If it is Public, it is Fair Game
People want to pretend that whatever they do on social media is somehow separate from their work life, but it is not.
If you are a defense contractor with a clearance, even a “public trust” level of clearance (which is a very low level clearance), what you do on social media definitely counts.
In fact the Department of Defense is just taking a page out of the song book that the commercial space has been doing for years.
Going back to the defense contractor world, everyone who has some form of a clearance is now enrolled in what they call CE or Continuous Evaluation. It used to be that people with clearances were only re-evaluated every five or ten years. Then we had attacks like the Washington Navy Yard shooting, the Fort Hood shooting and Edward Snowden. The feds figured out they needed something better.
HR professionals have been using “open source intelligence” or OSINT for years now. Once the DoD released a guide they call SEAD 5, they started using OSINT as well.
Whether you are in the commercial space or the government (employee or contractor) space, your boss is likely looking at publicly available data. Some employers are asking for your social media passwords. Depending on the state that you live in that may be illegal. Many are asking for your social media usernames (of course you can lie).
What is included?
- Social networks (like LinkedIn and Facebook)
- Microblogging sites (like Twitter and Mastodon)
- Blogging sites (like WordPress and Tumbler)
- Picture and video sharing sites (like Flickr and YouTube)
- Music sharing sites (like Spotify)
- eCommerce sites (like eBay)
- Dating sites (like Match.com)
- Geosocial sites (like TripAdvisor)
- News sites where people can comment
- Search engines (like Google)
Google me and you will find everything from articles that I wrote in the 1990s to media interviews to many other things.
So you have a couple of choices:
- Don’t participate in the online web (that may be too late)
- Filter what you say so that you don’t say anything that will get you fired, not hired or lose your clearance
- Go private and don’t make anything visible
In my case, there is a lot of stuff that I didn’t post although I participated in like speaking engagements and media interviews. If you want to go dark, you need to avoid speaking in public.
Then, of course, you also have the data brokers. The government does buy data from brokers. Companies may buy data in the form of a “background check”. It used to be that a background check was a check to see if you had been convicted of a felony. Not any more. It can be a lot more, depending on how much money your (potential) employer wants to spend.
We even offer open source intelligence as a service. As a company executive, you want to know what is out there about you. And your company. Credit: Gov Exec
Concerned about your digital exhaust bits? Give us a call. For the most part, we cannot change history, but in some circumstances we can.
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