I'm reminded of Hemingway, who was in the last years of his life accused of delusional paranoia, and in part because of that forcibly committed, given shock treatments, and repeatedly attempted suicide (and, sadly, eventually succeeded).
OK, the downvote made me take another look. I'm blind - disregard the above comment. I guess I was expecting to find it in a header or footer or sidebar, and when I didn't find it there I gave up too quickly.
What happens if the Men Against the Republic of Korea go on a massive killing spree?
What if the Dudes Against Vermont Equality start blowing up bombs all over Vermont?
Silly examples aside, giving up a part of yourself and your life because of terrorism only serves to demonstrate the effectiveness of terrorism, which then serves to encourage more of it.
It's true that it's a sad thing when names are ruined, but I doubt you'd find very many people willing to carry certain names any longer, such as Hitler.
Oh good grief. They're not really that dumb, are they? "Hey, we have some questions to ask you about this war you're apparently waging in the Middle East..."
Bet you dollars to donuts that the author's name does, in fact, at least partially explain their interest. Remember that law enforcement was particularly interested in Aleynikov because he used subversion for VCS.
Isis is a relatively common name; among other things it's the name of an Egyptian god. Also, the Isis in question has had that name for well before the terrorist group was getting called by that name.
Edit: Sorry - I didn't realise that Isis is the name of the OP. I thought you were talking about the terrorist organisation
> Isis is a contributor to Tor
A 'political' entity making contributions to a project like Tor suggests they're making changes to benefit them. What changes would ISIS supposedly like from Tor?
Though Isis was referring to the name of the OP, not ISIS, this piqued my curiosity:
> What changes would ISIS supposedly like from Tor?
I wonder if there are examples of criminal/terrorist organizations supporting projects that could benefit them? (I know about Le Roux/TrueCrypt, but others?)
> A 'political' entity making contributions to a project like Tor suggests they're making changes to benefit them. What changes would ISIS supposedly like from Tor?
Isis here is the name of the author of the blog post, not the terrorist organisation.
And it's a bloody shame that the acronym for Islamic State has become so widespread that a properly capitalized given name is mistaken for their organization.
I'd always liked the name Isis, and would have named a daughter that (if that ever happens), but the name is now ruined for probably a century or more (much like the name Adolf, I'd imagine, though I wasn't around before that name was ruined).
A forum supposedly full of educated people thinks Isis, with this spelling, is a terrorist group... What a media brainwashed bunch we have here. Dear God... (shakes head)
hm, here the story is clear, as presented by the self declared "harassment victim": the FBI politely asked for a meeting (without making a time consuming investigation before that), several time, but still politely, and the "target" never was interested, had some anxiety attacks, and eventually made a paranoid blog post.
Given the FBI's inglorious history[1][2][3], I'd say that any time the FBI shows the slightest interest in you, you are totally justified in being paranoid. The FBI are not your friends, they're not your buddy, they are not on your side, and there's almost certainly little or no reason to talk to them, especially without an attorney present[4].
The federal law enforcement agency is trying to talk to someone and making it quite clear they don't want that person's lawyer present for the conversation nor even know the topic.
What exactly would it take to cross your threshold for paranoia?
And how would one know they're not going to be arrested if they meet with the FBI? You'll end up in a lot of trouble if you trust every word the government says, especially when it's something as secretive as this. And of course there's no proof that she wasn't a suspect in some investigation, etc. The only thing we know is that the FBI is no longer as interested in meeting with her (which means very little on its own).
The FBI is very good at getting you to trip up when facing questioning and using that against you.
Isis is wise to stick with a lawyer but the 'approach her in public without a lawyer' smacks of using this 'lying to the FBI' tactic to get her charged as the first step if the FBI is targeting her for some reason.
> There is an options page[1] (the same page you get by clicking on the badge) with which users can choose whether they want to be a proxy. By default, if a user has not made a choice, they will be a proxy. If you want only people who have explicitly clicked "yes" to be a proxy, add the cookierequired parameter. If a user has selected "no," they will never be a proxy, regardless of the presence of cookierequired.
Much less offensive than showing unrelated images meant to confuse and disrupt my commercial decision making process, usually accompanied by persistent surveillance for increased effectiveness.
In either case, your ire is better directed at your browser.
It really is outrageous. I'd had this article up a day or so ago, and forgotten about it. Now I've burned through 6gigs of my mobile bandwidth allotment for the month .. in just the first few days.
Really, really obnoxious. I now have a serious grudge against this person.
When you visit a website that downloads Javascript to your computer, you are giving the site an implied license to execute code reasonably related to the website. If they go off and use that capability to do something else, you've exceeded the scope of that implied license.
