The FBI is apparently being proactive in doing its job by laying out specific scenarios on its website that employers can learn from in order to prevent spying and generally help keep our nation safe (via Wired). Here is one fearful scenario:
You hire a foreign-born engineer who has been educated in this country. Over a 10-15 year period, she rises to mid-level management. Then, she returns to her home country—where she gets paid by that government to set up a business that competes with yours.
The key there is “foreign-born.” It doesn’t matter if you have been educated in this country from an early age or even if you are a Greencard holder. If you are foreign-born then employers should watch out for you because you may sell good Americans out to your Motherland. That’s scary. If I was an employer I might instead hire someone that looks American…just to be safe. Here is another one:
A series of university students and professors from overseas take jobs in research labs on campus and get involved in related military projects. Individually, they learn only bits and pieces. But collectively, when they pass that information back to their home country, it paints a telling picture of our country’s defense initiatives.
Good advice. The next time I see a group of “FOBs” eating lunch together I am going to consider them a “collective.” But wait, what if someone thinks that I’m foreign born when they see me sitting with a group of other desis at school! Qué Malo!
The FBI is willing to help by offering a training program (or something) to spot these collectives, or sleeper cells, or whatever…
Specifically: Join our Counterintelligence Domain Program or our Research and Technology Protection program.
Amazing what helpful advice you find on websites paid for by your tax dollars. I hope no foreign born readers visit Sepia Mutiny. Individually they can’t do us any harm but collectively they could use the knowledge they gain here to paint a telling picture of how we operate and then make the blogs of their own countries better.
Rahul,
I guess that’s a new take on the phrase. Apres moi, le deluge brun. Fermez la porte!.
Salil, I don’t parlez francais very bon. Thank goodness for Google Translate.
What’s that? After me, the flood?
Yeah, as long as some people think they sit on a moral high ground, they couldn’t care less if the floods of suspicion wipe away all foundations of the land of reason.
How’s that for a metaphor? 🙂 Whether it makes sense or not.
Oh man. Don’t nobody go in there fo’ thutty, fowty-five minutes! Um…apres moi, le deluge brun.
The highlighted piece clearly leaves out India/Indians as a part of this “conspiracy”. Indian government does not pay individuals to set up a business – on the contrarty, Indians have to pay the Indian government babus left-right-and-center to set up a business!!
We all know which country is being alluded to in this stupid FBI notice…
M. Nam
Camille, Some Italians were also interred at Ellis Island during WW11. I knew three of them when I lived in Brooklyn NYC long time ago. There was a good reason for the Japanese internment. Some were spies but because of cultural ignorance in the US gov’t at the time could not filter them out like with Germans and Italians. Read In Defense of Internment by Michelle Malkin or you can just read several reviews and parts of the book.
I agree with you on behavioral profiling but I also believe that we have to use all the tools available. For example, there is a reason EL AL is the world’s safest airline.
The fact that the FBI is doing this shows how desperate we have become, but can you blame them. It is the reality of the times. Everytime I get profiled I feel reassured, because although I am not a threat I feel someone is doing what I would do. Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
That says all I want to know about the book.
An F1 is a non-immigrant visa. A student applying for an F1 visa at a US consulate, is expected to return to his / her country and not stay back. If he / she even hints at staying back permanently, the consular officer rejects his / her visa summarily. So the US government fully expects that these highly skilled, educated, trained people will one day return to their homeland to share that knowledge. Add to that the state of immigration laws in this country that discourage skilled people from migrating here in any case (H1B’s have now become a lottery, and the average wait time for an MS to get a green card is between 6 -12 years). So why does the fact of people returning to their home countries, come as a shock to FBI? Or is it the classic case of FBI not knowing how the state department and the USCIS works?
…makes me feel like i am back in the USSR (long lines and all), only with more consumer goods thrown at me to keep me adequately distracted
Rajesh, the conversation was over the moment you mentioned Michelle Malkin. I have read her book, and I not only find her rationale specious, I find her politics and her logic, in general, to be completely ridiculous and devoid of reality.
Yes, I can. We have HUGE PROBLEMS in our intelligence community, and I do not believe that the way to reconcile this is to get both the government and private citizens to go all “big Brother” on one another. Honestly, there’s no point in pursuing this further — we are never going to agree, and we’re only going to end up rehashing the same issues. I think a conscientious overhaul of the system is required, and I don’t think the world we live in today is any more dangerous than the world we lived in 10 years ago. It’s just that we (Americans) have finally lifted their heads (relatively) from the sand to realize that the world is not a safe place. I just hope that even more will realize that some of the “insecurity” we face is of our own making and that we really need to think of new ways to approach these problems instead of bringing up old Cold War-style McCarthyism, xenophobia, and racism and holding it up as an alternative to thoughtful analysis and problem-solving.
Camille, your words have been noted by the system. Appropriate action will be taken.
Thanks. If I magically disappear next time I travel, you’ll know that the CIA is holding me in a secret prison.
The highlighted piece clearly leaves out India/Indians as a part of this “conspiracy”. Indian government does not pay individuals to set up a business – on the contrarty, Indians have to pay the Indian government babus left-right-and-center to set up a business!!
