The fact pattern doesn't fit well with ICE, because Indiana University cooperated with the investigation (and struck him and his wife from their pages).
The track record of espionage investigations against people of Chinese origin is not great, so it's not a defense of this investigation to say that that the details rhyme with that rather than immigration.
This isn’t immigration. He’s a tenured professor and already has permanent residency at the very least. He is most likely a US citizen.
FBI is most likely dealing with an espionage angle. His research field of cryptography and using it to protect genomic data probably has something to do with it.
The US govt track record on stuff like this is quite abysmal with several researchers having their career and livelihood destroyed.
What he did was public domain, unless he consulted for alphabet agencies. The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage by making life hard for family back in china
(For what it's worth, at the time I wrote the comment, the rest of the comments on this story were about ICE raids).
Nobody knows anything about this story. He might be in custody, he might be in Indiana, he might be abroad, he might be about to get charged, he might not be, he might keep his positions at IU, he might have lost all his positions at IU.
It's an interesting story worth paying attention to because he's a prominent figure in an area of research we all pay attention to. But given some kind of criminal investigation is in process, and that he has a lawyer, there's no signal to derive from the fact that we can't get quotes from him in the media; that could just be him being smart.
Are you suggesting that it isn't helpful or useful to speculate that he was an undercover FBI agent working to infiltrate US-based dark web crypto gangs and that the University's actions tipped off the gangs? So when he went missing the FBI kicked into high gear? Just making stuff up like that doesn't provide clarity?
Does he have a lawyer? It wasn’t clear who retained council, it sounded like it was just a woman living at the Carmel house, which could have been a rental tenant…
> The Chinese govt also has a pretty nasty track record of pressuring erstwhile Chinese citizens to engage in espionage by making life hard for family back in china
China also has a history of establishing "police" stations in foreign countries with the mandate to harass and control expats. They did this in Canada at least, surely they did in the US too.
Thank you! Reading this, it seems to be unclear/unspecified in the text exactly who or what group was involved in this or whether there was affiliation to the Chinese state. That's the part I'm really interested in though.
Here you go, you can pick one of the several hundred articles written about the topic over the past 3-4 years from the world's oldest, more reputable and foremost news gathering/journalism organizations.
This is one of those things that's so well known, with plenty of sources, it's kind of odd to have to ask for one. Any search should have been full of these results.
I don't think it is odd and I disagree with you. First, if you find too many search results, that is just as bad as not finding any. Secondly, when it comes to this specific issue, the quality of information can range from unusable to thorough based on what article about it you read. Given that "Secret overseas Chinese police force" is such a good headline, there are many many websites and lower tier news sites publishing about this. There seems to be no one catalyst publication that broke this story first. This makes it hard to establish any objective facts about it (for me). On top of all this, there may also be personal bias involved when reporting about it.
Given all this, why is it so odd for me to ask for more information here? Like, instead of discouraging me from asking for more information in the future, you could have listed the sources you feel are usable.
It's weird to doubt something that's been in the news a bunch and is reported on by reputable sources though. Instead of expecting 100 people to do a basic search for them, they should have done their own search and only doubted if they didn't find anything.
You may have read a different comment then. I didn't doubt this claim, I only asked for more information about it.
And no, one should never be discouraged from doing so, even if a "basic search" (not exactly well defined either) leads to many results.
This whole "do your own research" attitude is not good. It's easy to make any claim whatsoever without any basis of truth in this manner. Good for you if that is enough for you but for me that is not enough, logically speaking.
Yes. I didn't doubt the claim. But I was able to read a lot about the topic and inform myself better by visiting the links in some of the responses.
One may call me lazy but I think it was a valid request and I also believe that informing oneself is not quite as easy as it perhaps seems. I certainly don't think it's as simple as "googling the issue" when it comes to something like this.
I didn't downvote the comment, but I would have done so. If we want to talk about how discussions should work then the commenter should have first spent two minutes researching and/or explained why sources like the Associated Press (my first result when copying and pasting the comment in DuckDuckGo) aren't reliable.
"I don't understand" is a good way to foment discussion. "I don't believe you" usually isn't.
I believe the Associated Press is a reliable source, I'm not sure where I stated otherwise...
I just want to state for the record that I didn't claim to disagree with the comment nor am I a conspiracy theorist, nor a Chinese spy... I only asked for more information (which other comments have then provided).
