A good story in WIRED giving updates on the situation with Dr. Xiaofeng Wang. https://www.wired.com/story/xiaofeng-wang-indiana-university-research-probe-china/

The Indiana University chapter of the American Association of University Professors have written a letter demanding Dr. Xiaofeng Wang’s reinstatement.

I am jumping down with frustration at our academic community. People: we cannot do anything if everyone is unaware of professors getting arrested for multiple weeks.

Some early non-Indiana coverage of this story. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sketchy-first-reports

@hovav @matthew_d_green So I say sensitive and it definitely understates Wang's contributions to computer science - his h-index alone puts him within the 80th percentile of researchers. It's hard to be influential and prolific without some of your work being sensitive

In 2023-2024 alone, he specialized in confidential computing, info leaks, and exploitation. There isn't a singular answer which sticks out.

Some of his research (e.g. Wang et al 2024) is with coauthors based at China Academy of Science institutions which have been subject to some major scrutiny. I don't think this alone has been cause for concern in the past, but who knows these days.

It's possible he was considering changing employment, perhaps to a PRC university, and that alone is enough to trigger a major investigation. I consider this a chilling effect that will cause more brain drain. I don't blame anyone for getting perturbed by that level of suspicion.

Or it's possible that some more precedented kind of misappropriation or breach occurred. That would be a shame.

@matthew_d_green FBI not saying much of anything https://www.idsnews.com/article/2025/03/iu-professor-bloomington-carmel-fbi-search

@matthew_d_green

The university does not appear to have memory-holed his wife.

@ljean Has anyone been in contact? I hear he’s been missing for two weeks and his students can’t reach him. How does this not get noticed for two weeks???

Update to this story: I’ve now heard reports that Wang’s students have been unable to contact him since mid-March. His website was taken down on the 19th.

@supersat this isn’t normal Karl.

@adamshostack None of this is in any way normal.

@matthew_d_green Is it normal for a university to memory hole a former professor's pages? I thought the norm was to keep scholarship present, but possibly mark it as an inactive page.

@matthew_d_green He has always been a hard-working play by the rules colleague. I do not know what he is charged with. I am not confident that he is being provided full due process for a named chair by the University. I may be wrong, but I do not have the information that would provide that confidence right now.

He has been an excellent colleague for 20+ years. Being under investigation is not a crime. I have been asking for information. I do not have it. Unless he is found guilty in a court of law or I get significantly more information, I would like to say I am standing with him. But I do not know how to. So right now, I will say that I have been proud to have been his colleague for two decades. I do not even know if he is still my colleague? He is on administrative leave.

I can not say he is not getting due process - clearly there was a warrant issued. I do not know what is happening.

There is nothing more patriotic in America than demanding transparency in justice and due process, except possibly the notion of innocence until proven guilty.

@matthew_d_green I’ve heard (from someone I trust) that his university web pages were all taken down and colleagues don’t know where he is.

Xiaofeng’s profile is no longer available on IU sites. So here’s his Google Scholar. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pONu-5EAAAAJ&hl=en

House belonged to Xiaofeng Wang.

I just heard that a cryptography professor at Indiana University had his house raided and was fired. Don’t know much more. https://www.heraldtimesonline.com/story/news/local/2025/03/28/fbi-department-of-homeland-security-agents-search-house-in-bloomington-indiana/82710451007/

When Signal was designed, our threat model was protecting the communications of civil society, journalists, just regular citizens ...

The threat model of military operations & sharing your hate of Europeans was not what Signal was designed for. Ephemeral messages and cryptographic deniability are not fit for communications that require accountability.
But I appreciate their effort to make government more efficient by adding journalists to the chat instead of requiring to go through FOIA.

So there is one Signal Foundation doing the work that a dozen companies should be doing. No idea what to do about any of that.

I guess my takeaway (1) is: no matter what people say, actual privacy is one of the most valuable services in the entire world, (2) network effects ensure a winner, yet (3) it is a totally unstable balancing act for for-profit companies to provide this, long term.