[Basic] Advantage of the Week: Security Clearance

[johndallman]

Security Clearance [5, 10 or 15] is a mundane social advantage. A government or other powerful organisation trusts you with secrets more important than would normally be disclosed to someone of your Rank, Status or other kind of importance. This advantage first appeared in GURPS Terradyne for 3e.

You don’t have to pay for Security Clearance to know things that are normal for your importance within the organisation. The chief NCO of a special operations force is cleared to know all about the troops, equipment and other resources of their unit, and that comes with the job. However, if that NCO needs to know details about the intelligence agents who report on another country’s secrets, that would definitely require Security Clearance: that information would not normally be given to someone who might be captured by an enemy. That means that most real-world people with “security clearance” don’t have this advantage: their backgrounds were checked as a prerequisite for their appointment. Prudent organisations will do very comprehensive checks in advance on individuals who might need to receive sensitive information on short notice.

The usual levels of Security Clearance are:

• “Need to know” access to a small set of secrets [5]. A submarine officer knows their boat’s capabilities, but does not know all the engineering secrets that enable them to be achieved.
• “Need to know” access to a wide range of secrets, or free access to a narrow range of secrets [10]. A submarine designer needs to know a wide range of engineering secrets, so that they can be integrated into a design; a national desk officer in an intelligence agency needs free access to information about her country’s spies in the other country, so that she can avoid clashes between their work.
• Free access to a broad range of secrets [15]. This is for cinematic secret agents, who have plot armour against interrogation, or very senior government officials who want to know everything.

Security Clearance will always vanish if you talk to the wrong people about your special knowledge. It can also be incompatible with disadvantages. Characters who might be coerced or blackmailed (Addiction, Debt, Secret, or relatives in an enemy country) or aren’t reliably mentally stable (Greed, Sadism, Paranoia) might be denied Security Clearance, but this depends on the campaign and the agency. There is a ‑50% limitation for clearance granted by smaller organisations, such as city governments or smaller corporations. Security Clearance with that limitation might well not work as a prerequisite for a legal Alternate Identity, or for learning skills like Brainwashing, Cryptography, Electronic Warfare, or Intelligence Analysis. In some settings, Security Clearance is required for those traits.

In GURPS supplements, Security Clearance is, naturally, an option on templates for agents of large organisations, as well as cutting-edge engineers, and those who manage them, or clean up after them. Fantasy has some useful examples of low-TL uses of the advantage, while Horror gives MIBs the [15] level. Madness Dossier uses this advantage for characters deeply immersed in the Project, and several Magic supplements can require it for access to specific spells. SEALS in Vietnam requires all SEALs to have this advantage at [5], which represents them being much better-informed than most people in the setting, while having fairly low Rank. Supers adds the Informal, ‑50% limitation, and Zombies don’t have clearances, unless the seting is very unusual.

If all the PCs in a campaign will have the same level of Security Clearance, it can be omitted from character sheets and bookkeeping. The occult WWII campaign worked that way, and the characters built up considerable knowledge of Axis magical capabilities, while carefully avoiding learning about Allied resources, magical or otherwise. We handed in all the codebooks we recovered, but were never told about the outcomes, and were quite happy about that. Applying need-to-know to yourself is satisfying in its own way.

How has Security Clearance played in your games?

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You don’t have to pay for Security Clearance to know things that are normal for your importance within the organisation. The chief NCO of a special operations force is cleared to know all about the troops, equipment and other resources of their unit, and that comes with the job. However, if that NCO needs to know details about the intelligence agents who report on another country’s secrets, that would definitely require Security Clearance: that information would not normally be given to someone who might be captured by an enemy. That means that most real-world people with “security clearance” don’t have this advantage: their backgrounds were checked as a prerequisite for their appointment. Prudent organisations will do very comprehensive checks in advance on individuals who might need to receive sensitive information on short notice.

I was going to merely answer "It hasn't come up" because either no one has it or all PCs "have it", but reading this breakdown I'm now far less sure exactly what it is or how to figure out who gets it when. Or if it is even overpriced; If Rank 3 requires SC1 for certain knowledge, but Rank 4 doesn't for the same knowledge and they have access to more knowledge, then SC1 is worth less than Rank 4. However, unlike other traits I have this kind of issue with, I feel like I could easily figure it out when I actually have to (again, hasn't been used).

I've definitely had the opposite happen, there are definitely secrets (or other sensitive information) PCs have explicitly avoided learning even when their job would call for it. I may be an overly nice GM 95% of the time but my players are well aware of the 5% I go too far the opposite direction.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I was going to merely answer "It hasn't come up" because either no one has it or all PCs "have it", but reading this breakdown I'm now far less sure exactly what it is or how to figure out who gets it when.

I think the fair way to play it is to charge for it when some PCs have access to secret information, and others don't.

Organisations don't necessarily apply it consistently or fairly. Back in fall 2003, I was working on porting my employer's software product to AMD's x86-64 processors. At the time, Intel were not making x86-64 chips, but were selling the Itanium processors, which they have since abandoned.

