14 DAY TRIAL // Tor Project developer Isis Agora Lovecruft has published a blog post [also here] accusing the FBI of harassment for the past six months.
Lovecruft's troubles started when she and her family were on vacation, and when an FBI agent dropped by her house and left his card, with a message to call him.
Weeks passed by as Lovecruft mulled over the decision to call or not call the agent, knowing she had done nothing wrong. She also knew very well that the FBI was very interested in anything TOR-related.
In recent months, it was discovered that the FBI paid the Carnegie Mellon University to hack the Tor network and had been hiding details about Tor Browser exploits from the public eye.
Agents refused to talk to Lovecruft's lawyer
Lovecruft, who was also in the process of moving her residency to Germany, asked her lawyer to call the agent and inquire about what it was all about.
The agent told her lawyer that they only wanted to ask her a few questions, and only in person, without his presence. The lawyer offered to relay the questions to his client, but then the FBI agent ignored his remark by saying "I don’t believe you actually represent her."
After that, Lovecruft says she spent a large amount of time pondering about what the FBI wanted from her. She stressed about if she could leave the country, if she could ever come back, if she'd ever see her family if she leaves, and all sorts of situations that arise when the government is stalking you without any reason.
Agents didn't stop, even after she left for Germany
Eventually, Lovecruft mustered the courage and left the country to live in Germany. Even if she fully expected to be stopped at the airport and detained, her name was not added to a no-fly list.
But things didn't stop after she left. Two months after that, her lawyer received voice mails from another FBI agent.
This agent told the lawyer that things had cleared up in regards to some documents, about which they needed Lovecruft's opinion, but they're now pondering of serving her a subpoena.
A subpoena would force her to meet with the FBI under a penalty of failure. Following the FBI's secret manner in which they refused to offer information to her lawyer, and even told her lawyer that they'll question her without him present if they can, Lovecruft has now made all her past dealings public.
Her blog post serves as a reminder to the public of the FBI's secret fight against anything Tor-related, even its developers. She says she found it unsettling that the FBI would deny her legal representation and would not provide her with any information, especially if she was not the target of an investigation.
