8 ms·

Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in prison

180 points by aestetix 12y ago

tptacek 12y ago
Brown originally faced more than a century in prison on a swathe of charges relating hacks targeting corporations No, he didn't. https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...
- Alupis 12y ago
  Sure 5 < 100, but does that somehow change the morality of what's being done here?
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I'm less certain about the morality of the charges than you are. My certainty also does not have the same magnitude as yours but on the inverse vector. Someone will inevitably premise a reply on the idea that it does, though. My understanding, after reading the news and the relevant stuff on freebarrettbrown.org (which collects a bunch of filings) is that he faced sentencing for three counts: (i) concealing laptops during the execution of a warrant, (ii) threatening an FBI agents, and (iii) being an accessory after the fact to the STRATFOR hack. Of those three, (i) and (ii) seem open-and-shut. Even Brown's own motion to dismiss concedes them. (The more damning of the two, about the laptops, was accompanied with a sort of harebrained argument that it's not a crime to conceal evidence so long as you hide it somewhere in the scope of the search warrant, so that it is at least mathematically possible that agents executing the warrant could have found it.) He plead guilty to them, then discussed them in their particulars at his allocution. Accessory-after-the-fact liability for relaying a URL to a bunch of stolen credit cards is a fuzzier charge. I have no idea what I think about it. But two things worth considering: (1) Accessory-after-the-fact liability is a much lesser offense than being an accomplice to the STRATFOR hack. Accomplice liability would have charged him as a principal to the actual crime. That's not what he got convicted for. (2) The charge doesn't criminalize sharing of URLs, but rather intentionally facilitating the spread of stolen credit card numbers. The DOJ had the burden of proving intent. His "actus reus" was, I think we all agree, very minimal. But his mens rea might not have been. His vulnerability to having mens rea proven at trial was probably greatly enhanced by the fact that one of the open-and-shut charges against him was about his effort to shield Jeremy Hammond from prosecution. It would have been hard for him to argue that he wasn't much more intimately involved in the STATFOR hack than some Twitter rando RT'ing a URL would have been. I dunno. As usual, nothing is as simple as Boing Boing and Wired make things out to be. I think the government had a stronger case against Brown than it did against Auernheimer.
    - thaumaturgy 12y ago
      Our opinions on the application of law and justice are usually diametrically opposed, but I have to thank you for taking the time to write this out. It's completely fair and even-handed, and focuses on the facts of the case.
      - tptacek 12y ago
        Thank you. I doubt we're diametrically opposed, unless you're an anarcho-capitalist. A detail I didn't have until this comment was too stale to edit: The "accessory after the fact" charge seems to have been --- according to Kim Zetter --- based not on the transmission of the link, but rather the specific role Brown played as a go-between for the Stratfor hacker and Stratfor itself. To wit: Brown is apparently accused of exploiting that role for the purpose of throwing the scent off Jeremy Hammond. You can be deeply aware of a crime in progress and not have any duty under US criminal law to police your fellow citizens. But that's a precarious position to be in: as soon as you do anything that can be construed as helping the crime, you graduate from witness to accessory. That seems to have been what happened to Brown.
  - dinergy 12y ago
    That he threatened federal agent(s)? That he knowingly claimed to be part of a [mostly] criminal hacking group? That he knowingly and willfully obstructed an investigation? He did stupid, illegal things, and honestly it sounds like he got off pretty light, to me.
    - sroerick 12y ago
      Have you heard his "threats" against federal agents? God forbid journalists protect their sources. https://wikileaks.org/Assange-statement-on-the.html https://wikileaks.org/Assange-statement-on-the.html
      - tptacek 12y ago
