FBI Harassing Core Tor Developer, Demand Meeting, but Refusing to Explain Why

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160505/00383034349/fbi-harassing-core-tor-developer-demanding-she-meet-with-them-refusing-to-explain-why.shtml

by xkiwi • 10 years ago

249 118 10 years ago

techdirt.com

celticninja• 10 years ago

The worst thing about this is that it will turn out that the developers involvement will be relatively innocuous in the grand scheme of things, hence the lack of any real urgency from the FBI, but it is terrifying for both the developer and as a citizen that he FBI seem to be inept and/or deliberately making it so difficult to speak with someone who it would appear they think can assist them.

teh_klev• 10 years ago

Original source:

https://blog.patternsinthevoid.net/fbi-harassment.html

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11631329

deadtofu• 10 years ago

Could they be trying to serve her?

jonnybgood• 10 years ago

If they were, they wouldn't make a phone call first. They would just do it.

mcherm2• 10 years ago

It sounds like her concern is that they might show her a magic piece of paper which, once you've seen it, requires you to do certain things and prohibits you from ever talking about it to anyone.[1]

Magic pieces of paper like that really shouldn't be a part of our legal system.

[1] https://epic.org/privacy/nsl/

setra• 10 years ago

They can email those to you.

ithkuil• 10 years ago

if emailed, what prevents you from leaking it (along with other recent content of your email inbox) claiming somebody hacked your email ?

pfg4• 10 years ago

I don't think sending an email would legally count as a served subpoena, at least not unless you somehow (at the very least, but I doubt that's sufficient) indicated that you're fine with that? I'm not familiar with how this is practiced in the U.S., but in many EU countries, "regular" email is essentially useless in a court of law, even more so for something like a subpoena which needs to be served in person.

halomru• 10 years ago

"I never received an email, your honor. I don't know what they are taking about. By the way, look at this cool statistic of how many emails get lost on their way from one mail server to the next"

njloof• 10 years ago

She does (still) have a canary:

https://fyb.patternsinthevoid.net/canary.html

beedogs• 10 years ago

We won't know whether she still does for another four months.

nothrabannosir• 10 years ago

Could an NSL require you to leave canaries in place?

praptak2• 10 years ago

They would just serve the paper using the usual techniques for delivering legal papers to persons possibly unwilling to receive them. These techniques usually avoid identifying yourself upfront.

I believe they rather want information which they cannot legally force her to divulge (otherwise see above), so they're trying their luck at intimidation.

DougHaber2• 10 years ago

That isn't always true. In the U.S. legal system, a person can be granted immunity, and in doing so have their 5th amendment protection against self-incrimination terminated. With that, they could be forced to provide testimony, and refusal could result in fines and jail time without due process for as long as the courts see fit.

MacsHeadroom12• 10 years ago

NSL are used to compel a party to DO something to assist with, so called, matters of national security, under threat of physical force. If the letter isn't received and a person can't be physically detained then it can't compel anything, other than hiding from its possible existence

To make things more difficult, the very contents of the letter itself are considered a national secret. Typical methods for serving papers would needlessly jeopardize the confidentiality of such papers. So one would presume that these methods simply aren't in the cards.

ryanlol5• 10 years ago

That's certainly not a valid concern. There's much simpler ways of serving such a letter.

willvarfar• 10 years ago

They serve you the letter personally, don't give you a copy, and then tell you verbally what they require you to do. NSLs don't leave a paper trail on the recipient's side.

golergka• 10 years ago

The original story told about a couple of polite phonecalls where they have requested to talk with her. How does it get described as "harassment"? Of course, she also added a lot of paranoid speculation to her original blog post, but there's not a single confirmation of her fears so far, not even a hint.

Lawtonfogle2• 10 years ago

The original story told about a couple of polite phonecalls where they have requested to talk with her. How does it get described as "harassment"?

As soon as they continued after the very first 'no' it becomes harassment. Imagine this was a work setting, the FBI was a coworker of this individual, and they asked for a date. After the very first "no, please don't bring it up again" it becomes harassment.

unlinker• 10 years ago

Only that this is not a sexual setting and the fact it is a "she" changes nothing in this context.

k-mcgrady• 10 years ago

> "As soon as they continued after the very first 'no' it becomes harassment."

Untrue, legally, at least in the UK where at least two incidents that cause you distress are required to have been committed by the same person/group. And then it's up to a judge to decide if the 'distressing' behaviour would be considered distressing by any reasonable person.

droopybuns• 10 years ago

She has wisely communicated her desire to do so only with legal council present and they are clearly saying that they will circumvent this if they can.

