4 ms·

Folks here seem happy to dunk on her, but her brother's take seems more reasonable: > It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experience

Folks here seem happy to dunk on her, but her brother's take seems more reasonable: > It was my brother, the lawyer, who pointed out that what I had experienced sounded a lot like a coerced confession. “I read enough transcripts of bad interrogations in law school to understand that anyone can be convinced that they have a very narrow set of terrible options,” he said.

dublinben 3y ago
Unlike an interrogation, the author could have stopped this ordeal at any time by turning off or simply not answering her phone.
- imgabe 3y ago
  People can stop an interrogation at any time by asking for a lawyer or just not answering any questions.
  - beaeglebeached 3y ago
    I did that. Then they got a federal search warrant by making up a dog that supposedly smelled something, said there must be drugs hidden in my GI tract, dragged me to the hospital and then sent me the hospital bill when nothing was found. You can stop answering questions and they keep dragging you to more hospitals racking up your debt. This whole time I was 'not under arrest' so I had no real rights, but apparently DHS can drag you to hospitals cuffed for 'emergency medical care' without an arrest. On another occasion feds came to my house to investigate a neighbor. When I refused to talk they waited until I was shutting the door and stuck their fingers in to try and get me for assault as it closed. Thankfully I caught the door at the last millisecond and just stared at them blankly with the door cracked until they left.
    - commandlinefan 3y ago
      The solution is to severely limit the power of the federal government... but at least in the United States, every serious political party is working over time to do the opposite.
      - azemetre 3y ago
        You don’t need to “limit power” (whatever that means), you just need to make people accountable. Getting rid of qualified immunity for most law enforcement agents would be a good start.
        beaeglebeached 3y ago
        And eliminate immunity for judges. They ought to be brought to account for subversion of rights.
- UncleMeat 3y ago
  "I am invoking my 5th amendment right to refuse to speak. I will not speak until I have my lawyer present." This is a (mostly) effective way of immediately stopping an interrogation. Yes, a police interrogation is even more intense than what the author experienced. But confessing to murder is also quite a bit more serious than handing somebody 50 grand in a box.
ovi256 3y ago
The fact that someone with a lawyer brother believed a Federal agent (real or fake) would act in her interest while denying her access to a lawyer is sad. This alone, or knowing that the CIA does not investigate domestic fraud, would have stopped this.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago
  I 100% believe a federal agent would encourage not involving a lawyer if it benefitted them.
ryandrake 3y ago
> Folks here seem happy to dunk on her I don't see that many people dunking on her. On the contrary, people do often tend to very carefully dance around the topic of preventative measures because they don't want to be seen as "victim blaming." It should be OK to say "here's what we can learn from this, about the tactics scammers use, about the technical issues like call spoofing, so that we can avoid being victims ourselves."

dublinben 3y ago

Unlike an interrogation, the author could have stopped this ordeal at any time by turning off or simply not answering her phone.

imgabe 3y ago
People can stop an interrogation at any time by asking for a lawyer or just not answering any questions.
- beaeglebeached 3y ago
  I did that. Then they got a federal search warrant by making up a dog that supposedly smelled something, said there must be drugs hidden in my GI tract, dragged me to the hospital and then sent me the hospital bill when nothing was found. You can stop answering questions and they keep dragging you to more hospitals racking up your debt. This whole time I was 'not under arrest' so I had no real rights, but apparently DHS can drag you to hospitals cuffed for 'emergency medical care' without an arrest. On another occasion feds came to my house to investigate a neighbor. When I refused to talk they waited until I was shutting the door and stuck their fingers in to try and get me for assault as it closed. Thankfully I caught the door at the last millisecond and just stared at them blankly with the door cracked until they left.
  - commandlinefan 3y ago
    The solution is to severely limit the power of the federal government... but at least in the United States, every serious political party is working over time to do the opposite.
    - azemetre 3y ago
      You don’t need to “limit power” (whatever that means), you just need to make people accountable. Getting rid of qualified immunity for most law enforcement agents would be a good start.
      - beaeglebeached 3y ago
        And eliminate immunity for judges. They ought to be brought to account for subversion of rights.
UncleMeat 3y ago
"I am invoking my 5th amendment right to refuse to speak. I will not speak until I have my lawyer present." This is a (mostly) effective way of immediately stopping an interrogation. Yes, a police interrogation is even more intense than what the author experienced. But confessing to murder is also quite a bit more serious than handing somebody 50 grand in a box.

ovi256 3y ago

The fact that someone with a lawyer brother believed a Federal agent (real or fake) would act in her interest while denying her access to a lawyer is sad. This alone, or knowing that the CIA does not investigate domestic fraud, would have stopped this.

ParetoOptimal 3y ago
I 100% believe a federal agent would encourage not involving a lawyer if it benefitted them.

ryandrake 3y ago

> Folks here seem happy to dunk on her I don't see that many people dunking on her. On the contrary, people do often tend to very carefully dance around the topic of preventative measures because they don't want to be seen as "victim blaming." It should be OK to say "here's what we can learn from this, about the tactics scammers use, about the technical issues like call spoofing, so that we can avoid being victims ourselves."