We all know which country is being alluded to in this stupid FBI notice…
What the hell is he talking about?
I swear, some of the bullshit being uttered here lately…I wonder why your tongue doesn’t jump outta your face and run screaming down the street.
Question to Ms. Malkin’s desi fanboys. Do you get to call her malkin — in hindi?
When she looks at me like this, how can I deny Michelle, my belle?
coach, this is a fantastic visual!
~Natasha~ You understand this issue with a clear head. Is this because of your relatives who perished in the WTC ? In my case it was my shipmates at the Navy Command Center at The Pentagon. They were all killed except for their commanding offcer who was away in another part of the building in a meeting.
I realize that this can be a drag on scientists doing defense research. This is too important to worry about offending someone. Security is primary. I say three cheers to the FBI for doing this.
1) Citizens should be considered citizens, no matter how or when they obtained their citizenship. I am a foreign born American, but here is the kicker. My father is from my country of birth (an Arab country) but my mother is American. I have been American since birth and yet my passport lists my birthplace (again, an arab country). I’ve posted a little rant about that here. So the singling out of the foreign born kinda rankles me. And it would rankle me even if I was not a citizen. This is not the way to improve security. 2) Regarding the comment on El Al security. I was pulled aside for extra screening in Tel Aviv one time, primarily because of my birthplace and the fact that I had spent time in the Palestinian territories. It’s a long story, but to make it short, certain extra screenings that were planned (snap goes the rubber glove), and even a check of my hand luggage, were canceled because I told them that my mother is Jewish (true, but completely unproven and should be irrelevant given that the original reason for searching me was my time in the PT and that “someone may have put something in my bag without my knowing it”). It is the classic example of why ethnic profiling absolutely does not work.
Rajesh Harricharan at @ #66 said:
Since you use the words “drag” and “scientists”, I’ll assume that this is partially an allusion to my comment @ #29. “This” is not a drag on scientists doing defence research; it is a drag on the openness and transparencey that, above everything else, ensure that good science gets done. In reference to comment #29, my colleagues and I are not defence scientists, but what we know and do has the potential to win wars. Nevertheless, not one of us has any issues with communicating what s/he knows or has learnt to a colleague — whether Russian, Iranian, Albanian, or from “the West” — if the colleague will cite this knowledge appropriately. That’s how good science is done; it is not about “offending someone”, for heaven’s sake! Many in my profession — myself included — lost close friends in the attack on WTC, but it hasn’t caused any of us to re-assess the core values of openness in research.
I think that your views are conditioned by your experiences of how the military thinks and works. There is a different world out there whose perspectives are different and, given the empirical evidence, as valid as yours.
Come on, coach. Just cuz its Moornam, you don’t have to call BS immediately. In case you didn’t really get what he meant, i think it he’s saying its not India FBI cares about, its China.
“There was a good reason for the Japanese internment. Some were spies but because of cultural ignorance in the US gov’t at the time could not filter them out like with Germans and Italians. ” Rajeesh.
Actually Rajeesh (I don’t know why you ditto’d me earlier) J. Edgar Hoover did not think interning the Japanese was necessary, and he was pretty sharp about such things. Maybe he liked wearing the kimonos. Anyway, i would never argue in this day & age for racial profiling. I was merely pointing out that it has worked for some, in some places, some times. However, we as a society, are at a point where it no longer does. But quite frankly, I think some serious profiling is in order at the voting booths. Most of what we’ve got in government, both elected and appointed, is not healthy.
“When she looks at me like this,(picture link) how can I deny Michelle, my belle?”
Rahul, you demonstrate the primal mind that thinks in pictures and you unite it to modern technology. I look forward to every pictogram you produce. I feel I am at the birth of a new script….
grunting in pleasure Me happy. Me thanking you.
Whyspy, I ditto’d your post #34. I saw nothing to disagree with that on #34 only, even though we both seem to be on the opposite ends of the political spectrum. The Name is Rajesh.
whyspy, Ome more thing. In reference to your post#34: The people here in West Virginia are friendlier and more polite tham other places I have lived. I know all my neighbors on my my street and have visited some of their homes. We do not lock our doors when we go out and most of us own more thn one firearm, a long-gun and a hand gun. This probably has something to do with the low crime rate here.
“grunting in pleasure* Me happy. Me thanking you.” well if you’re that happy, give us a big smiley picture. But really, the pleasure is all mine.
sorry–Rajesh. My spelling. yeah,probably opposite ends politically, but I’m used to that where I work. I try to tread lightly on egg shells but they always break anyway. I’ve heard W.Va. is a pretty nice place to live. It appears racist feeling is less there than you’d think but I’ve never tried it out. I worked with a lady whose parents had been farming there for generations. Her childless sister was thinking about adopting an Asian kid. Her dufus dad’s only objection was, “where are we going to grow the rice to feed ‘im?” I THINK he was kidding.
Here ya go!
well done. now me happy too.
Rahul,, How did you find my picture ? Yea! I often describibe myself as a knuclke dragging, weapon wielding, cave man, 🙂
Rajesh, sorry about blowing your cover. I hope you won’t ask the FBI to be more vigilant about me now 🙂