It's like going to a kitchen remodeling store and hosting a dinner party there. Yes, they invited you in, but the scope of that invitation was looking at new counters, not hosting a party. That's trespassing. In the computer realm, it may well be a CFAA violation.
At the risk of not taking it seriously enough, does this woman sound a little overly paranoid to anyone else?
They call and ask to speak with her, and suddenly she's talking about flight records and backdooring software... admittedly the stuff about having teams in multiple cities looking for her was a little disconcerting, but if they wanted to arrest her or coerce her into something shady they'd have done it, and probably quickly and not very politely.
I'd have just assumed they were investigating a case that was tor related and either 1. Didn't know enough to understand that she wasn't involved just because she contributed to the software or 2. (less likely) Wanted her opinion on some of the tech specifics of how Tor works.
Maybe just show up to meet them, with an attorney (of course!) and if they start asking anything serious the attorney tells you to shut up and you leave.
It sounds to me like the agents were doing their jobs in their normal, properly secretive if a bit ham-fisted way, and this person totally freaked out.
> Maybe just show up to meet them, with an attorney (of course!) and if they start asking anything serious the attorney tells you to shut up and you leave.
Cooperation is for people who did something and want to create a reason for the government to go easy. The proper course of action here is to politely state that they can deliver a subpoena to your lawyer.
> It sounds to me like the agents were doing their jobs in their normal, properly secretive if a bit ham-fisted way, and this person totally freaked out.
Telling someone's lawyer that you'll interview their client without them by picking her up on the street is more than "ham-fisted."
Being paranoid doesn't mean you should speculate wildly about intent. Maybe they also think she's an alien. Maybe they don't. Without more data, spinning around on it won't help and may possibly make the problem worse.
Well, she is a core contributor to Tor, but I don't see any possible reason why the FBI could not say that they just wanted to ask her a couple of questions about Tor to her lawyer(s).
I've been following her on Twitter for a couple of months now, and from me "getting to know her" from social media and her blog, I don't see a possible legal reason to ask her a few questions that could not be shared with her lawyer. After all, like she stated, her work is very transparent, so everything she's working on is available to the public.
Yup. It's impossible to be overly paranoid about any government. Too bad the people who didn't realize this when it mattered are no longer with us because they're imprisoned, dead, or missing. Maybe growing up in the US where such occurrences are rare only because of the humongous population but still happen with regularity makes people soft or stupid or both. Seems to me like parents who fail to teach their children this are doing them a disservice.
Her name is literally Isis, and she is a core developer of Tor. If those aren't enough buzzwords to get the FBI swarming around her house, I don't know what is. I don't blame her for being paranoid, but I don't understand why she refused to talk to them at all. From the post it seems like she was okay with a phone call, but they wanted to meet her in person. So perhaps she was scared of being detained. That makes sense I guess, but if they really wanted to detain her, it would have been easy to do at the airport.
> but I don't understand why she refused to talk to them at all
Talking to law enforcement is the job of your lawyer. If law enforcement refuses to talk to your lawyer, is it really that far-fetched to think they may want to do other things outside the bounds of the usual legal process?
I can't up vote this comment enough. Law enforcement are not your friends and they are not on your side. My very close friend's dad has been a cop for 35 years and he has told us this over the years. Want another opinion?
The author links to that video in the article, which shows that she's aware of the games that are played.
They're using bully tactics. Did they have to show up on her family's doorstep? No. Did they really have people watching out for her in five cities? No. Was there any reason they couldn't communicate through her lawyer? No. Did they have to speak to her in person? No. Do they have the right to circumvent her legal counsel (or make threats to do so)? No.
They're just playing mind games, like they're trained to do. Spooks gonna spook.
Yes. Also, unlike "ordinary" police, in the US it's a crime to lie to a federal agent. In her place, I'd be worried that I might accidentally say something that would give them leverage.
As others have pointed out, if they just wanted her expert opinion on Tor they could have had the phone call or submitted the questions to her lawyer, which is standard practice by the way.
There is a huge whiff of shadiness about how the agents were behaving. Maybe they had a good reason and just wanted her help, but everything screams watch the fuck out or end up like Aaron Swartz.
If she wants to find out what they want, then she's going to have to talk to them. Of course, she can terminate the conversation by invoking her miranda rights at any time.