        His own sentencing allocution --- which was, to say the least, not a weak-kneed cowtowing to the DOJ to minimize his sentencing --- admitted fully to those threats and blamed them on withdrawal from Paxil and Suboxone. The threatening videos and tweets were the most unambiguous regret he expressed. Regrets he expressed moments before haranguing the DOJ, at length, for their misconduct during the case.
        fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        >Regrets he expressed moments before haranguing the DOJ, at length, for their misconduct during the case. Is that supposed to make a difference?
        tptacek 12y ago
        Yes, but not the way you think it does: my point is just that he wasn't admitting to random things to kowtow to the court and minimize his sentence. The majority of the allocution is accusatory, combative, and unrepentant. And, good for him for being honest. But it follows logically that things he did admit in the allocution, he was admitting sincerely.
      - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
DannyBee 12y ago
It's hard to know what happened here, because the papers aren't available, and honestly, PACER is a piece of shit to get stuff from anyway. However, I wouldn't believe random tweets. For example, one says: "Notable that though there's no evidence Barrett took part in the hack releasing credit card info judge is determined he did. #FreeBB" This is pretty unlikely, particularly if it was used as a sentencing factor. Every federal judge knows that you can't use facts not proven to a jury or in a plea agreement, to enhance a sentence. This is completely well-settled law now. See United States v. Booker, 543 US 220 (2005), Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004) and Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) (Apprendi is a little different in that it says you can't enhance past statutory maximum, but Booker and Blakely make plain you can't enhance at all except using facts admitted by the defendant or proven to a jury)
- Alupis 12y ago
  The thing that bothers me is he's being sentenced for "aiding" LulzSec and "obstruction" of justice by reporting on and re-tweeting information about their hacking spree. This is the same LulzSec that was being secretly run by the FBI via their turncoat, Sabu, during some of LulzSec's highest profile hacks (such as the Stratfor hack) Also, in addition to his 5 year imprisonment, he's been ordered to pay nearly $900,000 in fines.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    So, he plead guilty to these charges, that's why he's being sentenced for them. He chose not to take his chances and make those arguments.
    - Alupis 12y ago
      My guess is he plead guilty under advisement his case was hopeless. There's a significant likelihood evidence necessary to aide his case is locked away deep inside the FBI. A very a la NSA illegal wiretaps putting people in prison under guise of "confidential informant".
      - 12y ago
shit_parade 12y ago
The US government's system of justice seems increasingly opaque, arbitrary, and solely for the purpose of maintaining the status quo and those already in power. Meanwhile, much worse crimes by those in power such as torture go unpunished.
- simplemath 12y ago
  It's frankly disgusting.
- ingler 12y ago
  "It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong." -Voltaire
- tptacek 12y ago
  Institutionalized and organized torture programs are a monstrous offense, so by implication you're saying it's immoral to enforce laws against all lesser offenses, not just the ones that have a lot of HN valence. For instance, you would also believe it's immoral to enforce laws against car theft, or counterfeiting. I'm as frustrated as everyone else that the CIA and its horrible contractors, some of whom enriched themselves to the tune of millions of dollars by designing an abhorrent and utterly ineffective scheme to torture random people from West Asia, are apparently going to be shielded from liability. It's a miscarriage of justice. But history is full of miscarriages of justice; we don't give up on civilization when they happen.
  - lstyls 12y ago
    A "miscarriage of justice" implies an occasional event. The system is rigged in favor of those individuals and groups that hold power in this country.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      For hundreds of years, African Americans were systematically murdered, robbed, raped, and disenfranchised by hundreds of thousands of American citizens who were never made culpable for the overwhelming vast majority of those offenses. If countries had to give up after continuous cycles of injustice, there would be no countries. I concede ahead of time that there's a coherent political philosophy that says "that's right, and that's a good thing". It's just not mine.
