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.
They carried boxes into the house and stayed inside. One neighbor said agents went through a trash bin that sat outside the residence. Bloomington Police Department cars patrolled the area. Officers stopped and went inside throughout the day.
A spokesman said BPD was there to provide "scene security" and wasn't part of the federal investigation.
A Homeland Security agent at the scene said any information would have to come from the FBI, which confirmed the search but gave no details and said nothing about the residents of the house.
"The FBI conducted court authorized law enforcement activity at that location today," FBI spokesman Chris Bavender said in response to an inquiry about the activity at the house in the 3000 block of Xavier Court. "We have no further comment."
A cluster of neighbors gathered about 3 p.m., seeking to exchange information none of them had about why the federal agents were at the two-story brick home. None knew the status of the Chinese couple who has lived there for around 20 years.
Seven people who live on the cul-de-sac refused to give their names or comment on the record for this story, some citing concerns for speaking publicly about what they had seen or heard Friday.
Neighbors agreed the couple kept to themselves. No one knew their names. They rarely saw them, even though the houses are close together. A next-door neighbor who has lived in her home two decades said she had never spoken to the couple residing in the residence.
Monroe County property records list the homeowners as Xiaofeng Wang and Nianli Ma. Wang is listed as computer science professor and Director of the Center for Security and Privacy in Informatics, Computing, and Engineering (SPICE) at Indiana University in Bloomington.
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.
Ma is listed in IU's directory as a systems analyst and programmer at the Herman B Wells Library.
Contact H-T reporter Laura Lane at llane@heraldt.com or 812-318-5967.