Everything about this assumes the other side is acting in good faith. There are enough examples, and people formerly in the position of the other side saying the same thing, to make it overly risky to assume this. The incentives are not aligned to encourage law enforcement to make society safer, that's just a byproduct of what they are incentivized to do, which is identify people they can arrest and then do so. Usually this is because the person has broken a law, but that logic can be twisted in many ways depending on unscrupulous agents, or agents that wrongly believe they are doing the right thing even though there is no evidence. There are numerous links all along this thread of the now famous talk by a former law enforcement agent about why it's a bad idea to ever talk to law enforcement without a lawyer present. At a bare minimum, never put yourself in a situation where it's your word against the word of law enforcement, whether they are recording or not (they may misplace that recording, for whatever reason).
Absolutely false, she can ask her attorney what they wanted. It's actually great to see someone following best practices even when it is not the easiest thing to do.
Good federal defense attorneys will tell you NEVER to talk to the government. EVER. Once you talk to them you're open to a wide litany of charges that they basically can make up if they don't like your answers (e.g., lying to a federal agent, conspiracy, etc.) Here's just one of many articles about it: http://mimesislaw.com/fault-lines/protip-never-willingly-tal... (BTW: I do think she is being a bit paranoid, but I don't think she should talk to them -- it only invites problems.)
If the FBI comes knocking on your door, you have already been tagged, and likely thoroughly investigated for something bad. Or more simply put: There is no good reason for the FBI to pay you a visit. She has every right to be "paranoid."
> There is no good reason for the FBI to pay you a visit.
Conducting a background investigation on someone else applying for a security clearance is arguably a "good" (or at least, not-bad) reason for the FBI to pay you a visit. (Also, criminal investigations in which you are not a target may also be not-bad, depending on the exact circumstances.)
In both those cases, there should be no problem with letting the person's attorney know what this is about. If it's a clearance investigation, it's a no brainer. The government has no problem leaving voice mail in Peter's mailbox saying "we're trying to reach Paul because Bob's applied for a security clearance." So this kind of secretiveness is unnecessary.
If it's an ongoing investigation, having the lawyer there is a GOOD THING, because it becomes the lawyer's job to keep his client aware of the repercussions of doing anything to sabotage the investigation.
Many years ago I had an FBI agent call me and ask if he could come and talk to me because he was doing a background check on someone who was going for Top Secret clearance. I said sure. He came to my work, asked a few questions, and then went on his way. Gave me his card just in case I remembered anything he might like to hear. Never heard from him again. Very polite, nice guy.
Seems quite different from this case. The agent you're referring to stated his intentions up front quite clearly.
As far as I can tell the only details revealed by the FBI in this case is that they had some "documents" (without giving any context) for the author to review and answer questions about, and refused to share any details with her lawyer.
I'm not discounting that there are FBI agents who behave properly and politely without pushing the limits of legality, but I also believe there's plenty of evidence to suggest that there are plenty of agents who share none of those qualities (note that I'm not speculating on what fraction of agents are in each bucket, just that both are non-zero).
It sounds to me more like old fashioned FBI "bumper lock". This is when they attempt to provoke some sort of action on the part of a person under investigation. This very publicly backfired for them in the anthrax investigation, when one target killed himself under the stress and the other got super pissed off and met them head on with press conferences.
It's not a lie though, the distinction is subtle but important.
Something like asking you what the closing stock price for GOOG was yesterday. If you said "I think it was 500" but say it was 505, boom insta-crime.
There's been quite a few examples of the FBI then using the threat of prosecuting the above "crime" in order to get leverage so people will comply with things they may not have usually done.
You should probably read 18 USC 1001 [1]. Your example doesn't work for several reasons.
* The statement is about your belief, not the facts. If you actually believed that, it's not a false statement.
* Even if the statement is a statement of fact and not belief (e.g. "The closing stock price for GOOG was 500 yesterday."), the statement has to be materially false. 500 vs 505? Close enough.
* Even if the statement is materially false or fraudulent, (e.g. the stock price was really 50,000), the falsehood has to be given "knowingly and willfully."
Yes, she sounds quite paranoid. More paranoid than is justifiable from the limited communication made by the FBI so far.
That said, this seems pretty unacceptable. Regarding her attorney:
>Five minutes later, Burnett called back and said, “I don’t believe you actually represent her.” Burnett stated additionally that a phone call from me might suffice, but that the FBI preferred to meet with me in person. After a pause he said, “But… if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking her some questions without you present.”
What's wrong with that? The FBI is totally free to walk up to anyone and ask them questions. And yes, they're quite good at finding people since that's a big part of their job.
If they consistently decline to ask those questions to your lawyer, and drop the matter within hours of a foreign country giving you a long term resident worker visa, you're right to be concerned.
Sure, but publishing an opinion piece blasting the FBI for things they did in your imagination is ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with what the FBI actually did.
