July 10, 2015

BARACK TO THE FUTURE: “Until the new mega-fixes are in place” at OPM, Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club writes in a post appropriately titled “God Help Us All,” “proposals have been floated to return the entire system to paper,” such as this one:

The Office of Personnel Management and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have figured out how to keep the security clearance process going while the Electronic Questionnaires for Investigations Processing (e-QIP) system is offline for cybersecurity fixes.

Under the new interim procedures, OPM and ODNI said the applicant must provide hard copies of forms SF86, SF85, SF85P to the sponsoring agency, but not to OPM or ODNI.

“When the e-QIP has been restored, the applicant will re-enter his or her personal information history into e-QIP so that the required investigation may be completed through the regular process,” the memo said. “Agencies shall maintain a list of all investigations initiated using these interim procedures and the subsequent date the investigations are processed through e-QIP when e-QIP service is restored.”

“Reverting to paper may actually improve security.  Consider why this might be so,” Richard adds:

The great benefit of paper clearance forms (and one might add, paper ballots) is that it limits the ability of bureaucrats to play games with data.  The lower tech medium puts the kibosh on all the plans, mandates and improvements they are just dying to implement. All that gender stuff is hard to implement when you’re faced with a stack of paper reaching to the ceiling, besides making the information harder to leak, misuse or steal.  It disempowers the bureaucrats.

The fact that reverting to lower tech may actually improve security suggests that lack of money isn’t the problem, nor are the shortcomings of computer hardware. The biggest shortage plaguing the elites today is a deficit of intelligence. They are a menace to themselves and to the public; and are not even smart enough to know how dumb they are.

The reason why reducing OPM to low tech paper may help things is akin to why taking the Bugatti keys away from an irresponsible teenager prevents an accident from occurring. “Just take the skateboard kid. It’s really all you can handle.”

In the meantime, the Democrat operatives with bylines at CNN know where the real blame in this scandal lies:

 

The MSM is there to help ensure that the buck never stops on Obama’s desk — unless it’s good news.

UPDATE: Just as a reminder, in 2013, “Hispanic groups threatened the GOP, if they should filibuster the unqualified walking Security Risk Katherine Archuletta:”

Posted at 4:14 pm by Ed Driscoll