61–70 of 517 posts
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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?
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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…
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.
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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…
so you're saying he vanished...?
Sound scary but when looking at the facts, it is probably reasonable. Both the university, the court, and the lawyer seem to not raising any fuss yet, signaling that whatever this is, it likely all legal and severe enough to warrant absolute silence. The employer was likely contacted far in advance for detail not available to the public, and very likely they complied and realized there are serious issues that can tar…
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Sure, I mean, the FBI's involvement makes it not look like another department's case. I am saying that on top of that, an arrest of any kind would (normally) go differently than whatever happened to this professor. The idea that the FBI would call the employer of a suspected spy, inform them that something was going to happen, that all of his colleagues would be informed, and then after a week they'd search his home,…
I don't think anyone, least of all OP, is suggesting this is what happened.
Everything is rank speculation at this point, but if I were going to speculate I'd speculate that Wang suddenly left the country of his own volition and the employer began investigating his disappearance and stumbled on things that led to them calling in the FBI.
That's still purely speculation, but it would account for the sequence of events and the manner of investigation way better than any ideas about him being "vanished" by the US government.
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.
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.
FBI is most likely dealing with an espionage angle. His research field of cryptography and using it to protect genomic data probably has something to do with it.
The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal with several researchers having their career and livelihood destroyed.
What he did was public domain, unless he consulted for alphabet agencies. The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage by making life hard for family back in china
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…
> we don't even know if Wang is in custody so you're saying he vanished...?
Yes, as far as we know he vanished, but as far as we know he did so under his own will before the university even put him on leave.