Journalist Faces 105 Years for Private Intelligence Reporting
Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week, accused of using information acquired by the hacker group Anonymous to report on private intelligence firms, threatening an FBI agent, and committing credit card fraud by linking to a document that contained stolen credit card data. His supporters say the writer is being targeted for daring to investigate the secret world of security contracting.
Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week, accused of using information acquired by the hacker group Anonymous to report on private intelligence firms, threatening an FBI agent, and committing credit card fraud by linking to a document that contained stolen credit card data. His supporters say the writer is being targeted for daring to investigate the secret world of security contracting.
“Using information Anonymous took from the firm HBGary Federal, Brown helped discover a secret plan to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian,” “Democracy Now!” reported Thursday. “Brown similarly analyzed and wrote about the millions of internal company emails from Stratfor Global Intelligence that were leaked in 2011.”
“Democracy Now!” talked with Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University whose article “The Strange Case of Barrett Brown” appeared in The Nation last month. Ludlow said: “Considering that the person who carried out the actual Stratfor hack had several priors and is facing a maximum of 10 years, the inescapable conclusion is that the problem is not with the hack itself but with Brown’s journalism.”
The charges against Brown could suggest it is criminal “to even link to something or share a link with someone,” he adds.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
‘Democracy Now!’:
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
"Both well-meaning and more illicit-minded intelligence professionals basically realize [exposures of the inner workings of power] can't go on," the publisher and journalist tells the "On Contact" host in a discussion about attacks on such organizations as WikiLeaks.
The WikiLeaks founder now appears to have been a political operative in 2016—favoring the Trump campaign—despite his denial that he played such a role.
People worldwide join online event to draft citizen-initiated legislation aimed at countering government spying.
New First Amendment concerns are raised over the treatment of Brown, who was imprisoned in a case related to email leaks.
When a magistrate sentenced the literary genius to two years of hard labor for the crime of being gay, he said it was the maximum punishment allowed by law. That turned out to be truer than the judge might have imagined. It killed him.
Four Al-Jazeera journalists have been sitting in an Egyptian prison for more than a year because they dared to report on the coup orchestrated by Egypt's current president, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.