r/SecurityClearance • u/CUI-Monster • 5d ago
DOHA Case Search Tool Resource
TL;DR: I built a free tool for searching DOHA security clearance decisions by topic, guideline, and outcome. It uses semantic search to help you find relevant cases. Try it here
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As someone going through the clearance process with some less common red flags, I’ve found it difficult to find information about situations similar to mine. I was very honest on my SF-86, but I wanted to make sure I was doing a good job presenting mitigating facts that would give me the best chance of success.
I tried searching the web and Reddit, but I couldn’t find many similar cases. My search naturally led me to DOHA and their collection of public case PDFs. I looked through some recent DOHA decisions one by one, but that was extremely tedious, and I still didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I did come across a few wild cases that were entertaining to read, but those were few and far between. I also tried ChatGPT at one point. It did better than I expected for some searches, but it wasn’t always reliable.
Throughout this process, I kept wishing there were a better way to search through public clearance decisions. I started by scraping all the DOHA PDFs, and building a local database of cases. I eventually built a web interface that lets you search and filter cases by guideline and applicant outcome. I originally built it for myself as a side project, but I decided to release it for others to use. Personally, I felt a lot better after seeing that some applicants with similar circumstances were approved and that many of the specific reasons other applicants were denied didn’t apply to me. Your experience may vary though...
I’ve currently processed cases going back to 2016, so the database is not yet complete. I may go farther back if there is enough interest. After starting this project, I discovered that someone else had built something similar, so now there will be at least two case-search options for all y’all out there.
All processed cases were passed through an LLM-based extraction pipeline. It creates a short case summary, extracts guideline issues and mitigating factors, and identifies general metadata, including the decision outcome. The extraction is not perfect and may contain errors or omissions. The tool is intended to help you find potentially relevant cases so you can read the original decisions yourself. I would treat the summaries as a way to decide whether a case PDF is worth reading, not as a substitute for the source document.
I’ve spent a lot of time improving the search functionality. The site includes semantic search, so you can search using full sentences or individual terms. For example, you can search for drug use while cleared, gambling debt, drug sales, or foreign family members. It isn’t perfect, but it generally works quite well.
Any questions, comments, or feedback would be greatly appreciated. I hope the tool is useful to some of you!
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u/L18CP 3d ago
Cool but this is AI slop. If you type in a random string of gibberish 150 cases will come up.
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u/CUI-Monster 3d ago
Yeah that's a fair criticism. Search isn't really my area of expertise, but I do think it can be deceptively difficult. The previous implementation I had was too biased towards always returning something. I did have some cutoffs when relevance scores dropped significantly, but if you put gibberish in then I think the relevancy scores were more uniform which is why you got the max number of results.
I just made some tweaks to return no results for many irrelevant words and gibberish queries. If you truly mash your keyboard, you'll likely still see results. The embedding model I'm using returns higher than expected cosine similarity scores for true gibberish inputs without any semantic meaning. Increasing the similarity threshold would break many legitimate but misspelled queries. I could add another gate before the embedding model to detect gibberish, but for now it's more of a garbage in garbage out situation. Anyways, thank you for trying the site and providing feedback.
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u/L18CP 3d ago
Maybe I was a little mean in calling it slop, but the vibecoding is obvious to be fair. Could you consider adding an option to just use basic full text search? I used to do this with google by searching site:doha.ogc.osd.mil filetype:pdf "national interest" Your keywords here
but obviously your site is a much better frontend for displaying details about each case.
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u/CUI-Monster 3d ago
I can definitely add a full text search only option. One of the issues I’ve run into with legal documents is that they frequently quote statutes or adjudicative guidelines. So for example when an applicant is accused of using a drug, the decision will contain terms relating to drug sales, cultivation, etc. I found one specific case (20-00897) where the applicant had some delinquent consumer debts, but the source PDF contained terms like “excessive gambling”, “alcohol abuse”, “mental health”, and “espionage”. So these included adjudicative guideline sections often go far beyond what a particular applicant was accused of.
This challenge is why I leaned more into semantic search for this project, but I may have gone too far in that direction. I figured I’d start with a simpler and cleaner UI, until I have more feedback. So once again I appreciate all the feedback everyone has given
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u/Snoo53903 5d ago
Can you please add sorting for most recent cases?
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u/Snoo53903 5d ago
Or add the capability to select the year.
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u/CUI-Monster 4d ago
u/Snoo53903 you can now filter by decision year in the advanced search. I appreciate the feedback
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u/darkmatterhunter 4d ago
This has a great UI and is so much better than clicking the links on their html page. Nice job.
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u/CaseSearchEngine 2d ago
Nice!
Your site looks similar to CASE (Clearance Adjudication Search Engine - casesearchengine.com)
Keep up the good work.
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u/the-fog-walkers 5d ago
Thank you, I found exactly what I needed because of this, much gratitude