That's called getting arrested, if that's what they're planning at all. You don't have the right to set the time, place, and company for your arrest. They'd want a shot at a 1-1 interview. Convincing crooks to spill the beans is a valid part of their tactics. Yes, you have the right to have a lawyer present; they have to stop interrogating you once you ask. You also have the right to not have a lawyer present and answer questions anyway. The FBI of course hopes that crooks are stupid enough to exercise that latter right.
Well I contribute(d) to Tor (in small, almost meaningless ways like translating it and managing the translations), but I never did anything illegal. In fact, I've never even been to the U.S. Why should I be labeled as FBI's enemy if I never even entered the U.S. and when all I wanted to do is to give something give back to the world by allowing the people of my country to browse the web anonymously?
It's not my fault if someone from any country in the world decides to use the project I helped with in an illegal way.
Well, there has been no harassment. Leaving a card on a door or having a phone call with the lawyer is the daily work of law enforcement. Most of this story is made up in the mind of the author - from the motive they had, to the fact she would have been detained any minute.
Her post is a good illustration of the chilling effect created by minimal but specific attention from essentially all-powerful state agencies. That the potential events of which she was concerned haven't yet occurred still leaves them as effective inhibitors of legal conduct and a source of gratuitous distress.
Finding someone to ask them a question is not harassment.
They were probably testing to see if the attorney would invoke the right to remain silent.
edit: Really her attorney did a terrible job. If the attorney knew the client didn't want to talk to FBI, she should have handled it way differently.
edit2: Man even if the attorney didn't know the client wanted to stay silent, if you hear "we uh… need her to clear up her involvement or… uh… potential involvement in a matter" you assert the 5th and wait for the subpoena--and then fight it.
So if I call your partner and tell them that I'm going to find you and beat you up, I'm not harassing you, because I haven't contacted you specifically?
I think he meant a legal precedent defining whether the following constitutes harassment:
> Refusing to talk to a person's lawyer, then saying "we will be attempting to talk to this person without a lawyer present"
IANAL, but it seems like it's OK for an FBI agent to say they'd prefer to talk to someone in person without a lawyer. It's not OK for them to coerce someone into talking without a lawyer, but it doesn't seem like that has happened here. I understand the author's fears, but the real issue seems to be the largely unchecked potential of the FBI to inflict harm upon specific citizens for any reason, not their actual behavior in this case.
It's de jure unethical for another lawyer to directly contact someone who has a lawyer. I would say it is de facto unethical for law enforcement agent to try and end-run around someone's lawyer. That undermines the specific roles law enforcement agents and lawyers have within the justice system.
I was talking about speaking to a person of interest instead of directly with their counsel (counsel without a case isn't legal counsel, in many US contexts depending on local legislation and interpretation).
It does not seem a threat either. The police can stop you anytime, ask you anything and it's your right to say no.
"I'm gonna ask you questions" does not sound so terrifying to me :)
"If they already know they will get nowhere with it" - we are still putting a lot of thoughts in their mind. They have asked for a meeting in person. Everything else is wild speculation.
They already refused to talk to her lawyer. There is every reason to assume that any subject they would bring up in person is one that could easily affect her negatively, as they would have zero reason not to share any benign subject ("we're doing a background check on someone who knows you", "we'd like to have you appear as an expert witness", etc) with her lawyer.
There's good reason to believe that the FBI repeatedly calling upon your places of residence is harassment [1][2]. At the same time, trying to contact someone peaceably and privately is a reasonable action; It is only because of past abuses that we are suspicious of their every minor action. There's a balance somewhere in there, but I'm not going to pass judgement on either party here. It's not clear that they weren't structured to be threatening, and it's not clear that the author isn't being paranoid.
Look up Terry stops. They can make up any reason after the fact, and routinely do. Your 4th amendment rights, on analysis, do not exist for any practical purpose.
Oh, agree. But "just to chat" is not a legal reason, and the FBI in particular would have a fun time justifying hanging around watching for "furtive movements". That's why the first question out of their mouth when stopped in all those fun youtube videos is "am I being detained". They of course can detain you, but it establishes that it is a detention.
She's a contributor to Tor. Refusing to talk to her lawyer and saying they're going to pounce on her uninvited out of nowhere is harassment in my eyes.
I think it's reasonable for them to contact her and ask her questions, but they should go through the lawyer if she wants them to.
She mentioned she works on the Tor project and asks the question if her participation is relevant in this case. That part isn't made up.
I find it reasonable for someone to assume that their participation in a currently legal (but controversial) project would be a potential reason that the FBI wanted to question you.
It's not that much of a stretch to imagine that the reason the FBI are threatening to abduct her off the street and deny her the right to legal counsel is somehow related to her being a major Tor contributor.
