Brown writes: "The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex."
Barrett Brown. (photo: Sparrow Media)
Good News
25 January 15
ood news! — The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in the world’s greatest prison system. I want to thank the Department of Justice for having put so much time and energy into advocating on my behalf; rather than holding a grudge against me for the two years of work I put into in bringing attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn Greenwald, the agency instead labored tirelessly to ensure that I received this very prestigious assignment. — Wish me luck!”
Imprisoned journalist and activist Barrett Brown was sentenced in a Dallas Federal Court this morning to 63 months of incarceration within the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Brown, a contributor to Vanity Fair and The Guardian, has already been detained for 28 months on charges stemming from his proximity to sources in the underground hacker collective Anonymous. Prosecutors asked Judge Samuel A. Lindsay to impose a sentence of 8.5 years on Brown while dozens of high-profile journalists, publishers, advocates, technologists and activists submitted letters to the Judge asking for a sentence of time served. Advocates for Brown, as well as journalist supporters have cited great concern that the prosecutorial overreach in USA v. Brown can have a chilling effect on journalism.
About Barrett Brown
Brown is a political satirist, freelance writer, and former activist with Anonymous. Brown has contributed to The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, and has authored two books. He also founded Project PM, which over time became a crowd-sourced investigation into the activities of private intelligence contractors.
In March 2012 Brown’s home was raided by the FBI. He hid his laptops in order to protect his sources — subsequently he and his mother were charged with obstruction of justice.
Six months later, Brown uploaded a three-part video series to YouTube which laid bare his frustration with the FBI investigation, and stated that he would look into the lead FBI agent and vowed to defend himself if he were raided again. He was arrested the same day. A court-appointed psychiatrist raised questions about his psychological culpability during the time in question, due to the fact that he’d suddenly withdrawn from prescribed medications. Brown pleaded guilty to making threats over the internet and has expressed regrets about these statements.
In December 2012 the DOJ unveiled an indictment charging him with multiple counts of identity theft and credit card fraud due to the fact that he’d pasted a link to stolen documents. After a determined effort by his legal team to have the charges dismissed, prosecutors backed off from the indictment, which was regarded as a victory for press freedom and digital rights. He then faced one count of being an accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access of a protected computer, based on his relationship with Jeremy Hammond.
Brown agreed to a plea deal in March 2014, under which he faces up to 8.5 years in prison. His defense is asking the Court for time served.
More information about Brown’s charges.
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Comments
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But yes obamaphiles and their sycophants…."I put into in bringing attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn Greenwald, "..
Yes even this pretty clearly seen thing... will be made by those who would co opt any cause…..evil Republicans somehow inflitrating Obama's DOJ and changing his good to evil….
keep keep voting away….we will get change….not!!
Ghandi type statement and resistance of a non violent sort being the only rational response to facism, from within a facist state.
As a aside this guy..he looks very similiar by facial appearence to a young Bob Dylan…leading me to wonder…is the Bob Dylan... the young man singing anti discrimination songs and anti war songs despite the obvioius potential hazard to that(a J Edgar Hoover firmly still in charge back then)……not now this sort of person…(music itself being perhaps a bit co opted nowadays).
A hacker for anonymous. Anonymous who helped us so greatly here in New Mexico.. organize against many many being shot by police….now a federal team in charge as result.
Seems so. In any event…thank you…you who so bravely stand for us and suffer penalty for us.
Please, please find someone to proofread your comments. Many times, your comments are downright unintelligible.
Your Obama in matters such as these, the DOJ , in which he has complete and utter control of direction and focus…is doing the same things as his supposed opposition does…..hinderin g the display of free speech and information.
In all things of substance, he is as they are..exactly one and the same as they are..
So this also you find unintelligible. It is not the words….it is what I say... that you and your ilk find so repulsive, and hard to understand.
We will not follow you ,or your kind, which has a snack of liberalism which the full meal does not contain.. it being quite conservative. Yes, your kind do like this snack, and expound greatly upon that…but the meal itself..is not the snack..the meal itself it is facism, none other.
No, many people cannot figure out what you are saying to judge whether it is true or not. I usually can't get past the first paragraph.
I don't get carried away by red or green marks. I see a lot of naïveté in the comments, some personal attacking, and a lot of rah-rah popular bandwagon mentality here. Many obviously watch the tee-vee, which is probably the worst thing going in USA. Not so much of street-wise smarts, however; although there are a few. And then there are the occasional out-and-out liars.
