Three Social Media Activities That Might Cost You Your Security Clearance

It should be no surprise that most clearance holders have active social media accounts on one or more of the many available platforms. Censorship has rapidly increased over the past year, which has led to technological improvements in systems used to track information and activity on those platforms. While the security clearance world builds out the Continuous Evaluation program, it would not be surprising to see an increased focus on social media and internet activity in the very near future.

Guideline A of the Adjudicative Guidelines for Determining Eligibility for Access to Classified Information deals with “Allegiance to the United States”. In reviewing potential violations of this guideline, the government looks for indicators that a person has associated themselves with or is a sympathizer for persons or organizations who advocate, threaten, or use force for a number of different nefarious activities counter to Federal, state, or local governments. Here are a few social media activities that might cost you your clearance:

You must not advocate for or threaten violence against the government or any government official. This might appear to be simple advice, but many people regularly threaten to “fight” for what they believe in or might urge others that “now is the time to…” You might have made comments that have been repeated throughout history since the time of our founding fathers to modern day, such as “The second amendment is there to protect all of the other amendments”.