Harassment might not be accurate, but the word "threat" certainly is. In the law enforcement force continuum, just showing up is recognized as a use of force.
Paranoia or not, if the reason was anything as benign, why not just tell her lawyer? Why the “But… if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking her some questions without you present.”? That sure doesn't inspire confidence in their goodwill.
If they wanted to know something about her code, they should have told her lawyer that—or, if they believed she'd be uncooperative, served a subpoena for the relevant information.
" Should I be worried about what happens to me when I return? Why is the FBI trying to make a developer of an open source encryption tool feel unwelcome in their country of origin? Should I try to get a different citizenship? Is my family safe in the US? Should I worry about the FBI raiding my parents’ house and shooting our family dog? Should I worry about FBI agents stalking and harrassing my mother?"
So, exactly like Soviet Union then? I guess you can't learn anything from history if you haven't actually lived through it.
The moment that a weapon crosses the threshold of a building that was, moments before, weapon free, the odds of a pet dog, or a person, getting shot go from 0 to non-zero.
Personally, cops make me nervous. Whenever I'm on the subway and a pair of cops end up in the same car I'm in, my odds of catching a stray bullet go up. Before the cops got on the train there were (very likely) 0 guns in the car with me, after they got on, there are (at least) 2.
You can't get shot if there aren't any guns within range. Call it irrational, but the only place where I can be reasonably comfortable with guns is at a well managed shooting range.
Sure, I agree, I think gun ownership is weird and horrible, and I wish the US would dis-arm. You'd see a dramatic drop in completed suicide for one thing.
But even in the incredibly violent US, with poorly trained gun happy police, only 5,500 dogs are killed each year. That's way too many, but parent said "you should be afraid of this" - no, you really shouldn't. If you own a dog you should be far more worried about the risk of the dog being run over; or of the dog being over-fed (half of American dogs are overweight or obese) or of all the other far more common stuff that kills dogs.
(All these numbers are estimates, so who knows how good they are).
1) The FBI are monumentally stupid. In a technical sense, and in a practice-of-law-enforcement sense. They're beat cops without the experience and too much power over red tape. Generally expect them to treat you like a rookie detective who read a manual about tricks to coerce consent from perps.
2) Neither warrant canaries, nor giving the FBI information on how to track your work, is not going to help you. They don't care if you do cooperate, they only care if you give them something.
3) If they really wanted to abuse you and your family, they would just do it. There is no point in thinking up these scenarios and putting yourself through hell. You have to move on with your life. If you think the gov't might be interested in you, sure be prepared, but unless you're going to spend your time working connections and getting government influence to have leverage in a future confrontation: let it go.
Did anyone else notice she's very explicitly pointing to her warrant canary that she's maintained for over a year? Also, the Tor project retweeted her canary tweet.
This certainly sounds like a very stressful situation, and I really hope the situation resolves in such a fashion as she no longer feels threatened.
That said, I don't understand why, once she was in Germany, she didn't call the FBI at that time to find out what the heck was going on. Since she's not on US soil she doesn't have to worry about the FBI physically tracking her down, and if the FBI asks questions she doesn't want to answer she can hang up. Worst case I can think of is the FBI asks a question with at least one potential answer that would incriminate her, she feels uncomfortable answering for whatever reason, and the FBI then interprets her ending the call there as suspicious (I don't believe the right against self-incrimination applies in this particular circumstance).
Edit: As mentioned in another reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11631827), I'm not suggesting that she should give information to the FBI or otherwise cooperate. I'm suggesting she should seek information from them, with the proviso that she will not be answering questions (and therefore her refusal to answer after being asked a question will not be suspicious). Heck, since the FBI indicated they don't necessarily believe her lawyer represents her, she could just call them and say "Please talk to my lawyer <insert name here>, he represents me in this matter" and hang up.
The police are not your friends. They will leverage any slip up you make to squeeze you in to doing what they want. Thus the lawyer. SHe works for Tor. Could you imagine what they might squeeze her to do?
Also, they're not going to say anything over the phone that they aren't willing to say to the lawyer.. so no real point in calling.
They already said earlier that they would accept a call. They changed their story to saying they'd really prefer to meet in person, but since they already admitted they'd accept a call then that should still work.
In any case, the point isn't to cooperate with the police. The point is to just find out what the heck the FBI actually wants. Finding out what they want doesn't mean actually giving them what it is they want. She could say upfront that she's not answering any questions and just wants to know what they want from her. If they won't tell her under those conditions, well, she's no worse off than she is today.
