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Comment by dublinben | Hacker News Reader

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

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People can stop an interrogation at any time by asking for a lawyer or just not answering any questions.

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.

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.

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.

And eliminate immunity for judges. They ought to be brought to account for subversion of rights.

"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.

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