Why Barrett Brown's Trial Matters

[Th1onein]

From the Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-m-gallagher/why-barrett-brown-matters_b_4447315.html

Before he was arrested and detained, I asked Barrett Brown why he didn't encrypt his communications. He replied, "I don't consider myself a criminal in any shape or form and never have, and refuse to 'hide' from a government I see as illegitimate."

As a journalist who'd been around awhile and witnessed the media's incompetency firsthand, Barrett understood the stakes in the ongoing information war, and that's why he devoted himself with zeal to advocating for Anonymous. Erroneously pegged by the media as a "spokesperson" for the group, he merely served as a colorful character to explain its operations, though he never participated in hacking. Far more near and dear to him than Anonymous was the outfit he'd created, called Project PM.

Project PM is a crowd-sourced investigation focusing on private contractors and their dealings with governments. It was designed to be an actionable resource for anyone interested in learning about the growing surveillance state, the activities of cybersecurity firms, and other threats. Using a combination of open source intelligence, e-mails leaked by hackers, and ordinary research, they released reports and exposed a number of alarming capabilities, particularly showing that activists and journalists were at significant risk from rogue elements of the intel community-even before Snowden blew the whole system wide open.

It's no accident that the DOJ, which has already been implicated in schemes to go after critical journalists and activists (see: Team Themis), has brought its full force down upon Barrett Brown, overreaching quite dramatically in the process. The existence since September of a gag order is telling, as is the earlier subpoena of his website to identify those he worked with. Altogether he's looking at a maximum sentence of 105 years in prison, and the idea that his persecution could be unconnected to his work is absurd.
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First, they came for the journalists.....

[KoKo]

1. Recommend...that's a definite read.. And, what Chomsky said:

from the article:

Noam Chomsky states that Barrett Brown is being "punished for the crime of taking citizenship seriously." This is clear: he stands for values of liberty, transparency and privacy; though soon prosecutors in Dallas will try to persuade a jury otherwise. Increasingly, conscious citizens know the true score -- an electronically connected generation that is skeptical of authority after a decade of failed wars and mass spying will not be fooled by their arguments.