Author Archive

Marko Hakamaa

Marko Hakamaa served in various military police positions with the United States Army worldwide for 22 years before retiring in 2006 as a Master Sergeant. Afterwards, he transitioned into the civilian workforce as a contractor background investigator for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) before entering civil service as a Security Specialist in 2009.

Obtaining Security Clearance

This Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals (DOHA) from a few months ago case caught my eye due to the extensive criminal history of the applicant and how he thought he would be eligible for a security clearance. Considering his background, he was initially denied eligibility by the DoD based

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Security Clearance Denial

It would be safe to say that most, if not all, government workers know that using drugs is not copasetic or in line with the Drug-Free Federal Workplace policy. This applies to all tiers of investigations, not just security clearance applicants. When I find Defense Office of Hearing and Appeals

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Security Clearance Process

Although Security Executive Agent Directive (SEAD) -5 already provides government agencies the authority to collect open-source social media data, most agencies have shied away from doing it for a couple of reasons. First, they do not have the manpower and expertise to pull and review the data, and second, they

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Obtaining Security Clearance

Historically, the credit bureaus have always included medical billing debts reported by creditors as being delinquent. These are usually reflected as a medical bill collection by whichever company the medical services use for their collection efforts. Oftentimes, the person for whom the credit report was run on is not even

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