Is that accurate? Being charged with a crime but then having charges subsequently dropped shouldn't show up in a background check. Plus, given their line of work, I think in their profession it would basically be a badge of honor.
This can happen just being under investigation. Or worse, no arrest, conviction or investigation. Just word of mouth kind of stuff can do it.
Employers also have a convenient privilege to maintain these narratives about a former employee. This is employer to employer confidentiality where they can say almost anything about you to another potential employer and you never have the chance to hear it or correct it.
Everyone should support the ability of even a person with a conviction to continue working and contributing to society. It's kind of a civil death that leads to bad outcomes for those targeted.
>Everyone should support the ability of even a person with a conviction to continue working and contributing to society. It's kind of a civil death that leads to bad outcomes for those targeted.
And not just those targeted either. The communities where those people live are deprived of the higher economic activity of someone with a middle/upper-middle-class income/lifestyle than someone who can only get a job mopping floors or washing cars.
That has a definite downward drag on the economic health of the communities where folks aren't given the opportunity to contribute because of past transgressions or, as we're discussing here, unwarranted criminal charges and investigations.
It's not just sad, it's a disgusting waste of human potential. More's the pity.
Also, I've seen many job applications that ask a question like: "Have you ever been arrested for a crime, regardless of the outcome?" Presumably mere involvement with law enforcement (even if acquitted or charges dropped) is some kind of signal in these guys' risk formulas.
Can confirm. I needed a security clearance for government contracting work when I was in my mid-30s. The background check flagged a dismissed charge from when I was a teenager.
It's hard to say if they would be able to gain security clearances in the future. Not to mention automated application systems will drop them from the system immediately with a prior arrest.
THIS should be illegal. If you are arrested and have all charges dropped, you should not show up on any database whatsoever, nor be required to answer “yes” to “gave you been arrested.”
The SF86 has a 7-year lookback on arrests. Clearance is fundamentally discretionary, though; it's a risk assessment. I don't think you have even a due process right to it.
I say all this but --- knowing that the principals in this story might read this thread and drop in and correct me, which would be awesome --- I think it's actually more likely that their careers benefited from this news story, and that they probably didn't lose any cleared business from it. I can't say enough that these two became industry celebrities over this case.
> Clearance is fundamentally discretionary, though; it's a risk assessment. I don't think you have even a due process right to it.
Security clearance is subject to due process protections (at least, insofar as it is a component of government hiring and continuation of employment), because government employment is subject to due process protections and the courts have not allowed security clearance requirements to be an end-run around that.
Navy v. Egan (1988) acknowledges a due process protection but limits it to procedural due process, not review of the merits of the clearance determination (i.e., the due process protection does not extend to substantive due process.)
Subsequent cases (mostly at the Federal Circuit, I can’t find the Supreme Court getting involved much since) like Cheney v. DOJ (2007) and Cruz-Martinez v. DHS (2020) have developed what that requires.
For cases outside of government employment, though the decisions so far are only at the trial level, Perkins Coie LLC vs. DOJ (2025) and Zaid v. Executive Office of the President (2025) are worth checking out in this regard.
pretty sure the companies making money providing this service would bring a freedom of speech defense if you tried to get a law passed keeping the information from showing up in a search, and would win, despite the obvious idiocy of the result.
One of them went on to start their own physical pentest firm. I think they're doing fine. I also think if they'd lost clearances, or ran into later clearance problems, that would have made it into their complaint. I don't know, maybe you're right. It's not like I disagree with them about suing.
I mean it was fine for these guys because they got huge press and happen to be in an industry that can handle this. They've got experience, current employment, industry contacts, and there's really barely a functional college curriculum, or certification track for this. You #1 need to be trusted to break in since you know, they teach each other how to break into high-security facilities.
I really just wanna point out that getting contracts for government administrative building is already like, way in and near the top of the game, this could have set them back 9 months or none at all, still, someone has to be held accountable when there is an obvious miscarriage like this.
