I thought I read somewhere once that it was a violation of security procedures to reveal your security clearance level (unless it was in doing your job to access information). Is it ok to mention you used to hold a top secret SCI after the fact?
If you weren't allowed to mention the fact that you have one, then nobody would ever be able to apply for a government contracted job.
What the government doesn't want is people going out to a club and getting hammered and then telling a bunch of strangers that you have a clearance because it makes you a target in a situation where you are already vulnerable.
The funny thing is, a clearance doesn't give you a need to know. From my experience the overwhelming majority of people with a Top Secret clearance don't have access to anything that is even remotely interesting.
There is no formal guidance (that I'm aware of) about revealing a secret, top secret, Q, or L clearances, nor is there formal guidance on revealing that you are SCI eligible.
Each SCI compartment and SAP has its own unique rules about what you can and cannot reveal (some SCI compartments mere existence is classified at the SCI level itself, meaning you can't say you hold that clearance to anyone who doesn't hold that clearance, for example).
Each SCI compartment also comes with it's own unique rules about when you can or cannot talk about what you learned or were cleared to access (most are probably lifetime NDAs).
That said, it's pretty shitty opsec to tell someone, or the Interwebs, that you hold a specific clearance or do a specific job.
I'm not aware of one. In some cases, the information will just be disclosed, and you'll be forced to sign the paperwork and be 'read in' after the fact. As long as you have a legitimate need to know, that's fine.
Security procedures don't apply to you once you no longer have a clearance. Except for, of course, revealing the protected information until it is declassified.
Yes, the security structure can seem a bit artificial at times, like:
- During cleared professionals-only job fairs.
- Leaving a cleared job and all of a sudden there are no reporting requirements or security procedures. It's as if the gov't refuses to acknowledge that sensitive info is still in your head.
You can say you have clearances, but you aren't supposed to talk about what level.
When I was leaving the agency I worked for, I had to get what I wanted to write on my resume approved. They told me I had to remove my clearance level.
