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FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado

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

#201

Post by trod1234 »

CodeWriter23 wrote: post #104
Animats wrote: post #74

This hasn't hit mainstream media yet. It should have by now. Disappearing people is not something the US government is allowed to do. Here's Xiaofeng Wang's bio on the Indiana University site.[1] Google Scholar.[2] Archived version of home page at Indiana University.[3] If anybody has a PACER account, please check there. [1] https://alliance.iu.edu/members/member/8580.html [2] https://scholar.google.com/citations?use…

Occam’s Razor suggest he was exfiltrated.

There are no published facts aside from this guys missing, so there can be no adequate accounting of the facts.

You've misused Occam's Razor.

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

#202

Post by thaumasiotes »

lolinder wrote: post #92
tw04 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If in the ensuing investigation they found out that he'd been spying for the PRC for the last 20 years and they were freaked out about the reputational implications of having been harboring a Chinese spy in a red state in the current political climate? I don't know anything for sure, my main point is that everything is speculation, but some speculation is better grounded in the facts than other speculation. EDIT: I s…

> EDIT: I see you've engaged in the very frustrating practice of editing your comment to reply to my comment. This time with even less etiquette than normal

You should blame HN for that, not tw04. The site specifically promotes it.

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

#203

Post by bigiain »

lolinder wrote: post #105
slg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the long list of problems caused by the government "disappearing" people (which they have objectively been doing lately) is that it destroys trust and therefore makes even valid legal proceedings seem more shady than they would in a world in which due process was a universal guarantee in practice. I don't fault anyone for jumping to conclusions implicating the government is in the wrong here rather than Wang.

> by the government "disappearing" anyone (which they have objectively been doing lately) Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here. Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. This case is notable because no one seems to know where this man has gone. But yes, point taken: the extrajudicial…

> Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here.

Not that we know about yet. Someone's got to be the first of that sort of government action to be discovered and come to the notice of more than just their friends and family, and it's highly unlikely to be discovered the very first time it happened.

I'm reasonably confident that if this news manages to get covered widely enough. there's going to be a bunch of "me too" reports of coworkers or family that have disappeared under similar circumstances in the last 3 or 4 weeks. I'll be curious to see what other nationalities and professions show up in those reports.

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

#204

Post by runarberg »

trod1234 wrote: post #197
runarberg wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is HN and we love these simplistic universal laws here (Hanlon's razor being another beloved law) but Occam’s razor isn’t really applicable here, or at the very least, it isn’t very helpful, and it certainly isn’t conclusive. That he was exfiltrated by the Chinese government also requires the same number of variables as that he was disappeared by the American government. So Occam’s Razor actually suggests…

Just an FYI, you do know that Hanlon's Razor isn't a law, or even a rule of thumb. It was a joke in a joke book, and has been taken entirely out of context by most people who use it to justify anything.

haha, I did not know that. The first time I saw it, it was actually used against my point here on HN.

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

#205

Post by lolinder »

bigiain wrote: post #203
lolinder wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by the government "disappearing" anyone (which they have objectively been doing lately) Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here. Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. This case is notable because no one seems to know where this man has gone. But yes, point taken: the extrajudicial…

> Notably, they haven't been "disappearing" people in the manner that would have to be happening here. Not that we know about yet. Someone's got to be the first of that sort of government action to be discovered and come to the notice of more than just their friends and family, and it's highly unlikely to be discovered the very first time it happened. I'm reasonably confident that if this news manages to get covered…

I replied to this argument in response to a sibling. I'll link my reply instead of repeating myself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527605

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

#206

Post by dathinab »

jimmydoe wrote: post #98

Know little about this case, but given what happened with China Initiative in Trump I, I’m genuinely surprised there are still Chinese professors not leaving or preparing to leave US. 200+ lost jobs, at least one suicide, if that still not ring alarm for these Chinese-born professionals, their IQ may not match up the tenure I assume.

but where to leave to?

Many of them are basically refuges which did use their nogen to be able to escape the Chinese regime and find a home without technically being refuges at any point.

Some grew up in the US.

Many have family and children in the US, thus which very well might be US citizens.

For many they do not have a place to go, the US is their only home.

Even for thus which where involved in spying not all of them did so of their free choice. It's not a secret that China secret police is present in most countries with larger China ethnicity including the US and there had been more then one or two cases of them threatening and blackmailing ethnic Chinese people (including such with full US citizenship). Including e.g. kidnapping their children.

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

#207

Post by Andrex »

lucubratory wrote: post #168
luyu_wu wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not easy to leave a tenured position you worked half your life to get to I suppose...

From what I understand the PRC tries pretty hard to provide a lot of incentives to academic returnees. I do wonder if they have a tenure match program, where if you have tenure at an American university of a given calibre you are automatically granted tenure at a Chinese university of a similar calibre if you return to China. They probably should.

If that's true, then that seems to be the simplest explanation for what happened here? (Honestly asking.)

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

#208

Post by genocidicbunny »

formerly_proven wrote: post #148
genocidicbunny wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily -- if there's evidence of the disappearance being across state borders, FBI might get involved because that's now federal jurisdiction. Similarly, if it's someone of high profile, or involved with a high-profile organization, the local police might also choose to hand that over to the FBI to deal with since they can probably get better access. In this case, this was a professor working on cryptography…

The article claims his status is unknown ("Their resident status (e.g. US citizens or green card holders) is currently unknown."), but I doubt a non-citizen could be "Director of NSF Center for Distributed Confidential Computing".

You're right, I've updated my comment to be less authoritative on the residency status.

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

#209

Post by aerostable_slug »

bigfatkitten wrote: post #17
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.

Media-heavy espionage cases are the exception, not the norm. "Diplomats" routinely get declared persona non grata and just put on the next plane home. Neither the U.S. nor the other country wants to make a fuss.

That's generally because those diplomats can't be tried for their activities in the host nation, and also because said diplomats are running spies, not stealing secrets themselves.

In other words, they aren't the traitors, their agents are. And those agents are the ones who get tried in the media circuses we're all so familiar with.

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

#210

Post by dcrazy »

lucubratory wrote: post #160
cma wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike the other recent disappearances and deportations to the concentration camp in El Salvador, this one does say it was with a court order.

Great! Can you provide a link to the court order so we can see?

The article author attempted to get the court order but could not find one. This is common when the order is made as part of an ongoing investigation, or else criminals could just watch for their names in PACER to know when to fire up the shredders.
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