The region where Palantir’s main office is happens to be less segregated than typical in the US. Not sure if that necessarily helps or hurts it, or is even relevant to either the court case or public opinion on the matter, though.
Blacks and Latinos tend to have small numbers in the computer science undergraduate pipeline, which is the reason why there are few available for hire.
I have to agree with hebegebe, with blacks and latinos, and you would figure the NY area would be a good indicator, it isn’t about filtering out resumes, it is about not getting any. I have been a hiring manager for almost 25 years, I have hired quite a few people in my own area and been involved in others, and I think in that time I have had maybe 2 candidates who were black or hispanic. The issue there is in the feeder to tech, the relatively few black and hispanic kids who are majoring in comp sci or engineering. These days when I get resumes I have had very few that were not Asian or South Asian, and the reason for that is simple, schools in China and especially India have sprouted up over the last 30 years turning out a lot of computer science and engineering graduates, they have flooded the pipeline and it is why they are so represented in numbers. With tech, blacks and hispanics tend to be more in IT support IME, in part because those kind of jobs generally don’t require a 4 year degree.
It also depends where you are, in a city like Atlanta you will see more representation from blacks in tech (I don’t know about hispanics), while there are a lot of Asian and south Asians working there, the workforce is a bit more diverse than it is here in NYC.
It’s also interesting as several relatives…most of whom are first-generation Americans did gain high security clearances necessary for their work…whether it was in the military(Army/Navy) or working on high level security clearance tech work for the Federal government*.
Also, have an immigrant neighbor who has a high-level security clearance position with some Federal government agency for nearly 30 years. This was underscored by Federal agents paying me and other neighbors visits asking about him/his activities as a part of routine followup background checks on employees even after they’re hired.
- I needed to submit to an extensive security background check and sign a NDA on what I've seen inside just to visit the public areas of said relative's workplace.
Actually, the Gibson guitar lawsuit wasn’t dismissed. Instead, Gibson settled with the Feds and agreed to pay a $300k penalty to avoid criminal charges:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/06/news/companies/gibson-imports-wood/
Was wondering about that as I’ve been following it years as the case became a hot topic among guitar enthusiast and musician friends IRL and on various guitar forums. I clearly remembered that the case was SETTLED with Gibson paying penalties to the Feds, not DISMISSED.
Big difference between the two.
@busdriver11 As a first generation American from a Chinese speaking country, and who have held the ver highest level security clerances for the past 30 plus years, I find that attitude insulting. I shouldn’t have to educate Amercians that the greatest traitors in the past 30 years have been US born, white male citizens (Ames, Hanssen, Walker, et al). Why are they not automatically suspect?
Insulting or not, NoVADad, it’s the world in which we live. There are certain countries that are hacking us constantly. This wasn’t exactly a problem 30 years ago. It might give you a warm fuzzy, but do you really think its the smartest thing to put foreign nationals, or people who have recently moved over here on certain projects?
Define ‘recently.’ It takes at a minimum five years to get naturalized. Nobody walking off a plane will be getting any of these jobs or clearances. People hacking into our systems don’t need to be inside to do their job as demonstrated by what happened to OPM. What I’ve run into are long held suspicious of ‘foreigners’ in the security establishment who still rely on discredited methods like the use of polygraphs to screen applicants. The likelihood of a foreign born applicant being a spy is the same as that of a native born American since it’s been proven the latter is just as likely, if not more, to sell their country out.
Your post #28 suggested that “someone of Russian or Chinese heritage, unless they are generations removed” (meaning including at least first generation Americans born in the US) should be considered more suspect in this way than other Americans. Why do you believe this to be the case?
“Your post #28 suggested that “someone of Russian or Chinese heritage, unless they are generations removed” (meaning including at least first generation Americans born in the US) should be considered more suspect in this way than other Americans. Why do you believe this to be the case?”
This isn’t something I feel strongly about, but how far removed should one be? For example, if you are from a country that we have hostile relations with, who are openly hacking us, how does that work? If you have immediate family members still living there, in Communist or repressive regimes, and you go over to visit, should you have access to top secret projects that involve hacking (or the prevention of it), that country? What if your spouse and kids live there? Seems like you and your family could potentially be at great risk, of both blackmail and threats to your family. Far more so than someone who does not.
How about the people who worked on the Stuxnet virus? Should they be of Iranian heritage, with family still at risk? I would hope that our security protocols would figure this out, but from some of the things I’ve seen, I do not have complete confidence.