So don't worry too much--I appreciate your contributions.
As the U.S. and state governments are so good at doing, and getting increasingly proficient at, they railroaded this guy with all kinds of false charges and accusations, basically seeking to destroy him because they didn't like him, by framing him for things he didn't do, and/or blowing charges out of all proportion, lying through their teeth in the process. Their version of "justice" is fascism: Imprison people no matter what on false charges, and/or use relatively minor charges and paint them as violations that are the end of the world, and threats to overthrow the government, etc.
Seizing the Declaration of Independence?! And some of you thought I'm crazy for believing that the U.S. is going insane?! With cases like this, they obviously are. And you think I don't know what I'm talking about that it's only going to get worse... and worse... and worse?? I have framed copies of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Bill of Rights, myself; so, when the government comes for me, they'll likely seek to use that against me, too. Is that not insane?! Of course it is!!
Barrett Brown is undoubtedly and clearly a political prisoner, as he has, in truth, been imprisoned for his exercise of free speech, and his support of True Freedom, Liberty and Privacy, including support of others who are also non-violently fighting against the rise of totalitarian, repressive corporate-fasci sm in the U.S. and the world.
(Cont'd)
"Welcome" to the land of the paranoid government agents with their witchhunt mentality, and "slash and burn", prosecute and convict at any cost, actions. "Welcome" to the home of the modern-day "Nazi" government in the U.S. that doesn't give a shit about human and civil rights, True Freedom, Liberty and Privacy, and freedom of speech, but are seeking to criminalize all exercise of rights and dissent, in a no longer Truly Free nation.
And, look at my blog, form-legal.net , the government will no doubt falsely claim that it's a bunch of "crazy manifesto stuff", "conspiracy theory garbage", and/or similar. They do anything they can, and practically stop at nothing, to discredit people and fraudulently make it look like they're "threats" to the government and others. And they will use anybody and anything, including your own mother, to "get you", destroy you and toss you prison... unless of course you never fulfill your duty to dissent, don't make waves and don't attract attention to yourself; in other words, as long as you are a good little slave and automaton who never questions the neo-Nazi, corporate- fascist authority that is increasingly getting out of control and terrorizing the people of the more and more "United States of Enslavement, Incorporated".
(Cont'd)
Enslavement is the opposite of freedom; and, since they are seeking to eradicate our God- given, innate, inalienable, immutable, inviolable human rights and civil liberties, criminalize them and imprison us and/or assassinate or execute us for exercising them, that's what the U.S. has come to, becoming an enslavement state where we are increasingly being turned into slaves, the opposite of Truly Free, where no True Liberty and Freedom, and the exercise thereof, will be tolerated whatsoever, but will be met with the most insane, extreme, vengeful, vicious, brutal, and the harshest, response(s) imaginable. If that's not a slave state, what is?!
A country where no one can exercise their True Freedoms and Rights without the increasingly harshest penalties therefor, and where one can only do and act as the government expects one to do and act, without exception(s), "or else", is without a doubt not Truly Free, and a slave state. Is that not an understatement and/or obvious?! It certainly should be!!
www.form-legal.net/#UnitedNationsEnslavement
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Political Prisoner?
In looking back at the story of Hans Litten, the prosecutor that dared to subpoena Adolf Hitler as a witness in the Transpalast Eden trial, I learned a bit about how much worse those times were. See http://www.cpbn.org/program/hitler-trial We aren't that bad (yet), but we are far from where we should be by this time in our history, and going the wrong way, fast. I fully expect Barret Brown to come out in much better shape.
The commenter's reference to Ghandi type peaceful protest against Nazis reminds me of how unaware Ghandi must have been of the situation in Germany (if he really thought that). Most would probably appreciate Litten's opposition to Hitlers SA predecessor to the SS, the most violent of the masses of working class Germans angry at the conditions forced on Germany (such as Belgian and French occupation of the Ruhr after the American Young plan cancelled the loans in 1929 that they needed to pay war reparations). A second major group was the German Communists in the KPD, and more violence prone KPO. Peaceful protests in the midst of such large, violently opposing, groups would have been hard to imagine. Where were the masses of non-violent protestors supposed to come from, with two others drawing on so many?
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