There is a difference between spies and intelligence officers, according to Carolina Angelis, who is a security advisor at Truesec and has a background in the Swedish intelligence service.
– A spy or enlisted agent is someone who is induced by a foreign power to commit this type of crime. Whereas an intelligence officer is a person who has that as a profession, says Angelis.
Illegals are the hardest to detect
There are different types of intelligence officers. One category is “illegals”. These are people who should not be able to be linked to the country they are spying for. An example is the researcher in Tromsø, Norway who claimed to be a Brazilian academic, but was in fact a Russian intelligence officer working for the GRU.
– Illegalists are the most difficult type of intelligence officers to detect. It takes a very long time for them to build such a deep cover. Where you learn a completely different language fluently to be able to pretend to be from, for example, Brazil, says Angelis.