Home » Posts tagged 'barrett brown'

Tag Archives: barrett brown

Olduvai
Click on image to purchase

Olduvai III: Catacylsm
Click on image to purchase

Post categories

Post Archives by Category

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

My Post Cyberpunk Indentured Servitude

Journalist Barrett Brown looks back in anger at the government’s trumped up charges against him as he starts a 63 month prison sentence.

Not long ago I was a mild-mannered freelance journalist, activist, and satirist, contributing to outlets like the Guardian and Vanity Fair. But last Thursday I was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison in a case that Reporters Without Borders cited as a key factor in its reduction of America’s press freedom rankings from 33 to 46. As inconvenient as this is for me, the upside is that for the first time in the two and a half years since I was arrested, I am at last able to speak freely about what has been happening to me and why—and what it means for the press and the republic as a whole.

A portion of my sentence stems from an attempt I made to conceal from the government the identities of certain contacts of mine: pro-democracy activists living under Middle Eastern dictatorships such as Bahrain, with which the U.S. is known to share intelligence on such things. Another large chunk is due to an admittedly ill-conceived public threat I made—in the midst of opiate withdrawal and what court psychologists say was a manic state brought on by medication issues—to investigate and humiliate an F.B.I. agent, who had himself threatened to indict my mother in an attempt to get me to cooperate against individuals associated with the Anonymous movement (my mother was indeed charged). Though I clearly stated that my intent was not violent, the prosecution claimed that my “victim,” Dallas-based Special Agent Robert Smith, had reason to fear that I might physically harm him and even his children—in which case it is not immediately obvious why the prosecution felt the need to alter the end of the sentence in question when quoting it on the indictment. (My complete statement, (PDF) in which I make a point of noting that I was merely going to proceed along lines spelled out by the FBI-linked contractor C.E.O. Aaron Barr while he was investigating activists on behalf of his corporate clients, and that I was doing so perfunctorily, and merely in order to make a point about the F.B.I.’s traditional reluctance to investigate its allies, has been viewed on YouTube by well over 100,000 people, including the dozens of reporters who have covered the story; none of them seem to agree with the Department of Justice contention that a journalist’s threat to “look into” someone in an explicitly non-violent manner necessarily entails violence.) A separate declaration I made to the effect that I’d defend my family from any illegal armed raids by the government, while silly and bombastic, was not actually illegal under the threats statutes. To judge from similar comments made by Senator Joni Ernst, it would not even have necessarily precluded me from delivering the G.O.P.’s recent response to the State of the Union address.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 25 Times the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents COMBINED

Obama Has Sentenced Whistleblowers to 25 Times the Jail Time of All Prior U.S. Presidents COMBINED

And Obama Is Arguably More Hostile Towards The Press Than Any President In History

The Obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined.

This administration has also obtained much longer jail sentences against whistleblowers than previous presidents.

ACLU legislative counsel Gabe Rottman noted last October:

The Obama administration has secured 526 months of prison time for national security leakers, versus only 24 months total jail time for everyone else since the American Revolution.

(So – as of October – Obama had thrown whistleblowers in jail for 22 times longer than all otherpresidents.)

Today, whistleblower Barrett Brown was sentenced to 63 months in prison.

So now we’re up to 589 months for whistleblowers. That’s 25 times more time meted out against whistleblowers by Obama than all other presidents combined.

But even that stunning figure understates the savagery of the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers …

After all, Jeremy Hammond – regarded by many as a whistleblower – was sentenced by Obama to 10 years in prison.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Assange: US prosecuting Barrett Brown for quoting assassination threats against me — RT News

Assange: US prosecuting Barrett Brown for quoting assassination threats against me — RT News.

The charges against journalist and activist Barrett Brown, accused of threatening an FBI agent, are partially based on his quoting another person’s threat to assassinate the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange said.

Brown, 33, whose sentencing was delayed until January on Tuesday, faced federal charges including computer-related crimes, obstruction of justice and publicly threatening an FBI agent performing his duty. He’s now looking at up to eight years in prison for aiding hackers in breaching corporate computers, after pleading guilty in April to being an accessory.

The accusations stem from Brown’s sharing of a link to a trove of files hacked from the servers of HBGary Federal and Stratfor, security intelligence firms and government contractors, in 2012, his other involvements with ‘hacktivism’ groups, and his actions during and after an FBI raid on his apartment and the home of his mother in March 2012.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
Click on image to read excerpts

Olduvai II: Exodus
Click on image to purchase

Click on image to purchase @ FriesenPress