I mean they called their boss! They had a special letter! Why didn't shitty sheriff just like demand that the security chief come out and make some calls? 600k sounds fair I suppose but 6 years sure doesn't when its an elected official!
prior arrests mean nothing and most ATS won't flag you; you could be innocent and they let you go.
prior convictions are a different story.
in most cases our ATS won't even ask, instead it'll come up in a background check after you clear the first HR hurdles. even then arrests may not show up.
This isn't a felony case. In fact, I'm not sure it ever was? It's not clear from their amended complaint, but they were ultimately charged with simple trespassing, a misdemeanor. Those trespassing charges were themselves dismissed a few months later.
What we're talking about today is the resolution of what looks to me (not a lawyer) mostly like a defamation case. Were they defamed? Absolutely. The problem is, to get anything useful out of a defamation case, you need to demonstrate damages. They were accused of a crime --- per se defamation --- but the point of the suit is to recover damages.
I don't want to be glib, and I'm very prepared to be wrong, but the Dallas County Courthouse Incident is likely one of the top 3 world events to have happened to both these pentesters. They've been cause celebres in the field for years and years. It might be pretty tricky to actually demonstrate damages.
They were arrested, arraigned and bonded for felony charges. Those were later reduced to misdemeanor charges and the case was eventually dropped/dismissed (can't remember which) - so they were facing felony charges for a while.
I didn’t see how long it took for the charges to change from felony to misdemeanor before being dropped. It would be standard for clearances to be suspended for investigation when you get charged with a felony. (You have to report even an arrest or misdemeanor, but it’s less likely they’ll suspend it while investigating you for those).
> how much sugar water people buy, cases and cases
One confounding factor here is that oftentimes the price is only reasonable in bulk. I don't know about walmart, but around me the best deal typically is "buy 2 get 3 free". I rarely buy/drink soda, but on the occasions I buy at all I'll be getting many cases at a time.
>So it's native to the new world, but not native to North America?
My understanding is that the wild turkey was common throughout North America, but was domesticated in Mexico, and modern turkey farming uses stock descending from that population.
So the bird itself is native, but most Turkey farms in the US or Canada would have been Mexico->Europe->NA.
Yes. As far as I'm aware the person I responded to was mistaken about that. My own point was that commercial farming in the rest of NA (and possibly even parts of Mexico, I genuinely don't know) was introduced via Europe rather than straight from Mexico. At least as far as I'm aware.
This specific bet is very targeted, but we do absolutely have commerciallly available self-driving cars in 2025 in several cities, and the list of cities is rapidly expanding.
An 8-10 year delay from expectations is not too bad all things considered.
>This change will not affect any other benefits in your AOL plan, which you can access any time on your AOL plan dashboard. To manage or cancel your account, visit MyAccount
Sounds like everyone keeps getting charged, since this is technically part of their "AOL plan", whatever that actually includes.
Benefits such as virus protection for email that you don't use, and a free AOL Toolbar with shopping offers you don't have installed. Thank you for your $10 a month you forgot we were charging you for 15 years.
>My sense is actually that the reason he talks that way is to make sure that people who consider themselves "on the left" don't mistake him for being someone "on the right"
If so he has sorely missed the mark. I pretty heavily associate the phrasing "the $X left" with disengenuous right wing pundits. Knowing nothing else about the author, seeing that pop up repeatedly doesn't merely suggest that he's on the "right", but that he's writing the piece with a politically motivated axe to grind.
I imagine it would work out roughly the same as if security camera footage was copyrighted, but as far as I can tell there really isn't a clear precedent in the US for this. The monkey selfie case suggests that they probably aren't, but as far as I can tell it's a legal unknown in the US.
In addition to that, if the Why ever changes (maybe the issue was in an external dependency that finally got patched), you'd have to update the name or else leave it incorrect. Mildly annoying if just in one codebase, but a needlessly breaking change if that function is exported.
For reference, here is the HN thread shortly after the arrest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21000273
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