Former Anonymous Spokesperson Indicted

SternisheFan sends this quote from Ars: "On Friday, a federal grand jury in Dallas indicted Barrett Brown, a former self-proclaimed Anonymous spokesperson, for trafficking 'stolen authentication features,' as well as 'access device fraud' and 'aggravated identity theft.' Brown has been detained since he was arrested in September for allegedly threatening a federal agent. 10 counts of the 12-count indictment concern the aggravated identity theft charge (the indictment references 10 people from whom Brown is alleged to have stolen information), but the most interesting charge is probably the first; a single count saying Brown, 'did knowingly traffic in more than five authentication features knowing that such features were stolen and produced without lawful authority.' But rather than a physical back-alley hand-off, this alleged trafficking happened online when Barrett transferred a hyperlink, 'from the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel called "#Anonops" to an IRC channel under Brown's control, called "#ProjectPM."' That hyperlink happened to include over 5,000 credit card numbers, associating Ids, and Card Verification Values (CVVs) from the Stratfor Global Intelligence database."

Comments

It's not black and white

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as so many people are dumbfounded that it can be considered at all wrong and indictable for him to do such a thing lets consider the following:

A person knows of a quantity of drugs out in the open with no owner. He goes to a group of kids and says "Hey come with me I'll show you where a bunch of drugs are". Has he done anything wrong? Is he responsible in any way?

Now lets assume that he knew those kids were actively seeking drugs. Has he done anything wrong now? Is he responsible?

Now lets assume one of the kids dies from an O.D. Anything wrong now? Is he responsible now?

Finally, is it really as black and white as a lot of users here want to make it?