If the security services in East Germany thought you weren't secure, you'd be working menial jobs for life, if you weren't in prison. In the USA, is a "security clearance" necessary to go to university? To work as a doctor?

There's a bit in the film "The Lives of Others", where a neighbour sees the Stati agent install bugs. The agent tells the neighbor that if she tells the target he's being bugged, then her daughter will lose her place in university. One of the characters in the film is a director of plays. He has "lost his security clearance" for critiquing the regime, was blacklisted and couldn't work.