More Creeping Stasification

A Cold War chill is descending on academia, according to Wired:

FBI Calls on Universities to Guard Against Spies
By Kim Zetter November 07, 2007 | 3:43:23 PMCategories: Surveillance

The FBI’s relationship with university students and academics has never been one of wine and roses — see the agency’s covert campaign to discredit Albert Einstein. Therefore, it might be a bit surprising to know that some university presidents are now embracing the agency and are perhaps even willing to become its eyes and ears on campus.

The National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, launched in 2005, consists of 20 university presidents around the country who are working with the FBI on matters of campus security and counter-terrorism to identify threats to students and staff. But the board is also being asked to guard against campus spies who might be out to steal not-yet-secret secrets. According to this report from NPR, the presidents are being advised to think like “Cold War-riors” and be mindful of professors and students who may not be on campus for purposes of learning but, instead, for spying, stealing research and recruiting people who are sympathetic to an anti-U.S. cause.

Speaking this week at Penn State University, FBI Director Robert Mueller told an audience that universities need to guard against spies who are out to acquire bits and pieces of technology and research and said he’s worried that “pre-classified and pre-patented” technologies could fall into the wrong hands.

More….

“Pre-classified and pre-patented” technology – WTF? Does that mean they’re giving patents to things that haven’t even beeninvented yet, just in case they are? The mind boggles.

It’s sad to see universities succumbing so easily to becoming government enforcement agents, but it’s not very surprising – academic, economic and defence interests often co-incide: many universities’ science departments wouldn’t exist at all without defence funding and there are revolving doors between private military technology companies, government and academia. There’s profit to be made from technology and many are doing very nicely out iof it, thanks. There’s no such thing as a free exchange of ideas in a corporate state. Ideas are worth money.

The joke is the US government warning universities against foreign spies, while it’s the government that’s mostly doing the spying.