A very senior manager in the company suddenly arranged a telephone appointment with me to disclose information that I was not allowed to tell my immediate management (although I could tell them that I was receiving information I could not share). That seems to correspond to Security Clearance 1 (Corporate, -50%, Informal, -50%, capped at -80%) [1]. The news was, of course, that Intel were developing AMD-compatible processors, which stopped being a secret a few months later, in February 2004.

[Pursuivant]

The classic example of Security Clearance given in at least one GURPS book is a TL6-7 cipher clerk. Normally, it's nothing more than a glorified radio operator or secretary job, except that you've encrypting and decrypting top secret information, possibly using top secret technology.

The same deal might apply to a secretary, servant, or PA for somebody who has access to serious secrets, like a high-ranking general's batman or aide de camp.

Arguably, Security Clearance can represent regular access to any sort of useful but closely held intelligence. For example, you might be a lowly janitor, but if you're working in a corporate law office which specializes in mergers and acquisitions and you're in a position to "overhear things," you might be able to make a tidy sum by playing the market or tipping off competitors.

In a cinematic setting, it's a way to give oddball characters who would normally never pass a background check access to Top Secret info on an "plot-dependent" basis. ("Sure, let the nameless costumed & masked guy with a sketchy legal history and dubious mental stability, with a talking chimpanzee sidekick, into the SCIF. What could go wrong?")

[thrash]

Originally Posted by johndallman

You don’t have to pay for Security Clearance to know things that are normal for your importance within the organisation.

Note that the examples below pretty much all contradict this. It's hard to see how one could be an effective submarine officer or design engineer, or an intelligence agency desk officer, without knowing those secrets. Similarly:

... skills like Brainwashing, Cryptography, Electronic Warfare, or Intelligence Analysis. In some settings, Security Clearance is required for those traits.

If the skill is required for the job (e.g., Intel Analyst), does it require Security Clearance or not?

Security Clearance will always vanish if you talk to the wrong people about your special knowledge.

On the other hand, this is not magic: you have to get caught by someone who will inform the proper authorities, and they have to act on that information.

It can also be incompatible with disadvantages. Characters who might be coerced or blackmailed (Addiction, Debt, Secret, or relatives in an enemy country) ... might be denied Security Clearance, but this depends on the campaign and the agency.

If you are denied a Security Clearance based on the contents of a Secret, it's arguably not secret any more. Losing an existing Clearance might be a consequence of having a Secret exposed, however -- or not, if the potential for blackmail is gone, too. Having an intact Secret might also be a reason to avoid undergoing a background investigation in the first place.

If all the PCs in a campaign will have the same level of Security Clearance, it can be omitted from character sheets and bookkeeping.

What are the (game mechanical) consequences of not having the same level of Security Clearance as the rest of your party? Being (say) the Russian intelligence liaison in a NATO team tracking a world-threatening supervillain, or the civilian specialist called in to assist a group of special operators for this one mission. It's effectively a disadvantage.

[Prince Charon]

Security Clearance is going to be fairly important for the alt-SGC characters in the Stargate: Fantasy - Worldbuilding thread. This version is an international spy organization under the Five Eyes agreement. The SG teams need to know about the 'gate and other worlds, same as on the show, but do they necessarily need clearance above the [5] cost? It'll probably end up as a question to be voted on in the thread (later on, as there are a couple of others currently pending), but input from people who have already been thinking about this stuff could help.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Security Clearance is going to be fairly important for the alt-SGC characters in the Stargate: Fantasy - Worldbuilding thread.

Security Clearance is specifically designed for "private citizens with access to serious secrets," like Teal'c and Daniel in the Stargate Franchise.* It works well in that context. Realistically, it's less than realistic.

*

Spoiler:  

Somewhere in the SG universe, there are counterintelligence officers getting ulcers over the fact that some cowboy special ops Colonel read a high-level enemy operative into just about all of Stargate Command's secrets during the course of the command's second mission. Their drinking buddies are the operations and intelligence officers who are freaking out over the fact that their best operational intelligence source is a long-haired, crackpot, former academic civilian.

[thrash]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Security Clearance is specifically designed for "private citizens with access to serious secrets," like Teal'c and Daniel in the Stargate Franchise.* It works well in that context. Realistically, it's less than realistic.

Once upon a Cold War, maybe so. Things got a lot fuzzier during the Global War on Terrorism, what with needing civilian translators to accomplish just about anything. Back during the Jedburgh days and into the early years of the CIA, Ivy League ivory-tower types were pulled in off the streets and made into intelligence personnel because (a) the Powers That Be were drawn from those sources as well and trusted their own, and (b) there basically wasn't anybody else.

So far as I can tell from open sources, some Special Mission Units take civilians seconded from other agencies when they need particular expertise, so it's not entirely unreasonable.

[The Colonel]

...and of course, if we look at a setting like The Laundry there can be the odd civilian ... some of them very odd ... who either read themselves in to the facts of something highly secured, or have to be read in to prevent something much worse and then, in either case, need to be cleared and secured at the end of a (often less than voluntary) recruitment process.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by thrash

Note that the examples below pretty much all contradict this. It's hard to see how one could be an effective submarine officer or design engineer, or an intelligence agency desk officer, without knowing those secrets.

Any officer has access to something that is some level of classified just to do their jobs. That's an assumed part of Rank. It's the officers in those specialized services that need to have Security Clearance to distinguish them from their peers.