cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/20187958
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.
Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.
He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data. I have personally spoken to him on three occasions for articles here, here, and here.
"None of this is in any way normal"
In recent weeks, Wang's email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university's Library Technologies division.
According to the Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma and located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. The station said that both a resident and an attorney for the resident were on scene during at least part of the search.
Attempts to locate Wang and Ma have so far been unsuccessful. An Indiana University spokesman didn't answer emailed questions asking if the couple was still employed by the university and why their profile pages, email addresses and phone numbers had been removed. The spokesman provided the contact information for a spokeswoman at the FBI's field office in Indianapolis. In an email, the spokeswoman wrote: "The FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity at homes in Bloomington and Carmel Friday. We have no further comment at this time."
Searches of federal court dockets turned up no documents related to Wang, Ma, or any searches of their residences. The FBI spokeswoman didn't answer questions seeking which US district court issued the warrant and when, and whether either Wang or Ma is being detained by authorities. Justice Department representatives didn't return an email seeking the same information. An email sent to a personal email address belonging to Wang went unanswered at the time this post went live. Their resident status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is currently unknown.
Fellow researchers took to social media over the weekend to register their concern over the series of events.
"None of this is in any way normal," Matthew Green, a professor specializing in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Mastodon. He continued: "Has anyone been in contact? I hear he’s been missing for two weeks and his students can’t reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???"
In the same thread, Matt Blaze, a McDevitt Professor of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University said: "It's hard to imagine what reason there could be for the university to scrub its website as if he never worked there. And while there's a process for removing tenured faculty, it takes more than an afternoon to do it."
Local news outlets reported the agents spent several hours moving boxes in an out of the residences. WTHR provided the following details about the raid on the Carmel home:
Neighbors say the agents announced "FBI, come out!" over a megaphone.
A woman came out of the house holding a phone. A video from a neighbor shows an agent taking that phone from her. She was then questioned in the driveway before agents began searching the home, collecting evidence and taking photos.
A car was pulled out of the garage slightly to allow investigators to access the attic.
The woman left the house before 13News arrived. She returned just after noon accompanied by a lawyer. The group of ten or so investigators left a few minutes later.
The FBI would not say what they were looking for or who is under investigation. A bureau spokesperson issued a statement: “I can confirm we conducted court-authorized activity at the address in Carmel today. We have no further comment at this time.”
Investigators were at the house for about four hours before leaving with several boxes of evidence. 13News rang the doorbell when the agents were gone. A lawyer representing the family who answered the door told us they're not sure yet what the investigation is about.
This post will be updated if new details become available. Anyone with first-hand knowledge of events involving Wang, Ma, or the investigation into either is encouraged to contact me, preferably over Signal at DanArs.82. The email address is: dan.goodin@arstechnica.com.
So we're literally just doing the thing now ?
Since it reads like you're American, as a French person, I'd recommend either starting a revolution and beheading your new kings or fucking off the country.
They won’t do shit. The majority of them don’t even know what’s going on.
Bought and paid for media not reporting and or outright sanewashing these guys.
This pains me to say this, because I am on disability, but I imagine the will be a lot of angry people when Musk destroys social security. I honestly wonder how the media will spin payment diaruptions to keep the populace complacent
Bullets. That's how. Homeland Security is the SA. ICE is the SS. When people start to fight back, they will shoot.
There's 120 guns per 100 people in the US, a huge veteran population with combat training, most of them armed, multiple armed paramilitaries, militia groups, and a large number of people with military-grade munitions and equipment all over the nation. As the old quote goes, "behind every blade of grass, a gun". It only takes about 3.5%. And there's only a few million people in the government, and 300 million disgruntled individuals, many of whom know the exact tactics, exact procedures, cryptographic codes, techniques and practices of infantry, marines, special forces, SWAT, police, the DHS and ICE. Not to mention, disgruntled active-duty servicemembers on the inside - the "insider threat" they keep lecturing us about.
My money is on them suggesting people will get a bigger slice of the pie once the "fraud" is removed.
