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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

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

user3939382 wrote: post #45
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…

FISA, our secret court with secret proceedings to deal with secret charges under secret laws with secret interpretations. What could go wrong?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and the higher level Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISA is the law limiting government surveillance certain of whose provisions they enforce) don't deal with “charges” at all, and the statute they do enforce the warrant requirements for (FISA) isn’t secret.

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

#52

Post by tptacek »

nothrowaways wrote: post #29

FBI might have their reasons and they are doing their job, so no objections there. But the university data scrab is stupid, you can't undo history. Universities should stay neutral.

The university scrub precedes the FBI raid by two weeks.

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

#53

Post by mschuster91 »

avs733 wrote: post #37
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.

> They also are the nations internal intelligence - I.e. anti foreign intelligence- leads.

And they are still bound by whatever who is in charge of the FBI wants. Always remember how the FBI was used in the Nixon era to target Black people and hippies [1].

[1] https://www.vera.org/reimagining-prison-webumentary/the-past...

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

#54

Post by whatshisface »

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…

It's also pretty clear that this isn't matching the pattern of an espionage case, since they gave everyone more than a week of advance notice that something was to happen.

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

#55

Post by RajT88 »

Hard to say what's going on, but if he was a spy that is a plausible response.

I've known ex-govvie infosec folks who get calls periodically from their contacts in government about Chinese state-sponsored spies embedded in big tech companies. It's a thing.

If this was just another "let's screw over an immigrant for saying something we didn't like", we'd have some clue as to the professor's politics. But of course, anything is possible.

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

#56

Post by giantg2 »

tptacek wrote: post #21
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…

No? FISA isn't an adversarial court that hears espionage cases; it exists solely to handle applications for surveillance. Espionage and national security cases are handled by ordinary federal courts.

What kind of court was Drake tried in?

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

#57

Post by briandear »

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.

This has zero to do with ICE. FBI does counterespionage investigations (among other things,) but doesn’t have anything to do with immigration.

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

#58

Post by tptacek »

whatshisface wrote: post #54
tptacek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's also pretty clear that this isn't matching the pattern of an espionage case, since they gave everyone more than a week of advance notice that something was to happen.

Who knows? The "advanced notice" (I'm assuming here you're referring to IU's decision to place him on leave, remove him from their web pages, and notify his colleagues, more than week before the raid) makes this look less like some extrajudicial ICE-type thing, not more. But nobody knows anything right now! We know he has legal representation, from the story, and competent legal representation is going to tell you to shut the absolute hell up in a situation like this, so there's not much to learn from the fact that Goodin can't raise him for a quote.

My only take here (besides the certainty that the shadowy hand of the FISA FISC court is not behind all this) is that it doesn't look like another ICE raid.

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

#59

Post by derbOac »

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.

I have a problem with any of this being secret one way or another. If someone is detained the public has a right to know about the case. Otherwise it's all abductions as far as I'm concerned.

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

#60

Post by that_guy_iain »

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.

They all get “vanished” before the media-heavy trials. You normally find out at the end not when they’ve been arrested.
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