No, don't do this, ever. Never think you are going to outsmart a professional doing his/her job - be it feds or police, you are going to lose. Imagine this happening in your line of work, it'd be absurd thing to happen, right?
In general, don't take health or legal advice from HN. There are other places for that, and there is money to spent well.
> She could [call them and] say upfront that she's not answering any questions and just wants to know what they want from her.
Presumably her lawyer advised her against doing this. If you'd bothered to retain a lawyer in a situation like this, don't you think you'd defer to his expertise on how to deal with law enforcement?
As she points out, the FBI is perfectly capable of knowing she flew to Germany. And heck, she just published that on her blog. Her calling them has no bearing on whether they are capable of extraditing her. My point was more that she doesn't have to worry about the FBI coming to her.
> Worst case I can think of is the FBI asks a question with at least one potential answer that would incriminate her, she feels uncomfortable answering for whatever reason, and the FBI then interprets her ending the call there as suspicious
If there was any kind of criminal suspicion involved, they would absolutely do that. That's why talking to law enforcement is something you have a lawyer do.
In my other reply (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11631827) I pointed out that she could call them, tell them she's not answering any questions, and just wants to know what they want. If she tells them upfront she won't answer questions (and sticks to that), then when they tell her what they want, not answering their question isn't suspicious.
But they won't talk to the actual lawyer involved. So what I'm suggesting is that she either simply tell them "Talk to my lawyer <name>, he represents me in this case" (since their excuse for not talking before was they don't believe the lawyer necessarily represents her), or to just tell them she's not answering questions but them to tell her what they want. Then she can talk to her lawyer again about whatever it is they say to her.
But it is her problem. Didn't you read the blog post? The fact that they want to talk to her and she doesn't know why is a source of considerable anxiety for her and is interfering with work.
The FBI only has to do that if they really care about resolving it. If the FBI doesn't care too much about resolving it (and obviously they don't care enough to actually talk to her lawyer about it), then it'll just stay unresolved and continue to cause anxiety to the woman involved.
And again... that's their problem, not hers. Her only reasonably prudent action at that point was to do nothing. Talking to the FBI directly instead of letting her lawyer handle it could have just made things worse.
If the FBI actually wanted anything to get done instead of just harassing her, they should have talked to her lawyer.
> I still planned to continue moving, of course, but now things would need to go to different places, and by different means.
> I started having panic attacks, thinking that I’d need to get myself and literally every object, including electronics, that I cared about accross the border
> Every device I owned could be compromised, I’d lose all my data, my pictures of family and loved ones, fiction I’d wrote as a teenager, and Lisp I’d wrote as a child
> I’ll admit I actually cried, not knowing when I’d hug my mom again
> I didn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t already in regular contact with me, fearing I might endanger them
> I didn’t talk to anyone who wasn’t already in regular contact with me, fearing I might endanger them — some thug might show up at their mom’s door or make some threats to their lawyers — and I didn’t want to risk harming people I care about. It hurt to not tell my friends what was happening. I felt gagged and frightened.
> I wanted to read the number theory papers I’d just downloaded and play with a new pairing-based cryptography library I’d just been given the source to, but I couldn’t do those things either, simply because I was too stressed out to think straight.
None of this is the reaction of a healthy person. Panic attacks? Not talking to people for fear of endangering them? Crying herself to sleep? Not knowing when she'd hug her mom again???
It's also worth noting that the quotations of the FBI agents include all of their tics and stutters. This is often done in an effort to discredit the person being quoted.
I developed panic attacks after spending a few years living with somebody who had severe depression peppered with episodes of psychosis (my wife). I didn't know the things that would send them into a psychotic episode[1], and the stress of it eventually caused me to be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.
This person is now on the proper medications, and no longer has psychotic episodes, but my panic attacks remain.
It isn't a stretch to think that constant harassment by the FBI could cause something similar. It's pretty well established that this is what killed Aaron Swartz.
[1] An interesting observation I've made regarding this: part of my life involves a job that deals with people who are having a psychologically challenging reaction to psychedelic drugs. The people having the worst acid trips are identical to the types of psychosis that my wife used to have. Like there is something that they really need to tell me, but can't get me to understand. My inability to understand what they need to tell me causes a tremendous amount of anguish.
I am sorry you have panic attacks, but having panic attacks is not a healthy response to stress.
Furthermore, this is not "constant harassment", or anywhere near the level of what the FBI did to Aaron Swartz. In addition, Aaron Swartz was absolutely not a healthy human being.
> ...having panic attacks is not a healthy response to stress.
Choking to death because of an allergy isn't a healthy response to peanuts, but like panic attacks, is involuntary. The legal system has already addressed the thrust of your argument with the Eggshell skull doctrine [0].
