuming no unusual circumstances, like a
treason conviction or something).  If memory serves me, I believe that
the time period is one year.  After that, your clearance turns into
a proverbial midnight pumpkin and you have to get cleared again the
hard way.

As a final note, remember that clearance doesn't imply access.
Information is still handed out on a "need-to-know" basis (don't you
just love cloak+dagger games).  If you don't need to know, it doesn't
matter what your clearance is.  You won't (or shouldn't :-) find out.

(In case of further responses, is there another newsgroup for this
stuff?  Discussing this in unix-wizards seems a bit silly.)

	Ray Chen
	princeton!tilt!chenr