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LudwigPastorius

(12,040 posts)
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 01:47 PM Tuesday

Have the "disappearings" begun?

Article on an academic who has dropped off the face of the earth after Kash Patel's FBI raided his home with weapons drawn.

https://www.wired.com/story/cybersecurity-professor-mysteriously-disappears-as-fbi-raids-his-homes/

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.

-snip-

As reported by The Bloomingtonian and later the The Herald-Times in Bloomington, a small fleet of unmarked cars driven by government agents descended on the Bloomington home of Wang and Ma on Friday. They spent most of the day going in and out of the house and occasionally transferred boxes from their vehicles. TV station WTHR, meanwhile, reported that a second home owned by Wang and Ma, located in Carmel, Indiana, was also searched. The station said that both a resident and an attorney for the resident were on scene during at least part of the search.

Attempts to locate Wang and Ma have so far been unsuccessful. An Indiana University spokesman didn't answer emailed questions asking if the couple was still employed by the university and why their profile pages, email addresses, and phone numbers had been removed. The spokesman provided the contact information for a spokeswoman at the FBI's field office in Indianapolis. In an email, the spokeswoman wrote: “The FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity at homes in Bloomington and Carmel Friday. We have no further comment at this time.”


5 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
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Have the "disappearings" begun? (Original Post) LudwigPastorius Tuesday OP
Uh oh...ALL of this AVOIDABLE but for those who whined endlessly about not being able Eliot Rosewater Tuesday #1
Agree LudwigPastorius Tuesday #2
I have talked about that Ludwig endlessly for weeks now, I always say 100 million so I guess I'm off by Eliot Rosewater Tuesday #3
Some more info Kaleva Tuesday #4
So very weird. LudwigPastorius Tuesday #5

Eliot Rosewater

(32,820 posts)
1. Uh oh...ALL of this AVOIDABLE but for those who whined endlessly about not being able
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 01:58 PM
Tuesday

to force Hillary to promise Medicare For All.

Who then said they would have to HOLD THEIR NOSES to vote for her or not at all.

And everytime one of them said this at least one or two of their friends who are NOT politically engaged figured WHY BOTHER voting at all I guess!

LudwigPastorius

(12,040 posts)
2. Agree
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 02:03 PM
Tuesday

89 million people eligible to vote last November decided they couldn't be bothered to help stop this rolling fascism snowball.

Shameful.

Eliot Rosewater

(32,820 posts)
3. I have talked about that Ludwig endlessly for weeks now, I always say 100 million so I guess I'm off by
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 02:24 PM
Tuesday

A little, but surely our democracy is dying and will die because for the most part that many people were too busy on Tik Tok to be bothered to vote.

Actually the human race may end now because of it.

Kaleva

(39,103 posts)
4. Some more info
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 03:03 PM
Tuesday

"Indiana U. Law Professor Alex Tanford, the union chapter's president, told CNBC in an interview Monday that Wang contacted him earlier this month as the university conducted what had first appeared to be a "routine" investigation over a grant application and how he reported a publication of his curriculum vitae.

Wang, who had been barred from his office and from access to his computer during the university's probe, emailed Tanford on Friday to say, "I've been terminated," the law professor recalled.

The email arrived shortly after Tanford heard from his daughter, who lives out of state, asking him what he knew about news reports of the FBI searching a house that same day in Bloomington, where Indiana U. is located"

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/fbi-searches-xiaofeng-wang-homes-indiana-university-cyrptography-computer.html

LudwigPastorius

(12,040 posts)
5. So very weird.
Tue Apr 1, 2025, 06:32 PM
Tuesday

Is he suspected of being a spy? Is he a naturalized citizen/here on a green/card? Why did the university fire him and scrub its web sites without any kind of process?

Is he in hiding, or did the FBI snatch him and deport him?

Just a big WTF.

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