My argument is that her panic attacks, when coupled with her other statements, indicate an unwell person, which undermines her credibility with regard to the seriousness of what the FBI agents are said to have done.
According to you, the FBI should have known she was unwell and treated her as such, which I can understand. Having never actually talked to her or even been aware that she was having panic attacks or other mental issues as a result of their inquiries, I fail to see how you would expect the FBI agents to do that, however.
As I said in another post, the FBI is well aware of the stress induced - to the point that they have given it a name when turned to their advantage: "bumper lock". If any of that comes as a surprise to you, and you'd like to know more, look into the interview techniques that LEOs employ. I've got formal training in Wicklander (which is very popular with law enforcement), inducing stress is a big part of the process. So they can't really claim ignorance, and even if they could it would not be defense (again, eggshell skull).
For those that don't know, "Bumper Lock" is following someone without being secretive about it, meant to induce stress.
This isn't "bumper lock", she's never seen an FBI agent, no FBI agent has contacted her directly, no FBI agent has spoken with her or seen her, according to her own account.
Conspicuous following is the most famously employed tactic, and obviously where it got its name, but it isn't the sole defining tactic. Bumper lock is the application of stress through overt investigation - and that doesn't necessitate direct contact.
Your loose definition of "bumper lock" includes every single interaction any LEO has with anyone, anyone related to anyone else, and even anyone's lawyer, and is therefore worthless.
This would be bumper lock if the FBI had actually contacted Isis at all, directly or indirectly. They haven't. What the hell do you want them to do if they need to talk to someone?
Well if I had thought I was in a conversation where I had to guard against a bad faith interpretation, then I would have been more careful (and verbose) - repeating the intent component I've already mentioned. So with that in mind, no, it doesn't include every interaction.
> What the hell do you want them to do if they need to talk to someone?
A formal letter would be nice, bonus points for including information that would allow one to prepare supporting documents. Civil interaction with legal representation would be an improvement. Basically any amount of effort to inform beyond what has been described.
If someone has already directed law enforcement to their lawyer, attempting to talk to them in person without their lawyer present is overwhelmingly likely to simply result in being referred to that lawyer again. The result is wasted time and an unpleasant experience.
The law enforcement in question would already know this, so pursuing it anyway is harassment, regardless of it being legal.
Threat - A declaring of one's intention to cause harm or loss to another's person or property or to limit one's freedom to act in a lawful voluntary manner (a threat to kidnap).
Harm to a person or property is not inherently present when talking to someone on the street.
> "But... if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking her some questions without you present."
This does not imply "a pleasant conversation of a few minutes on the street". This implies, given the past and present behavior of law enforcement at all levels of government, "ending up in an interrogation room for several hours during repeated questioning attempts, before being dumped on the street somewhere random after refusing to answer questions without a lawyer present".
> This implies, given the past and present behavior of law enforcement at all levels of government, "ending up in an interrogation room for several hours during repeated questioning attempts, before being dumped on the street somewhere random after refusing to answer questions without a lawyer present".
Why do you feel like you can confidently say that? First of all, they never say they intend on detaining her. Secondly, there is zero precedent for what you're claiming is implied here. Thirdly, "happen to run into her on the street" does imply an ad-hoc conversation and not a formal interrogation.
You're drawing conclusions without evidence, why do you think that's an okay thing to do?
Officers are trained in force escalation, wherein their presence is a use of force, so unless they change their policy on force escalation - hinting at a street encounter is hinting at a use of force. Whether a hint is a threat is another matter, but law enforcement can't have it both ways - were they are both given special consideration in their interactions and treated as benign actors.
Being threatened by someone who can legally kidnap you kind of puts the zap on you. I once pissed off a municipal cop, and he started calling coworkers - it took about a month for me to stop weighing the possibility of being dragged onto the lawn in my underwear before taking off my pants in my own home.
It's not the reaction of a healthy person, because the purpose of harassment is to damage your psyche. Just like bleeding when shot is not the reaction of a healthy person -- the purpose of shooting someone is to reduce their health. If you find someone bleeding, there are two reasonable conclusions: one is that they started out unhealthy, and the other is that they were attacked.
If we're going the analogies here, this is more like someone with a gun pointed at them worrying that they may get shot. "Stop worrying!" you say. "You can trust the person holding the gun! They almost never shoot people who don't deserve it!"
I've had the FBI point guns at me and don't see why the situation should've been worrying. Why would I have acted in a manner that would've justified shooting me?
Being told "the FBI has decided to talk to you without a lawyer present" has a small but entirely real chance of resulting in personal or professional harm.