Given the behavior of bad apple cops and agents, she is right to feel threatened. If these are agents with good intentions, they have no reason to be afraid of a lawyer. If they are going to circumvent her legal protections, harassment is the minimum best outcome for her.

perlpimp• 10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

the_ancient2• 10 years ago

I would consider any contact by the FBI at all harassment.

0091810911• 10 years ago

"I got absolutely no work done."

That's the tactics they use (don't ask how I know that). Be strong and welcome to Germany!

chinathrow2• 10 years ago

No idea why you get downvoted for this.

There is a german word for it - 'Zersetzung'. It was used by Stasi in former divided Germany and for sure has been used in recent years against other folks of the Tor community.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zersetzung

ryanlol5• 10 years ago

and for sure has been used in recent years against other folks of the Tor community.

Examples?

Edit: Not really sure why asking for examples gets downvotes. Google news search definitely didn't turn up anything but this story.

honua• 10 years ago

Vielen Dank, das war sehr interessant

warmblood2• 10 years ago

This is terrorism. Given what we all know based on past events about how the FBI conducts their activities, there is no way any reasonably aware citizen can conduct their life normally after such an encounter.

The last discussion thread on this topic had more than a few people complaining that Isis (the given name of the developer in the article) is overreacting and paranoid, which is a saddening response to see. It exposes the privileges and unfortunate circumstances citizens find themselves in because these agencies refuse to prosecute their anti-terror investigations in well-thought out ways, instead pursuing facile leads without regard to the external effects they cause.

We've even seen evidence that these agencies deliberately manipulate otherwise innocent people into behavior that implicates them in their "terror suspect" criteria, so it's hard to believe that anyone in this situation could be somehow too cautious.

maze-le4• 10 years ago

I wouldn't use the word 'terrorism'. Its usage is already inflated beyond reason... I'd rather call it what it is: intimidation / harrasment.

pdkl95• 10 years ago

intimidation / harrasment

The FBI used to call that "COINTELPRO".

warmblood2• 10 years ago

That's fair. I'm just really frustrated by how long this has been going on and the institutional resistance to addressing it for the better.

appleflaxen3• 10 years ago

It /is/ terrorism, but the FBI is not the agent of terror. Rather, they are reacting to terrorist boogeymen in the shadows, exactly how the terrorists want them to.

Terrorism is successful when our society becomes more of an authoritarian police state.

Kristine19752• 10 years ago

Are they reacting to terrorism? Or are they using terrorism as a pretext to expand their powers (or to achieve whatever goal they have)?

draw_down• 10 years ago

Sounds like they have no god damn idea what they're doing. But of course, frightening nonetheless.

nxzero• 10 years ago

Curious how many people on HN have had contact with the FBI in the past year?

rbanffy• 10 years ago

One colleague in my organisation used to work for them. ;-)

woodman• 10 years ago

It is hard to say for a lot of reasons, like if you'd consider informants with explicit direction from the FBI as "FBI". Also, while living in DC many years ago, I was surprised by the number of homeless people I saw with Blackberrys - until I learned about the way FBI surveillance is conducted there.

appleflaxen3• 10 years ago

I wish the FBI agents who perform these kinds of actions were as introspective as Snowden. Once you define your team as "the good guys", you can do all kinds of morally objectionable things to the other side.

"the ends justify the means" at that point

cptskippy2• 10 years ago

She lost my support at vegan gluten-free brownies. She's clearly a monster.

But seriously, this really stinks. If talking to the FBI wasn't going to have negative consequences for her then why would they choose to approach her like that?

The whole attitude by law enforcement that "anyone who doesn't 100% cooperate with us on our terms is an enemy and should be treated as such" really doesn't foster cooperation but it does foster fear and resentment. I think the whole Apple/iPhone debacle demonstrates that perfectly. It's gotten to the point that businesses are finding that they're in a better position if they lock themselves out of their own data and tell law enforcement to fk off because their hands are tied. It's ironic because this non-cooperative behavior is a direct result of the abusive and hostile tactics law enforcement use against everyone.

Bartweiss4• 10 years ago

The part about "meeting her on the street" is particularly slimy. Declining to pass questions through a lawyer is shady, but asking a person to confirm their lawyer's identity as a trap to question them is bizarre.

