FBI: Foreign students and researchers could be spies | Hacker News Reader

FBI: Foreign students and researchers could be spies

fbi.gov

8 pointsloverobots11 comments

edited from "FBI: Many foreign students are spies" as per comments some made.

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.

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...

"American Universities Infected by Foreign Spies Detected by FBI"

"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.

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

Technically, even at .01%, we are still talking about 100s or thousands of bone fide spies, so many (being a vague adjective for multiple) is applicable. Also, more controversial titles get more hits, -editing 101.

I understand your opinion and were it raised for nearly every other article that makes it to the front page, I might agree with it. However, as it stands and being the netizen I am going to upvote simply to keep things the same.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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

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