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FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

arstechnica.com

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Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#31

Post by sitkack »

vessenes wrote: post #16

FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court, which is in theory reserved for espionage and terrorism in the US. Most University cryptographic research happens in public these days, so I have a hard time imagining a sequence of events strictly bounded by cryptography research + chinese origin that yields FISA court motions. The real thing to say here i…

It could be that it wasn't an adversarial attack but a discovery, either of a weakness or an intentional flaw. Regardless, the crypto power gradient changes and that is concerning.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#33

Post by guerrilla »

vessenes wrote: post #16

FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court, which is in theory reserved for espionage and terrorism in the US. Most University cryptographic research happens in public these days, so I have a hard time imagining a sequence of events strictly bounded by cryptography research + chinese origin that yields FISA court motions. The real thing to say here i…

[flagged]

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#34

Post by tptacek »

refulgentis wrote: post #25

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-details-on-situati... Exclusive with more info on the timeline, but nothing substantive enough to clarify entirely. TL;DR: Professor was placed on leave which was announced to colleagues around 3/14. "What’s still unclear is whether the University investigation lead to the federal law enforcement actions or whether early stages of a federal law enforcement investigation led t…

This is good stuff and is probably a better link for the story than Dan Goodin's Ars story, much as I like Dan.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#35

Post by [deleted] »

tptacek wrote: post #18
whatshisface wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried in huge public media-heavy trials. The USSR even did huge public trials for American spies, because there's no incentive to forgo the nationalist boost to public opinion when collaborators would be aware of the disappearance either way.

Being removed from your employer's web pages isn't "being vanished"; we don't even know if Wang is in custody. All I'm saying is, in the fact pattern where this is another unhinged ICE raid, IU doesn't strike a tenured faculty member in an endowed chair position from all their websites. I've got nothing past that. Later From the TPM follow-up link downthread: faculty at IU were notified more than a week before the ra…

[deleted]

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#36

Post by lolinder »

whatshisface wrote: post #10
tptacek wrote: post #5

The fact pattern doesn't fit well with ICE, because Indiana University cooperated with the investigation (and struck him and his wife from their pages). The track record of espionage investigations against people of Chinese origin is not great, so it's not a defense of this investigation to say that that the details rhyme with that rather than immigration.

Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried in huge public media-heavy trials. The USSR even did huge public trials for American spies, because there's no incentive to forgo the nationalist boost to public opinion when collaborators would be aware of the disappearance either way.

> Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried

Or they vanish themselves before they're caught and are never heard from again because they got away.

We don't know that anyone has Wang in custody. He was scrubbed from the University computer systems weeks before the FBI raided his house, which suggests that whatever happened started then and built up to this recent raid which finally drew media attention.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#37

Post by avs733 »

casenmgreen wrote: post #15

Problem is, with things as they are now in USA, when you see stuff like this first question is : is this the ongoing, developing oppression, or is there is a real issue here?

While the question is not unreasonable, it is worth remembering that the FBI is not just a criminal investigation department. They also are the nations internal intelligence - I.e. anti foreign intelligence- leads.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#38

Post by packetlost »

raverbashing wrote: post #27
packetlost wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The university would likely not have scrubbed them from their site if they were merely being deported. There are either espionage concerns or this guy solved prime factorization.

TBH I don't think there's anyone to deport in this case anymore (And prime factorization has been cracked already ;) it's factorization of composite numbers that's a pain)

Ah yeah, I really meant factorization of semiprimes.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#39

Post by TechDebtDevin »

packetlost wrote: post #6
hypeatei wrote: post #4

[flagged]

The university would likely not have scrubbed them from their site if they were merely being deported. There are either espionage concerns or this guy solved prime factorization.

Scrubbing someone from a website would gather too much attention if they were trying to keep a breakthrough hidden, plus you'd probably havr a dead mans switch for that type of thing.

Re: FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

#40

Post by mvdtnz »

vessenes wrote: post #16

FBI + Client Attorney present + University's data scrub + nothing on the public docket likely means FISA court, which is in theory reserved for espionage and terrorism in the US. Most University cryptographic research happens in public these days, so I have a hard time imagining a sequence of events strictly bounded by cryptography research + chinese origin that yields FISA court motions. The real thing to say here i…

What's a FISA court?
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