lectrick 12y ago
I really appreciate that prosecutor Candina Heath used secret evidence to convict, played on FUD, and in particular made it illegal to merely link to certain publicly-available information. I will definitely sleep easier at night knowing that I better always agree with the government, no matter how corrupt it gets.
- specialp 12y ago
  Why don't you read the court documents of the facts that he pled guilty to. He hid his laptops and put out a decoy device when he knew the feds were coming. He threatened to kill the feds on Youtube and Twitter. Those 2 things are not exactly secret evidence. Then he was working with FBI infiltrated Lulzsec/Anonymous while they were actively breaking into Stratfor before it was known and being a spokesperson for Anonymous afterwards. This to me seems to be kinda crossing the line when it comes to reporting on something. Should we have reporters that know of a crime that will happen and then become the intermediary between the criminals and the victim when it becomes public? That is not linking publicly available information it is a bit more than that. He was not charged for linking.
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dmix 12y ago
> 63 months in federal prison, minus 28 months already served. For count one in the case, he receives 48 months. Does he not get any credit for time served in jail pre-trial [1] or is the 28 being subtracted 1-for-1? In the Canadian criminal law code you get time-and-a-half for time served in jail so he'd only have 26 months in prison vs the 48 stated here. Historically it was often 2-for-1 of time served pre-trial which in this case would have mean only 12 additional months in prison. In America I believe it is up to the judge to provide 'credit' during sentencing and there is no pre-defined ratio. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_served http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_served
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hellbanner 12y ago
This is scary. And what law is this "trying to hide a laptop computer during a raid" as one of his charges?
- specialp 12y ago
  "Interference with the execution of a search warrant" (18 USC 1501)
- shawnhermans 12y ago
  It is called obstruction of justice.
- tptacek 12y ago
  It's the same law that makes it illegal for giant companies to delete all their emails and file server contents when they're charged with fraud, and the reason they all maintain expensive and convoluted document retention policies. You can't deliberately hide evidence; that's a crime.
specialp 12y ago
For those that are interested, here is the court document outlining the charges against Barrett Brown: https://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_factualresume.pdf https://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_factualresume.pdf
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- deleted 12y ago
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tomohawk 12y ago
And just got done listening to how a local child molester was sentenced to probation.
- FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
  The child molester didn't embarrass powerful people.
fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Barrett's response to today's sentencing: “Good 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 wrondgoing 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!”
- wahsd 12y ago
  I like that guy. He has spirit that I only wish I had. I wonder if it is possible to fund his prison fund or something. I hope he publishes a book on the corruption of the prison system on the day that he's released and walks across the street of the prison to a book signing or something like that.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    I'm glad you asked. https://freebarrettbrown.org/ https://freebarrettbrown.org/ He writes here. He's written several articles about his incarceration. He is hillarious: http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/author/barrettbrown/ http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/author/barrettbrown/ There is an Amazon wish list somewhere too, but I can't seem to find it.
con-templative 12y ago
The US did poorly in 2014 Press Freedom Index, falling 13 places to 46th in the world: http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf

180 points by aestetix 12y ago

Brown originally faced more than a century in prison on a swathe of charges relating hacks targeting corporations No, he didn't. https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentence-eleventy-million-years/ https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

Alupis 12y ago
Sure 5 < 100, but does that somehow change the morality of what's being done here?
- tptacek 12y ago
  I'm less certain about the morality of the charges than you are. My certainty also does not have the same magnitude as yours but on the inverse vector. Someone will inevitably premise a reply on the idea that it does, though. My understanding, after reading the news and the relevant stuff on freebarrettbrown.org (which collects a bunch of filings) is that he faced sentencing for three counts: (i) concealing laptops during the execution of a warrant, (ii) threatening an FBI agents, and (iii) being an accessory after the fact to the STRATFOR hack. Of those three, (i) and (ii) seem open-and-shut. Even Brown's own motion to dismiss concedes them. (The more damning of the two, about the laptops, was accompanied with a sort of harebrained argument that it's not a crime to conceal evidence so long as you hide it somewhere in the scope of the search warrant, so that it is at least mathematically possible that agents executing the warrant could have found it.) He plead guilty to them, then discussed them in their particulars at his allocution. Accessory-after-the-fact liability for relaying a URL to a bunch of stolen credit cards is a fuzzier charge. I have no idea what I think about it. But two things worth considering: (1) Accessory-after-the-fact liability is a much lesser offense than being an accomplice to the STRATFOR hack. Accomplice liability would have charged him as a principal to the actual crime. That's not what he got convicted for. (2) The charge doesn't criminalize sharing of URLs, but rather intentionally facilitating the spread of stolen credit card numbers. The DOJ had the burden of proving intent. His "actus reus" was, I think we all agree, very minimal. But his mens rea might not have been. His vulnerability to having mens rea proven at trial was probably greatly enhanced by the fact that one of the open-and-shut charges against him was about his effort to shield Jeremy Hammond from prosecution. It would have been hard for him to argue that he wasn't much more intimately involved in the STATFOR hack than some Twitter rando RT'ing a URL would have been. I dunno. As usual, nothing is as simple as Boing Boing and Wired make things out to be. I think the government had a stronger case against Brown than it did against Auernheimer.
  - thaumaturgy 12y ago
    Our opinions on the application of law and justice are usually diametrically opposed, but I have to thank you for taking the time to write this out. It's completely fair and even-handed, and focuses on the facts of the case.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Thank you. I doubt we're diametrically opposed, unless you're an anarcho-capitalist. A detail I didn't have until this comment was too stale to edit: The "accessory after the fact" charge seems to have been --- according to Kim Zetter --- based not on the transmission of the link, but rather the specific role Brown played as a go-between for the Stratfor hacker and Stratfor itself. To wit: Brown is apparently accused of exploiting that role for the purpose of throwing the scent off Jeremy Hammond. You can be deeply aware of a crime in progress and not have any duty under US criminal law to police your fellow citizens. But that's a precarious position to be in: as soon as you do anything that can be construed as helping the crime, you graduate from witness to accessory. That seems to have been what happened to Brown.
- dinergy 12y ago
  That he threatened federal agent(s)? That he knowingly claimed to be part of a [mostly] criminal hacking group? That he knowingly and willfully obstructed an investigation? He did stupid, illegal things, and honestly it sounds like he got off pretty light, to me.
  - sroerick 12y ago
    Have you heard his "threats" against federal agents? God forbid journalists protect their sources. https://wikileaks.org/Assange-statement-on-the.html https://wikileaks.org/Assange-statement-on-the.html
    - tptacek 12y ago
      His own sentencing allocution --- which was, to say the least, not a weak-kneed cowtowing to the DOJ to minimize his sentencing --- admitted fully to those threats and blamed them on withdrawal from Paxil and Suboxone. The threatening videos and tweets were the most unambiguous regret he expressed. Regrets he expressed moments before haranguing the DOJ, at length, for their misconduct during the case.
      - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
        >Regrets he expressed moments before haranguing the DOJ, at length, for their misconduct during the case. Is that supposed to make a difference?
        tptacek 12y ago
        Yes, but not the way you think it does: my point is just that he wasn't admitting to random things to kowtow to the court and minimize his sentence. The majority of the allocution is accusatory, combative, and unrepentant. And, good for him for being honest. But it follows logically that things he did admit in the allocution, he was admitting sincerely.
    - PhantomGremlin 12y ago

DannyBee 12y ago

It's hard to know what happened here, because the papers aren't available, and honestly, PACER is a piece of shit to get stuff from anyway. However, I wouldn't believe random tweets. For example, one says: "Notable that though there's no evidence Barrett took part in the hack releasing credit card info judge is determined he did. #FreeBB" This is pretty unlikely, particularly if it was used as a sentencing factor. Every federal judge knows that you can't use facts not proven to a jury or in a plea agreement, to enhance a sentence. This is completely well-settled law now. See United States v. Booker, 543 US 220 (2005), Blakely v. Washington, 542 U.S. 296 (2004) and Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466 (2000) (Apprendi is a little different in that it says you can't enhance past statutory maximum, but Booker and Blakely make plain you can't enhance at all except using facts admitted by the defendant or proven to a jury)

Alupis 12y ago
The thing that bothers me is he's being sentenced for "aiding" LulzSec and "obstruction" of justice by reporting on and re-tweeting information about their hacking spree. This is the same LulzSec that was being secretly run by the FBI via their turncoat, Sabu, during some of LulzSec's highest profile hacks (such as the Stratfor hack) Also, in addition to his 5 year imprisonment, he's been ordered to pay nearly $900,000 in fines.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  So, he plead guilty to these charges, that's why he's being sentenced for them. He chose not to take his chances and make those arguments.
  - Alupis 12y ago
    My guess is he plead guilty under advisement his case was hopeless. There's a significant likelihood evidence necessary to aide his case is locked away deep inside the FBI. A very a la NSA illegal wiretaps putting people in prison under guise of "confidential informant".
    - 12y ago

shit_parade 12y ago

The US government's system of justice seems increasingly opaque, arbitrary, and solely for the purpose of maintaining the status quo and those already in power. Meanwhile, much worse crimes by those in power such as torture go unpunished.