Also, I don't know where you got "in the head" from.
If we're going to veer into dumb analogies again, this would be more like driving to work after somebody leaves you a voicemail saying "I'm going to be suddenly braking in front of your car for your entire commute".
DSVM 4/5 proposal[1], where it lists "Panic Attacks"/"Panic Disorder".
A person is not healthy if they're responding to an event by having panic attacks.
Before we go any further, do you believe a person can have an unhealthy thought, and if so, do you believe part of having unhealthy thoughts is drawing conclusions based on little/no evidence?
From page 7: "Although PAs themselves are not considered a disorder or a condition that necessarily requires treatment, they often present in the context of various anxiety and nonanxiety disorders."
So, again, it doesn't seem to me like panic attacks are a sign of previous unhealthiness, any more than bleeding in response to being shot is a sign of previous unhealthiness. It is definitely true that having a bleeding gunshot wound is a medical emergency, which is more than can be said of panic attacks! But it's not a sign that you were previously unhealthy.
> Before we go any further, do you believe a person can have an unhealthy thought, and if so, do you believe part of having unhealthy thoughts is drawing conclusions based on little/no evidence?
I don't know what you mean by "an unhealthy thought".
The wording is slightly vague, but "...a condition that necessarily requires treatment" means they are considered a condition, just not necessarily one that needs treating.
Furthermore, your own quote goes on to indicate that PAs are indicative of unhealthiness, which is what I'm pointing out.
Below I've provided you with some reading so you can understand what an "unhealthy thought" is. Let me know when you've established a working understanding so we can continue (or don't, up to you).
I agree that panic attacks are often indicative of present unhealthiness, just as I agree that having a bleeding bullet-sized wound is indicative of a medical emergency. What I have not agreed with, and what I think I have not seen any reason to believe, is that susceptibility to panic attacks in response to an attack indicate prior unhealthiness, any more than susceptibility to gunshot wounds in response to an attack is prior unhealthiness. In particular, I don't see anything in the paper that claims that.
OK, I've read those posts and I understand what you mean by "unhealthy thoughts". To make sure that I'm understanding your terminology, is this what you have been meaning by "unhealthy" / is a person with "unhealthy thoughts" themselves "unhealthy"? There are a few posts that say that everyone has some "unhealthy thoughts" from time to time, so if the sense of "unhealthy" that you're using is that everyone is unhealthy to some extent, I have been misunderstanding.
This blog post shows how to absolutely TERRORIZE a core developer using:
1. Bussiness card of an FBI agent, with a "call me" text hand-written on it
2. A phone and 10 minutes of time
If you have a few business cards and an entire afternoon, you can nuke entire projects (?) Something is not right here!
If you hurt your leg, you go to a doctor and he fixes you up. There is no shame in going to a doctor. If a postcard and a phone call can ruin your life, you can ALSO go to a doctor, and guess what, he will fix you up in that case as well! Try it. Go for one session with an open mind and (unless you have a really horrible doctor) it will help tremendously.
As a web developer wanting to dive into cryptography, where should I start? A goal of mine is to to contribute to an open source project in the next 6 months.
It could've been fit in a single tweet "FBI TRYING TO CONTACT ME. DO NOT KNOW WHY. IM FEELING VERY EMOTIONAL"
The FBI wants to talk to the author, and she has avoided them. That doesn't mean the FBI is harassing her, they haven't even taken any active measures against her.
And it is a beautiful name. Too bad the name got marked with a bad reference pretty much forever now.
I remember elementary OS wanting to name their 0.3 version Isis. Unfortunately, they had to change it because that was the time when ISIS was all over the news. All of their releases so far got named after ancient god: Jupiter, Luna, Isis (that got renamed to Freya) and the next edition is going to be named Loki.
I got really sad when they announced the change of the name because elementary OS is my primary operating system and I really liked the name Isis before all of this happened.
I used Tor as my username on Youtube before I knew what Tor was ; thought the name was a Swedish god , should change it to avoid future harassment (ha, ha)
this is totally tangential, but reading this "Personal or political views presented within this post absolutely do not reflect those of my employer(s), client(s), and/or legal counsel" reminded me how i've recently decided thats a silly thing, or at the very lease needs to be qualified. we all influence, and are influenced, by those around us. culturally, politically, etc etc. and if we work somewhere, our political and personal views will influence the company, sometimes in little ways, sometimes in bigger ways. i know the statement is meant like "the company does not formally hold my political opinion", but i guess i think the formal position on anything is secondary to how things shake out in practice.
And then, decades later, it was revealed that the FBI actually was constantly watching him, following him, and tapping his phones and communications. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html