With most security checks, they would likely look at things like someone’s family situation, and having relatives back in countries like China or Russia who could be used as hostages likely would be vetted out. When they do security checks, they do look at things that could be used for blackmail. Could someone who immigrated from Russia or China be a security threat? Of course, but that doesn’t mean all are suspect, plus it is highly likely that the Chinese or Russians would not send an agent as an immigrant and hope they get into a high secure area, they work differently. Actually, they would be more likely to plant people here and wait a generation before activating the kids (sleeper spies), so waiting might not work, and more importantly, they would be more likely to compromise someone after they get clearance and are in a sensitive area, either by bribing them or blackmailing them, and that could happen to native born Americans who were not Russian or Chinese, if a guy working in a sensitive area was having an affair, was into child porn, had a gambling problem, they could be compromised, and in most cases of espionage I know of that is how they get them, financially.
Yeah, you gotta watch out for those shady, recent immigrants from Asia. It’s not like long-standing American citizens of European descent would run for Leader of the Free World and publicly invite the Russians to hack us…
:-j
People with security clearances have to get permission for any foreign travel anyway.
But it seems like you are making up reasons to discriminate on the basis of ethnic heritage, even though those potential issues can be checked on an individual basis, regardless of ethnic heritage.
“People with security clearances have to get permission for any foreign travel anyway.”
Oh really? Guess we must have forgotten to get that permission when we did our foreign travel in the military. And really, is permission from your boss is going to take care of any potential problem?
“But it seems like you are making up reasons to discriminate on the basis of ethnic heritage, even though those potential issues can be checked on an individual basis, regardless of ethnic heritage.”
Well if it seems like that to you, then you are completely wrong. I’m trying to say what I think is the obvious answer to the point of this thread. If someone is a foreign national or recently entered this country, I wouldn’t be surprised if they were immediately ruled out from sensitive positions. If you have 100 plus applicants for every open position, why would you bother going any further?
“Foreign national or recently entered this country” does not equal “someone less than multiple generations removed from the home country,” which was the original comment.
I have a friend with high-level clearance working in a very sensitive field. She is also first generation born in this country. My understanding from her is that having substantial ties to another country – in the form of, for instance, frequent travel to visit relatives – can be a problem, although it will normally delay receiving clearance rather than prevent it. Obviously, this is more likely to affect more recent immigrants and their immediate descendants, but it doesn’t seem that ethnic origin per se is at issue. My friend also has a list of countries she is not permitted to travel to, and must follow certain protocols whenever she travels abroad.
My impression is that the primary concern was that a foreign government might use a US citizen’s relatives for leverage, rather than suspicion of divided loyalties.
^^For those with TS/SCI access, permission to travel outside of CONUS (yes, that includes Hawaii and Alaska) has to be obtained by the security officer, and a security interview conducted, and provision of a full travel itinerary before you are allowed to go. Upon return, a full security debriefing is conducted to as well as a counterintelligence interview.
“Yeah, you gotta watch out for those shady, recent immigrants from Asia. It’s not like long-standing American citizens of European descent would run for Leader of the Free World and publicly invite the Russians to hack us…”
I publicly invite all recent immigrants from Asia (shady or not shady) to hack all orange faced American citizens of European descent and post the evidence right here.
;
@toocoolforschool I don’t think that’s the theory they are suing under because if that were the theory almost every company would be in trouble.
Then please explain why you specified ethnic heritage, rather than actual potential security risks that can be determined on an individual basis, even for US-born American citizens, as the means of profiling suspicious people in post #28:
“Then please explain why you specified ethnic heritage, rather than actual potential security risks that can be determined on an individual basis, even for US-born American citizens, as the means of profiling suspicious people”
Do you not think that specific ethnic heritage, particularly if not far removed, is an issue? For example, my kids, my parents, my sister… everybody that I love lives in the US. Should I relocate to another country, would it be smart for them to hire me for sensitive positions that directly relate to the US? What if I came from a country from a repressive regime that could easily take action against them?
You know, what’s completely WEIRD is that you phrase it as, “profiling suspicious people”’ and who is talking about that? I am talking about avoiding hiring people for specific projects that relate to countries of origin, particularly repressive regimes, where they could have extensive family members located. And from the posts on here, it sounds as if they are very careful. It sounds like nothing more than common sense.
If you are concerned about family or other relations with people in those other countries, then wouldn’t it make more sense to evaluate such on an individual basis, rather than place entire ethnic groups under suspicion? Placing entire ethnic groups under suspicion creates many false positives but misses cases where the actual point of concern exists (e.g. someone not appearing to be of the suspected ethnic heritage has some relation with people in those other countries).