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Comment by dimino | Hacker News Reader

I don't think you know what harassment is then, if you think an FBI agent talking to you on the street is de facto harassment.

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"We are going to try and question you without your lawyer present" is at best an implicit threat.

No it's not.

Edit: To elaborate,

Threat - A declaring of one's intention to cause harm or loss to another's person or property or to limit one's freedom to act in a lawful voluntary manner (a threat to kidnap).

Harm to a person or property is not inherently present when talking to someone on the street.

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

This does not imply "a pleasant conversation of a few minutes on the street". This implies, given the past and present behavior of law enforcement at all levels of government, "ending up in an interrogation room for several hours during repeated questioning attempts, before being dumped on the street somewhere random after refusing to answer questions without a lawyer present".

> This implies, given the past and present behavior of law enforcement at all levels of government, "ending up in an interrogation room for several hours during repeated questioning attempts, before being dumped on the street somewhere random after refusing to answer questions without a lawyer present".

Why do you feel like you can confidently say that? First of all, they never say they intend on detaining her. Secondly, there is zero precedent for what you're claiming is implied here. Thirdly, "happen to run into her on the street" does imply an ad-hoc conversation and not a formal interrogation.

You're drawing conclusions without evidence, why do you think that's an okay thing to do?

Officers are trained in force escalation, wherein their presence is a use of force, so unless they change their policy on force escalation - hinting at a street encounter is hinting at a use of force. Whether a hint is a threat is another matter, but law enforcement can't have it both ways - were they are both given special consideration in their interactions and treated as benign actors.

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