Vulnerabilities Within Academia | Police | SIU

By its nature, the academic world encourages free thinking and informational exchanges in an open environment. Arguably, such networks are required for research institutes and academicians to accomplish many of their objectives. Within academia, there are clear incentives to build institutional networks to thoroughly explore a wide range of ideas. For instance, it behooves a researcher to develop direct access to primary sources or populations that will assist in actual research. Unfortunately, such an atmosphere is exploitable by an intelligence service, which can use this open environment to identify and target individuals of interest. The researcher looking to obtain direct access to sources of information may have to build networks that run through foreign governments. What’s more is that a foreign intelligence service may actively target such a researcher by using various lures, such as the establishment of cultural and academic exchanges.

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