Primary sources exist(ed?) on Chinese web, i.e. provincial gov websites advertising these "overseas service centres" used for diaphora services like renew PRC drivers license, which western western MSM regurgitating "Safeguard Defender" propaganda turn into overseas "police stations". Services also entail liasing with PRC law enforcement, i.e. if Chinese tourist gets robbed, they can refer to service centres for guidance, but it's largely PRC public security telling them how to work with local authorities due to language barrier (see drama of Italian police patrolled with Chinese police). These setups exist because PRC tourists/diasphora everywhere now (and thus targetted everywhere), but most places haven't brought up Chinese competency in public services.
Except US, AFAIK no other gov investigating has publically released evidence of foul play. Like there's arguments to close these stations are extra territorial setups, except as far as I'm aware, they're run by diasophra citizens of countries, not Chinese nationals. And LBH, anything pertaining to US actions vs China from last few years is indistinguishable from propaganda. There's some US court docs on the couple Chinese (US citizens) in NY being prosecuted for repressing dissidents on behalf of PRC gov, that's as close to primary source as you can get. This all without touching the founder of SafeGuard Defender, Peter Dahlin... history with PRC, first westerner to be charged for work undermining national security afer NGO reforms, arrested for a few weeks, deported, seperated from Chinese gf). Let's just say he's got bones to pick.
IMO accusations are borderline retarded, and unsurprisingly borderline retarded western msm and useful idiots in west believe it. Spend half a second thinking why PRC intelligence operations would coordinate under very public (and publically advertised) arrangements that gets comingled with civil activities. It's dumbest possible "front" to host these activities, especially for operation foxhunt tier work. Like Chinese spies, especially those with foreign citizenship,can get all sorts of cover work that doesn't directly linked back to official Chinese gov activities (as in terms of paperwork)... and they choose what, network of borderline extraterritorial consulate service arrangements?
E: The TLDR for me is western (really US led) propaganda associated with broad effort to dismantle PRC's United Front like work abroad, started with Chinese programs at various universities. Because again, Chinese intelligence so stupid and lazy (or bold) that they would setup in actual campuses. Which itself is response to PRC basically destroying US/Western NGO operations in PRC mid 2010s for subversive influence ops. Except Chinese don't really run large think tanks or well resourced NGOs as cover for their intelligence activities aboard. They don't need to, they have diasphora citizens everywhere already integrated. The few comparable arrangments that exist are United Front related setups in the west.
Permanent green card residents have been sent to El Salvador prisons without trial in the recent stuff. This incident does say it was with a court behind it though.
That's the DHS authorization. It deals with immigration issues as a part of its investigations (for all federal agencies). But immigration action is not its primary role. They won't come looking for you because you broke immigration laws. But they will enforce them if it's found that you broke immigration laws while investigating something unrelated.
Not only is that whole different set of claims from "The FBI does not deal with immigration action," but the new set of claims are also incorrect, which you can see from the links I've already provided.
That's moving the goalposts. You initially stated that they do not deal with immigration action. Now it's that immigration action is not its primary role. Those are mutually exclusive arguments.
Still, the current administration's renewed call to revoke birthright citizenship was via executive order, promptly blocked by courts. Currently the case seems to rest with the Supreme Court.
Very interesting[0]. However, he's not under threat;) so I'm still waiting (and will keep waiting, according to the person I originally asked).
I wonder what the strategy is, given that (in my view) it's unlikely the Supreme Court will agree with the Trump admin. Is it performative or will they use it to pressure legislators, and how do they see a route to winning there?
Still, the Wiki does show that it's certainly arguable, so we'll see.
Perhaps my question was unclear. I responded to "Even natural born citizens are now under threat." I asked to name one natural born citizen, not categories of people.
Perhaps, given you provided said categories, you'll be able to drill down and name a natural born citizen from them?
Trump himself has said he wants to end birthright citizenship. EVERYONE in the US is at risk. If you think you're safe, you aren't. This is what fascists do.
Jus soli[0] and and jus sanguinis[1] are well known legal concepts for citizenship, and jus soli is rare outside of the Americas, it’s not controversial to move to jus sanguinis as the norm, except in the way that it’s a change from the longstanding way of things in the US. To a European, jus soli seems crazy. Almost as crazy as people using caps in their posts.
I do wonder if you, or anyone, could focus on the question I actually asked instead of different ones they wish to answer.
Firstly, that isn't true. The US is a common law system, that common law being English common law, and because common law systems still share many features, they can use decisions and case law from other common law jurisdictions in their own decisions.
