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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.

This isn't about outsmarting anyone.

> 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?

> Since she's not on US soil she doesn't have to worry about the FBI physically tracking her down

There is an extradition treaty between the US and Germany.

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.

You're basically saying she should try and act like an imitation lawyer. That's stupid - that's the job of the actual lawyer involved.

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 they won't talk to the actual lawyer involved.

Too bad. That's their problem, not hers.

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 situation caused her anxiety, yes, but resolving it was still on the onus of the FBI, by way of talking to her lawyer.

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.

Yes, and? Her best course of action was, at that point, still "let the lawyer handle it".

And now we're back where we started, where I point out that the FBI is refusing to tell the lawyer what's going on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11632021

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.

Her lawyer might have advised her against doing that.

Entirely possible, though if so she didn't think it was worth putting in her blog post.