The whole thing reads like its either an agency involved in something unethical, or an agency so far removed from decent behavior that they no longer notice when they're menacing innocents.

joezydeco• 10 years ago

It sounds more like a subtle way to say "we'll meet you on the street, after a SWAT team drags you out of bed at 2:00AM"

kordless• 10 years ago

These are the effects of suppressing causality. When a person or group believes the knowledge of their actions needs to be suppressed to increase the performance metrics of their actions, they literally become insane.

No government has the right to withhold information beyond a clear and reasonable timeframe. 3 months seems reasonable. 1 year is out of the question.

grecy2• 10 years ago

“But… if we happen to run into her on the street, we’re gonna be asking her some questions without you present.”

Impressive for a LEO to state out loud he doesn't care about rights and due process. Like maybe he thinks he's above the law.

at-fates-hands2• 10 years ago

This is a classic psyops move on their part.

Get the person thinking they're not safe anywhere, so they stop going out, stop being mobile and stick to a more confined area. Once they've determined where she is, it makes it a lot easier to get in contact with her.

If she's smart, she start moving more frequently, and travel in states where they don't have field offices, avoid air travel and create a constantly moving target for the FBI officers trying to nail her down.

Kristine19752• 10 years ago

If she's smart, she start moving more frequently...

I don't think that's practical. It would cause her a lot of stress (not to mention cost quite some money) and sooner or later wear her out.

It also means that the FBI has reached their goal of intimidating her, since she is changing her behavior because of them (assuming that is their goal of course).

grecy2• 10 years ago

Wow, what a place to live in.

Regular citizens not charged with any crime having to keep moving to hide from LEO.

zekevermillion• 10 years ago

The problem is the attitude that the NSL is just another "tool" in the FBI's toolbox, to be used as aggressively as can be in the pursuit of criminals. There is no effective check or balance against this -- we are forced to rely on the investigators to use their discretion, knowing that any challenge to such a warrantless request has about a zero % chance of being successful before the FISA court.

I would like to see an activist attempt to challenge such an order, or even refuse to cooperate in an NSL where the FBI is acting outside of its legislative and Constitutional authority. However, the overwhelming incentive in any such situation is to cooperate. And from what I have read, even if the FBI is acting illegally, the subject of the investigation aided by the NSL may still be a fairly loathsome criminal -- so, you have to be quite a principled activist to risk prison time to make a civil rights statement, when this is directly going to benefit a badguy in the specific instance.

tobltobs• 10 years ago

This is like the SA treated people at the beginning. They knew they did not have any legal foundation for their harrasments, but that they would never hold accountable for that. After some time without uprising against that the SA was replaced by the SS.

hackuser• 10 years ago

1) Imagine the position of people who can't afford a lawyer, don't work for the EFF and know their rights, can't easily move to anothher country, and don't have a platform from which to publicly tell their story.

2) Imagine this power in the hands of a President with fascistic tendancies.

tzaman• 10 years ago

Why does everyone, including Ms. Lovecruft conclude that something is horribly wrong and that FBI wanting to speak with them means they are in deep shit? I'm by no means defending them, but to me, the whole (original) post looks overly paranoid.

I'm not an American, you can speak with Police freely here in Slovenia, so maybe I understand things wrong?

MacsHeadroom12• 10 years ago

For a developer of a tool frequently used to conceal "terrorism", this amount of paranoia seems healthy.

Also, no you cannot "speak with police freely" in the US. Anything you say to an officer of the law can be, and it should be assumed that it will be, used to incriminate you. To make matters worse, you can be forced to give up your right to self-incrimination by being legally compelled to divulge information which incriminates you.

In general one should never speak to police in the US. Not even as the whiteness to a crime. For a great overview of the seriousness of why one should never talk to US police, view this lecture by a professor and former criminal defense attorney: http://youtu.be/6wXkI4t7nuc

Incidentially, the American Civil Liberties Union of attorneys (ACLU) has created a series of mobile apps to record police encounters because of their tendency to be problematic for citizens. For example, https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.aclu.mobil...

homero• 10 years ago

It's plausible it's because of her name Isis and some agent thinks she's Isis

jeffdavis• 10 years ago

This didn't really register with me as tyrrany. What did the FBI actually do to her?

Going around a lawyer is a good way to lose a case against her, so maybe they weren't trying to make a case against her.

Maybe they actually had some real questions that involved her expertise or knowledge she might have had.

FBI Harassing Core Tor Developer, Demand Meeting, but Refusing to Explain Why

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