Moreover, the US Bill of Rights is an extension of the English Bill of Rights 1689 and Magna Carta (the founders were British, after all). From Britannica's introduction to the US Bill of Rights[1]:
> The Bill of Rights derives from the Magna Carta (1215), the English Bill of Rights (1689)…
Wikipedia[2] adds:
> The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those in earlier documents, especially the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776), as well as the Northwest Ordinance (1787), the English Bill of Rights (1689), and Magna Carta (1215)
Both the Virginia Declaration of rights[3] and the Northwest Ordinance incorporate concepts found in the English Bill of Rights and Magna Carta, for example:
> Mason based his initial draft on the rights of citizens described in earlier works such as the English Bill of Rights (1689) and the writings of John Locke.
And where do you think they got habeas corpus from?
And finally, in the link I shared on jus soli[4], in the second line, it states:
> Jus soli was part of the English common law
I could go on but that seems enough. Not only is your claim completely erroneous, it's also not misguided to contrast the situation to show that it's not a strange or dangerous change.
Of course, if you - or anyone - were to address my actual question then you might have the beginnings of a point.
> Firstly, that isn't true. The US is a common law system, that common law being English common law, and because common law systems still share many features, they can use decisions and case law from other common law jurisdictions in their own decisions
While US law has its roots in English common law, and common law concepts were referenced by the Founding Fathers, it has absolutely no bearing on US constitutional law.
It's interesting from a historical perspective, but that's it.
Jus soli has nothing to do with the US constitution or US laws. Period.
Bare assertion isn't a strong argument, especially when the constitution has been changed several times to add things that could also be said to have "nothing to with the US constitution of US laws". The president wants to change it, maybe it'll happen. Europeans will shrug, they've got their own immigration woes.
I'm sorry that you think your goalposts are the only valid goalposts. I can assure you that the fascists in power don't care about your goalposts. For me the only goalpost that matters is trump trying to remove these protections. If you don't think he'll start removing natural born citizens after asking to do so, then I'm not sure there's anything point continuing this conversation.
The fact that they are even trying to remove the protections that natural born citizens have always had in the US, should ring alarm bells for you, but somehow they are not. Maybe you really aren't familiar with the concept of "First they came for...", but you'll find out how this plays out soon enough.
I asked a straightforward question, à la the Socratic method, in order to allow the one making the claim to justify their position, à la Russell's Teapot. If you were not willing to answer the question from the beginning then you shouldn't be responding to me and wailing about "moving goalposts". My "goalposts" have been consistent since my first question - answer that question, please.
If you wish to make your points without addressing my question then you can simply comment directly on the article or respond to someone else, hopefully with more relevance to their comment than your slightly unhinged responses have had to mine.
>The current administration have proven they do not care about any of these things. Even natural born citizens are now under threat.
This is my original comment. You are moving goalposts where you want them to be. My comment is specifically about how this administration is threatening natural born citizens by trying to remove protections they've always had, and here you are seeming to say they aren't because no natural born citizens have been deported yet. You're simply just being an internet troll.
Using the Socratic method, especially on HN is not “just being an internet troll”.
If you can’t handle simple questions that undermine your claims then make better claims. Also, with your attitude I’m not sure this site is for you. Please refrain from the personal insults, it definitely lowers the overall tone of the board.
Your question did not "undermine my claims" at all. I never claimed that a natural born citizen had been deported - I only claimed that this administration seeks to remove that barrier, and as we've already seen, they have been extremely authoritarian and don't care much for laws or rules. If you can't see where this is heading, then you're blind with your head in the sand. Your comment is absolutely a "moving goalposts" troll, and I'm not the only one calling you out on that.
Argumentum ad populum, especially on contentious political matters, isn't persuasive. Nor on people who seek to avoid answering simple questions - you could've written "I cannot", or "I never claimed that a natural born citizen had been deported - I only claimed that this administration seeks to remove that barrier" and saved yourself the gnashing of teeth and personal insults.
My reading comprehension is enough to see an argument destitute of substance.
For there to be a threat there should be evidence of a threat. Your aspersions, which you are so keen on casting against anyone who doesn't share your views, are not evidence of anything but hyperbole and irrational panic.
If you cannot name a single person who is a natural born citizen that has been deported or has been threatened with deportation - or even anyone in power who has mused for a second upon deporting natural born citizens, via this legal change - then you have nothing.
If someone can show that the legal change you're warning about does not have the consequences you claim, e.g. all of Europe, then you have nothing.
