

FBI: Foreign students and researchers could be spies - loverobots
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/counterintelligence/higher-education-and-national-security
edited from "FBI: Many foreign students are spies" as per comments some made.
======
ColinWright
Your title is not an accurate reflection of what the paper says. Quoting
specifically, it says:

    
    
      > Most foreign students, researchers, or professors
      > studying or working in the United States are here
      > for legitimate and proper reasons. Only a very small
      > percentage is actively working at the behest of
      > another government or organization.
    

Nowhere can I find it saying that "many" are spies. I've searched specifically
for the word "many," but perhaps I've missed the section you are quoting.

From <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> :

    
    
        You can make up a new title if you want, but
        if you put gratuitous editorial spin on it,
        the editors may rewrite it. 
    

Please could you quote the section from which your title derives?

Thanks.

~~~
loverobots
I had to distill what it meant in a few words. I used the word many because I
couldn't say "most," "a few" or "some."

Bloomberg has their own take with examples but I chose to link to FBI instead
[http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/american-
univers...](http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-08/american-universities-
infected-by-foreign-spies-detected-by-fbi)

 _"American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI"_

~~~
dalke
"A small percentage of foreign students are spies" would not be too long.

Though the actual article concerns "students, researchers, or professors."
There's something like 700,000 foreign university students in the US, and 1
million foreign born workers in science and engineering.

Which means that "Many foreign researchers are spies" would have been more
correct, by your logic. For that matter "Many foreigners are spies" is even
shorter.

Fewer than 400 Americans have been to space. Would you honestly write "Many
Americans have been to space"?

I'm with ColinWright - your headline is not an accurate reflection of what the
paper says.

~~~
loverobots
EDITED to a more neutral title. The title will never be perfect but FBI is
certainly concerned, as are US colleges.

------
dwd
Foreign students contribute 12bn+ to US universities by way of tuition fees;
the majority funded by their own government, organisations or families. If the
US government wishes to limit foreign nationals ability to contribute to and
participate in valuable research they may find the funding for that research
will disappear as well.

Not to legitimise espionage, but you can't have it both ways.

This is actually a bigger issue that also encompasses outsourcing
manufacturing and technology development to foreign countries where they don't
play by the same rules as far as patents and IP rights.

~~~
dalke
Moreover, there have been similar spies in the US probably since we first
started as a country. Klaus Fuchs is perhaps the most well known example for
his work during the 1940s in informing the Soviet Union about the US atomic
bomb research.

I have a fictional book written during the 80s where one of the characters is
a foreign industrial spy.

Then there's the false negatives, as with Wen Ho Lee at Los Alamos.

For that matter, it goes the other way. The Russians regard the researcher
Igor Sutyagin a spy, and convicted him as such, even though he and the US deny
it.

So I think the right way to see this report is as a reminder of how the world
works, and not as a specific call to action in response to recent increases in
the amount of espionage.

~~~
dwd
Certainly. Can't have the population forgetting that the world out there is a
scary place - think of the starving defense contractors!

If this is a precursor to any push for legislative changes (and increased
enforcement powers) then the target is more likely non-state players and the
likes of anonymous: Terrorist is a little overused these days and spy is the
next best scary label.

~~~
dalke
Spies for our side are cool. Spies for the British are also cool, as long as
they don't spy on us.

------
excuse-me
At least the government is reacting to the threat. Successive US
administrations have done their best to try and ensure that there is no longer
any cutting edge university research to steal!

------
mjwalshe
this is just blowing up a tiny number up to generate page views very similar
to the Spy mania at the out break of WW1 or McCarthy like witch hunts in the
50's

