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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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point taken. Better said: We have no evidence that they have been disappearing people in this manner. We also, clearly, have a large body of people who are on guard for any such possible evidence, so I would reasonably expect that if it were happening with any kind of regularity we would have seen it by now. There's a possibility that this is instance #1 and we see repeats. If we do see repeats, I will happily engage…

In fairness, there was no public evidence of the Nazi death camps up until they decided to turn the prison camps into that at the Wannsee Conference either. It was only in retrospect that we learned the true horror of the Holocaust. Given that period of history, and how it brought the world to the brink, any patterning closely similar to that (which we are seeing today) these things should be considered happening unt…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_of_the_Holocaust_in_...

"Berlin Radio broadcast the mass-execution of Jews in Bialystok and the burning of synagogues in July 1941"

> It was only in retrospect that we learned the true horror of the Holocaust.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/how-the-world-discovered-the-n...

The full scale wasn't known but there was enough evidence something was going on.

I'm really not seeing much similarity between that period of history and this period. Godwin's law is probably more applicable.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The main site of the Center for Distributed Confidential Computing[1] is up, and the chart of "principle investigators" still shows XiaoFeng Wang as the center director. But many other links on that site are broken and pages have been cut down, compared to an archive from last month.[2] They used to have a Github.[3] But now it says "No public repositories". Here's their NSF funding.[4][5] About US$3 million. Xiaogan…

If you know anything about that organization, please follow up. Did something happen to the organization? Did they somehow offend the administration?

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

whats the soap box referrs to?

People refer to making impassioned arguments as “getting on one’s soapbox.”

Picture a small overturned wooden box that a person is standing on to yell to a crowd.

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

#254

His old website: https://web.archive.org/web/20240415075438/https://homes.lud... An app he wrote: https://web.archive.org/web/20240304061200/https://sit.luddy... or https://web.archive.org/web/20240727022112/https://homes.lud... A news (probably PR) article about it: https://web.archive.org/web/20220622001223/https://www.compu... None of these sites is available any more. This looks suspicious, even given the regular…

App YouTube channel is still up: https://www.youtube.com/@appguardian6684

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clearly not true that everyone is properly documented. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/lawyers-advocates-say-48...

Documentation is hard to do accurately when someone illegally immigrates with no documents.

The Department of Homeland Security is not an undocumented immigrant, nor is the court system. They are required to document what they do.

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

#256
post #108

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…

>Even the most egregious cases, which are very bad, have left a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow. How can you be confident in this? Is it possible that you are saying this because the only cases we know about are when they have happened to leave "a paper trail for lawyers and journalists to follow"?

> How can you be confident in this? Is it possible that you are saying this because the only cases we know about...

This is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance and is also asking someone else to prove nonexistence of a situation. Both of these are inappropriate in a good faith discussion and I believe it would benefit you to consider how you reason about these situations if you want to come to well founded conclusions.

If you have evidence, or even plausible speculation as to the government "disappearing people" you should present it here so we can all understand and respond to this, as it is extremely important. If you are just assuming that the government 'must be' disappearing people, without any evidence or even a plausible theory which you can share then you are just being hysterical.

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

#257
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…

Sure, they "disappeared" him, then forced the University to take down his profile, email address, and office phone. Having scrubbed him from the faculty listing index, he has effectively been removed from history. He's a ghost. Never mind this Ars Technica article, or all of the other information about him on the web. I mean, I get all my news from university phone directories, how about you?

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We here—those of us having a conversation on Hacker News—are capable of analyzing our perceptions and molding them to better fit the observed facts. We do not need to be victims of our own instinctive reactions. So whether or not it does matter if the facts don't line up with the speculation, it should matter.

Hacker news is not relevant to politics. I don't know why I should put effort into validating other people's perception of what is factual. Notably, "observed fact" is an oxymoron. You mean observation of something you then produce a statement to lossily refer to. Especially if the "fact" is bound to floating signifiers. Most of the terms of the alleged "facts" are floating signifiers. Good luck. You'll find a lot mo…

Politics is, to a great extent, a consequence of social interactions such as on HN. HN is a community of relatively wealthy, well-educated, and influential people - not often the most influential, but people who are hardly powerless.
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