You should get used to answering questions, it'll help you sharpen up your argument, that's why I ask simple questions[1]. Now, *please desist from your blatant and explicit rudeness*.
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.
Being removed from your employer's web pages isn't "being vanished"; we don't even know if Wang is in custody. All I'm saying is, in the fact pattern where this is another unhinged ICE raid, IU doesn't strike a tenured faculty member in an endowed chair position from all their websites. I've got nothing past that.
Later
From the TPM follow-up link downthread: faculty at IU were notified more than a week before the raid that he'd been placed on leave, and it was at that point Wang's pages were zapped from the IU sites.
It's also pretty clear that this isn't matching the pattern of an espionage case, since they gave everyone more than a week of advance notice that something was to happen.
Who knows? The "advanced notice" (I'm assuming here you're referring to IU's decision to place him on leave, remove him from their web pages, and notify his colleagues, more than week before the raid) makes this look less like some extrajudicial ICE-type thing, not more. But nobody knows anything right now! We know he has legal representation, from the story, and competent legal representation is going to tell you to shut the absolute hell up in a situation like this, so there's not much to learn from the fact that Goodin can't raise him for a quote.
My only take here (besides the certainty that the shadowy hand of the FISA FISC court is not behind all this) is that it doesn't look like another ICE raid.
Sure, I mean, the FBI's involvement makes it not look like another department's case. I am saying that on top of that, an arrest of any kind would (normally) go differently than whatever happened to this professor. The idea that the FBI would call the employer of a suspected spy, inform them that something was going to happen, that all of his colleagues would be informed, and then after a week they'd search his home, stands out as not a full explanation.
> The idea that the FBI would call the employer of a suspected spy, inform them that something was going to happen, that all of his colleagues would be informed, and then after a week they'd search his home, stands out as not a full explanation.
I don't think anyone, least of all OP, is suggesting this is what happened.
Everything is rank speculation at this point, but if I were going to speculate I'd speculate that Wang suddenly left the country of his own volition and the employer began investigating his disappearance and stumbled on things that led to them calling in the FBI.
That's still purely speculation, but it would account for the sequence of events and the manner of investigation way better than any ideas about him being "vanished" by the US government.
> It's also pretty clear that this isn't a normal espionage case,
You don't know if its detained, you don't know if is in the territory of the USA, you don't know anything....If it's a US Citizen would be espionage because?
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.
Some spies in the USSR did just get vanished, especially low-level domestic spies. Yeah the American dude running around and being caught for spying would probably get the media circus, but the mid-level manager he gave some cigarettes and money to in exchange for information about the production levels at the factory the manager worked to might instead find himself quietly arrested one evening, tried and sent off to the gulag by the early hours of the morning. You didn't really want or need to make a spectacle of those kinds of spies, since everyone already sort of had an idea of what happened.
> Spies don't get "vanished," at least not historically. They're caught, imprisoned and tried
Or they vanish themselves before they're caught and are never heard from again because they got away.
We don't know that anyone has Wang in custody. He was scrubbed from the University computer systems weeks before the FBI raided his house, which suggests that whatever happened started then and built up to this recent raid which finally drew media attention.
Maybe the Chinese disapprared him brcause his cover was blown :/ The Chinese are alleged to havr their own secret police in the United States keeping tabs on important citizens..
An expert in cryptography seems like someone theyd be keeping tabs on if they really do this.
Just spit balling here and dont mean to accuse the guy of anything.
I have a problem with any of this being secret one way or another. If someone is detained the public has a right to know about the case. Otherwise it's all abductions as far as I'm concerned.
We don’t know whether Xiaofeng is a U.S. citizen, a Chinese national, or holds some other status. He’s been in the U.S. for at least 20 years. He hasn’t been arrested, but it’s unclear whether he’s been located or is currently missing.
Let’s not spread misinformation. This could turn out to be a simple criminal case. He might even be a victim. Or it could be something bigger—maybe a spy case, or even something on the scale of Watergate. At this point, no one really knows.
> The fact pattern doesn't fit well with ICE, because Indiana University cooperated
Disagree: There are reasons to think the Indiana University leadership would willingly assist with something dodgy from right-wing politicians.
There was already a big controversy against the IU leadership enabling political censorship last year, which lead to an overwhelming no-confidence vote from faculty and students.
The track record of espionage investigations against people of Chinese origin is not great, so it's not a defense of this investigation to say that that the details rhyme with that rather than immigration.