Have them think they'll get their payments, but with interest and a thank you bonus if they just keep being patient. String them along until they either starve or get evicted, then they don't have to pay them anymore.
In good conscience I can’t recommend visiting the site or lowering yourself to read their blubbering nonsense, but if you do happen to find yourself reviewing the perspectives over on that other site in r/Conservative, you’ll find them infighting, and doing mental gymnastics to make sense of it all. Praising him, while simultaneously being upset he wants a third term, or ashamed of his imperialist plans. The blind leading the blind, but apparently at least some of them are bothered by some of the unconstitutional actions.
Man, if only this was happening in a country with armed citizens, they could maybe do something about it.
No good, the people with guns just shoot kids.
Trust me people are trying. Sadly, most of this country is too lazy or cowardly to do anything. I'm armed and I'm ready.
So the only outwardly observable effects of your actions are more ammo/weapon sales for gun companies that financed the Trump election?
Where's the protesting in public? The work strikes? The sabotage?
Join us April 5
https://indivisible.org/
Imagine that I googled for you and linked:
Articles about nationwide protests over the last few weeks
Articles about Teslas burning at dealerships
An article about a GOP headquarters building burning with ICE = KKK written.
Where have you been?
I didn't criticize Americans for doing nothing, I criticized this specific user for not doing anything.
And regardless, you guys are tame for a people supposedly bent on loving liberty having a fascist at the helm...
As for where I've been -- the (for now) better side of the Atlantic. My people are still waiting for the statue of liberty by the way.
As am I. They don’t realize we are also fond of guns on this side of the street, and are much more thrilled by the sight of dead Nazis.
Don’t point this out to them. They’ll just respond, outraged, that by going to cute little marches (parades) they’re doing all they can-
Come on, if they actually do something they might GET IN TROUBLE! Then all the bad things that are definitely going to happen to them might happen to them.
Luigi Mangione did more for the class struggle in 5 minutes than most of us have done in our entire lives.
And literally everyone failed to rise to the occasion.
It's good to be prepared for either path. Already started in Canada ahead of time just in case.
Basically I'm leaving if the majority elect anyone who sells us out.
... and then your descendants end up living in something like Louisiana ...
Sorry, associations with Murrica and Frenchies.
Anyway, thinking you are different makes you learn the hard way that you are no different. I thought Russian state is too cowardly to actually invade a big enough country for a real war (Georgia just doesn't count, they simply don't have strategic depth, they barely would even if they somehow annexed East Pontic mountains and Artvin from Turkey, that is, Tao or Tayq, the latter is the Armenian name for this and I'd prefer it to be annexed by Armenia, but neither will likely happen, anyway, a separate republic would be better, it seems some people there are chill enough). Oops, got excited. Back to "too cowardly", murdering and torturing those infinitely weaker than them - yes, bombing Chechnya - yes, betraying allies - 100% yes, but 2022-now was unexpected.
Same with ISIS-like groups being now preferred to Iran and Shia militias for the west. If we kinda remember why the latter are supposed to be bad, that's because they are threatening Israel and are a theocracy and against freedom and rule of law and all that. I mean, if HTS is about democracy then I'm an alien. If HTS is more democratic than IRI (which still has traces of being founded by both mojahed and left-liberal groups), then I'm a donkey. And in any case it kinda went unnoticed how groups formerly part of ISIS suddenly became better than Iran in western media. So the (military-wise associated) west supports groups clearly worse than their adversaries everywhere except Ukraine. And nobody questions that. I think the part about "free media in the free world" in western worldview should be revised too.
While your average Russian still thinks their state is just dumb\incompetent\evil-but-cowardly, and your typical European still thinks EU and NATO and such are on the right side of history. While the Russian state has already grown that meat grinder mechanism it lacked in Russian public conscience (Chechnya was considered something both unintended and in the past), and the EU and NATO are quite clearly on the strong side of history, sometimes officially congratulating jihadists with massacring whole towns.
OK, I went into politics, just - a nice joke, but tables may turn overnight and Americans may start giving out such advice.
American bootlicker doesn't understand what going into proper opposition means. They can't fix basic consumption habits that benefits their enemy lol