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Barrett Brown, Formerly of Anonymous, Sentenced To 63 Months
An anonymous reader writes with news that a journalist linked to Anonymous, Barret Brown, has been sentenced. "Barrett Brown, a journalist formerly linked to the hacking group Anonymous, was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, or a total of 63 months. Ahmed Ghappour, Brown's attorney, confirmed to Ars that Brown's 28 months already served will count toward the sentence. That leaves 34 months, or nearly three years, left for him to serve. In April 2014, Brown took a plea deal admitting guilt on three charges: "transmitting a threat in interstate commerce," for interfering with the execution of a search warrant, and to being "accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer." Brown originally was indicted in Texas federal court in December 2012 on several counts, including accusations that he posted a link from one Internet relay chat channel, called #Anonops, to another channel under his control, called #ProjectPM. The link led to private data that had been hijacked from intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, or Statfor."
Formerly anonymous.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
do the crime if you can do the time.
For using those pesky tags.
I've been on the scene since the '70s, and as much as I hope that my real identity to not be revealed to the world, I understand that once I post something online I take a risk (calculated or otherwise) of having my real identity exposed
There is no anonymity online or offline
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
And now... 3... 2... 1...
(1) Find a journalist you don't like who has linked to a vulnerable site they don't control
(2) Replace the content at the link target with illegally obtained material about someone powerful
(3) Sit back and watch how well the new SWATting works!
Journalistic shield laws anyone? The new first amendment-resistant law enforcement looks like we need something to replace the old antibiotics...
I'm not a fan of anonymous, but you should be very afraid when you look at these charges. This rather random assortment of charges that make you go "huh?" shows that the thinking went like this: 1) Get this guy 2) Charge this guy for things you don't charge all other people who do the same things. 3) Profit!!!
The bear doesn't like to be poked.
IMO he had a good case and could have won but I understand him taking the plea.
He didn't know the information was there in the link that led to this whole thing and the "threats" were hyperbole at the best. He probably couldn't afford a good attorney and he was looking at decades in prison. Typical FBI strategy is charge them with everything in the book so they plea to lessor charge you actually want.
It's a travesty what they did to him.
He was accused of hacking. We learned from the recent NSA Snowden leaks, that NSA hacks computers, but sends the data to scapegoat targets and collects the data as it crosses the public network.
So when you see a high anti-US person conveniently on a hacking charge, you have to immediately ask if he's been fitted up for the crime, if he's one of these scapegoat targets.
http://boingboing.net/2015/01/18/ecstatic-nsa-spooks-delight-in.html
"But the loot isn't delivered directly to ROC's IP address. Rather, it is routed to a so-called Scapegoat Target. That means that stolen information could end up on someone else's servers, making it look as though they were the perpetrators."
There's quite a few of these that have raise eyebrows, Pirate Bay founder hacks Sweden, supposedly to look for extradition warrants, and yet leaves a trail of evidence back to himself?? Handy, who gains most from that? Not him, there is no extradition treaty between Laos and Sweden. North Korea hacks Sony, NSA justifies its surveillance program. Who gains most?
I have my doubts.
This guy should have hit and actually killed somebody with his car, he would have faired better in court. These laws need some serious relooking.
he's out in 18 months
Does anyone here happen to know who this guy is, what he did? TFS mentions what the prosecutor intended to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, but they could prove that All Capone cheated on his taxes and OJ Simpson intimidated a guy in a hotel room. They were pursued and partially sentenced based on what they DID, apart from which bits the prosecution could prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
If asked "who was Al Capone?", you wouldn't answer "a guy who cheated on his taxes". Who is this person?
Everyone involved in this prosecution should be executed for treason
Bubba: "In Time You Will Call Me, Master"
In addition to jailing whistle blowers as we have seen numerous times, Journalists who report what Whistle blowers tell them are now felons. The first amendment has officially been shredded, and now comes the icing on the cake.
CISPA is back on the fast track program, as well as other programs to jail anyone and everyone including White hats.
Since the TPP is being fast tracked too, and corporations have immunity from all prosecution, we may not know what happens since Chinese hackers will simply be handing names to US officials who will make people disappear. Who's gonna write an article when they are going to prison for doing so?
The thing is, I have not seen anyone screaming about CISPA like the last go around. Nobody seems to know anything at all about any of these other programs, and the news won't even mention TPP. If you are not nervous about the political happenings going on, you are a fool.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
and was apparently in heroin withdrawal on the day of his arrest, according to the never-wrong Wikipedia.
Fun times.
So i you know anyone who has ever committed a crime you are guilty? Just what is that charge exactly anyway?
"Hacking" never meant anything outside of a small in-group, where it meant "outstanding creativity with technology". This is fundamentally a constructive activity, whereas the term as hijacked by the security industry s'kiddies is fundamentally destructive, breaking stuff for profit, like by rubbing other people's faces in their failures so you can show off how much smarter you are, or to sell bits of software supposedly mitigating holes and attacks, or whatever.
Outside of that in-group, thanks to the security s'kiddies, then the media including hollywood, then the lawmakers, it has become to mean "we don't know what exactly but presumably(!) something bad involving these computer thingies in ways we probably don't even understand". Criminalising this --by outlawing "computer hacking" while leaving the entire thing undefined, possibly deliberately-- means exactly that it's a federal felony to do something only not even the prosecutor knows or understands what this something really is. You cannot possibly trust that this way justice will be done.
On top of that, there is the entire plea deal thing. "we'll drop some charges if you just admit guilt for the rest of them, eh?" is a bad deal for the prosecuted, moreso because the prosecution --as it does-- will just stack up some more charges to have "bargaining chips" against you. In fact, taking such deals is bad for everyone else, too, because it creates uncontested precedents. "Look, just take that deal like everyone has before you, so we have some more warm bodies to fill our prisons with. Be nice and you get out earlier than you would if we thought up some more charges and threw them at you too."
Give yourself a suspended life sentence because you don't want to do the time.
What is the difference, between making a threat and transmitting a threat? Could this possibly be some kind of double jeopardy issue?
I realize my notion of this is very simplified, but still I found it a little odd.
It's a travesty what they did to him.
Is this the guy you're defending? So is he admitting to hiding laptops from a lawful investigation in that video?
if that article you linked is even partially accurate ...
captcha: quieted
It's Stratfor, not Statfor!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
And clicked, hoping to read comments celebrating his departure.
Australia, Canada and the UK are hardly perfect. But this type of legal abuse is unheard of. Somehow the courts have remained independent of politics. There are no huge sentences handed down for trivial crimes. And plea bargaining is nothing like as bad.
Is it really true that the religious right are so law and order driven?
All the other AC trolls here aren't so thoughtful.