
FBI Harassment - tga_d
https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html
======
zyxley
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).

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](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/opinion/02hotchner.html)

~~~
temac
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.

I would kindly advise some rest.

~~~
forgottenpass
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?

~~~
temac
That they actually search to take contact beyond a few phone calls.

------
vermontdevil
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.

See this from Popehat (Ken White)

[https://popehat.com/2013/05/01/shut-up-i-explained-mostly-
po...](https://popehat.com/2013/05/01/shut-up-i-explained-mostly-pointlessly/)

~~~
r00fus
Man that was a chilling reminder. Nothing good comes from saying anything to
law enforcement when they come calling.

------
excalibur
Oh by the way, the entire time this page has been open in your browser we've
been using you as a FlashProxy to connect Chinese people to Tor. Thanks!

~~~
rayiner
Seriously? That's outrageous.

~~~
imaginenore
And likely illegal.

~~~
ominous
Illegal where?

~~~
imaginenore
In the US.

~~~
4ad
Why?

~~~
ryanlol
Quite possibly unauthorized access.

~~~
4ad
Who is not authorised to access what?

~~~
rayiner
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.

~~~
4ad
Okay, but then you must believe that online advertising, as practiced today,
is also illegal.

~~~
fit2rule
What advertising burns up my bandwidth indefinitely without informing me
whatsoever? This is an obnoxious position.

------
showerst
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.

~~~
chatmasta
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.

~~~
zyxley
> 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?

~~~
emcrazyone
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?

See this from a cop and a law professor
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc)

~~~
sudojudo
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.

------
throwaway934678
Former interviewee of Mark here. His modus operandi is subtle harassment.
Isis' lawyer should file a complaint with Mark's boss.

~~~
willvarfar
Care to speculate whether this is a tech savvy agent who wants something
interesting or a clown who will have misunderstood everything?

------
openmosix
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.

~~~
ridgeguy
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.

~~~
joering2
a.k.a. Tyranny.

------
gambiting
" 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.

~~~
beamatronic
>> Should I worry about the FBI raiding my parents’ house and shooting our
family dog?

If you read the news, you should be afraid of this, even if you have never
broken a law in your life.

~~~
DanBC
There are about 70million pet dogs in US.

How many have been shot by FBI? The Puppycide documentary kickstarter guessed
at one dog death every 98 minutes, which makes about 5300 a year.

That's too many, but it's not something that pet owners should be worrying
about.

EDIT: (Compared to the say 1.2 million road traffic deaths of pet dogs each
year in the US.)

~~~
eric_h
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.

~~~
DanBC
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).

------
peterwwillis
So, here's some things.

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.

------
phit_
site down here

mirror:
[https://github.com/isislovecruft/patternsinthevoid/blob/mast...](https://github.com/isislovecruft/patternsinthevoid/blob/master/content/hacking/fbi.md)

------
chatmasta
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.

The canary is from Feb 22...

[https://fyb.patternsinthevoid.net/canary.html](https://fyb.patternsinthevoid.net/canary.html)

~~~
chinathrow
Her canary updates bi-annually only though.

------
eridius
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](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.

~~~
blazespin
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.

~~~
eridius
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.

~~~
tP5n
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.

~~~
eridius
This isn't about outsmarting anyone.

------
dimino
> 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.

This is not harassment.

~~~
zyxley
> "But... if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking
> her some questions without you present."

That sure sounds like intended harassment to me.

~~~
oh_sigh
The person can always refuse to answer questions without their lawyer.

~~~
zyxley
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.

------
Reef
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.

------
vijayp
The blog seems to be down. Does anyone have a link to a cached copy?

~~~
Thoreandan
[http://archive.is/loVuK#selection-389.255-409.27](http://archive.is/loVuK#selection-389.255-409.27)

------
troncheadle
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.

~~~
medecau
Did you finish cryptopals?

cryptopals.com

~~~
troncheadle
I had not even started, but now I have. Thank you!

------
joering2
Her canary is from 22 Feb 2016.

What conclusion should I draw from this??

------
ryanlol
This blog post is complete bullshit.

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.

------
hartator
Maybe it was something to do with ISIS being her username? Just speculating
though.

~~~
junto
I think that is genuinely her Christian name. Ancient Egyptian Goddess of
health, marriage and wisdom.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis)

~~~
r3bl
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.

------
the_cat_kittles
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.

~~~
chc
So what? I'm sure my family and I influence each other's political opinions as
you say, but my opinions certainly don't reflect theirs.

