FBI raids home of prominent computer scientist who has gone incommunicado
MAR 30, 2025 2:41 PM
A prominent computer scientist who has spent 20 years publishing academic papers on cryptography, privacy, and cybersecurity has gone incommunicado, had his professor profile, email account, and phone number removed by his employer Indiana University, and had his homes raided by the FBI. No one knows why.
Xiaofeng Wang has a long list of prestigious titles. He was the associate dean for research at Indiana University's Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, a fellow at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a tenured professor at Indiana University at Bloomington. According to his employer, he has served as principal investigator on research projects totaling nearly $23 million over his 21 years there.
He has also co-authored scores of academic papers on a diverse range of research fields, including cryptography, systems security, and data privacy, including the protection of human genomic data. I have personally spoken to him on three occasions for articles here, here, and here.
"None of this is in any way normal"
In recent weeks, Wang's email account, phone number, and profile page at the Luddy School were quietly erased by his employer. Over the same time, Indiana University also removed a profile for his wife, Nianli Ma, who was listed as a Lead Systems Analyst and Programmer at the university's Library Technologies division.
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https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/03/computer-scientist-goes-silent-after-fbi-raid-and-purging-from-university-website/
The whole article is worth a read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I can venture a guess 
People living on Xavier Court in Bloomington were mystified about Friday's presence of a slew of Department of Homeland Security and FBI agents who spent the day searching a neighbor's house.
A dozen unmarked federal agency cars and SUVs with Marion County license plates were parked in the cul-de-sac off Winslow Road, which has 15 houses and backs up to the YMCA walking trail. Agents arrived before 8 a.m., neighbors said, and were still there late Friday afternoon.
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Xiaofeng Wang's online SPICE profile says his research "focuses on system security and data privacy with a specialization on security and privacy issues in mobile and cloud computing, and privacy issues in dissemination and computation of human genomic data."
An IU distinguished professor profile lists Wang, who came to IU in 2004, as co-director of the Center for Distributed Confidential Computing, a project funded by the National Science Foundation. "He is considered to be one of the most prominent systems security and privacy researchers," the profile says, overseeing research projects totaling more than $20 million.
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https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2025/03/28/fbi-department-of-homeland-security-agents-search-house-in-bloomington-indiana/82710451007/