simplemath 12y ago
It's frankly disgusting.
ingler 12y ago
"It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong." -Voltaire
tptacek 12y ago
Institutionalized and organized torture programs are a monstrous offense, so by implication you're saying it's immoral to enforce laws against all lesser offenses, not just the ones that have a lot of HN valence. For instance, you would also believe it's immoral to enforce laws against car theft, or counterfeiting. I'm as frustrated as everyone else that the CIA and its horrible contractors, some of whom enriched themselves to the tune of millions of dollars by designing an abhorrent and utterly ineffective scheme to torture random people from West Asia, are apparently going to be shielded from liability. It's a miscarriage of justice. But history is full of miscarriages of justice; we don't give up on civilization when they happen.
- lstyls 12y ago
  A "miscarriage of justice" implies an occasional event. The system is rigged in favor of those individuals and groups that hold power in this country.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    For hundreds of years, African Americans were systematically murdered, robbed, raped, and disenfranchised by hundreds of thousands of American citizens who were never made culpable for the overwhelming vast majority of those offenses. If countries had to give up after continuous cycles of injustice, there would be no countries. I concede ahead of time that there's a coherent political philosophy that says "that's right, and that's a good thing". It's just not mine.

lectrick 12y ago

I really appreciate that prosecutor Candina Heath used secret evidence to convict, played on FUD, and in particular made it illegal to merely link to certain publicly-available information. I will definitely sleep easier at night knowing that I better always agree with the government, no matter how corrupt it gets.

specialp 12y ago
Why don't you read the court documents of the facts that he pled guilty to. He hid his laptops and put out a decoy device when he knew the feds were coming. He threatened to kill the feds on Youtube and Twitter. Those 2 things are not exactly secret evidence. Then he was working with FBI infiltrated Lulzsec/Anonymous while they were actively breaking into Stratfor before it was known and being a spokesperson for Anonymous afterwards. This to me seems to be kinda crossing the line when it comes to reporting on something. Should we have reporters that know of a crime that will happen and then become the intermediary between the criminals and the victim when it becomes public? That is not linking publicly available information it is a bit more than that. He was not charged for linking.
- deleted 12y ago
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dmix 12y ago

> 63 months in federal prison, minus 28 months already served. For count one in the case, he receives 48 months. Does he not get any credit for time served in jail pre-trial [1] or is the 28 being subtracted 1-for-1? In the Canadian criminal law code you get time-and-a-half for time served in jail so he'd only have 26 months in prison vs the 48 stated here. Historically it was often 2-for-1 of time served pre-trial which in this case would have mean only 12 additional months in prison. In America I believe it is up to the judge to provide 'credit' during sentencing and there is no pre-defined ratio. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_served http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_served

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hellbanner 12y ago

This is scary. And what law is this "trying to hide a laptop computer during a raid" as one of his charges?

specialp 12y ago
"Interference with the execution of a search warrant" (18 USC 1501)
shawnhermans 12y ago
It is called obstruction of justice.
tptacek 12y ago
It's the same law that makes it illegal for giant companies to delete all their emails and file server contents when they're charged with fraud, and the reason they all maintain expensive and convoluted document retention policies. You can't deliberately hide evidence; that's a crime.

specialp 12y ago

For those that are interested, here is the court document outlining the charges against Barrett Brown: https://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_factualresume.pdf https://freebarrettbrown.org/files/BB_factualresume.pdf

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tomohawk 12y ago

And just got done listening to how a local child molester was sentenced to probation.

FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
The child molester didn't embarrass powerful people.

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago

Barrett's response to today's sentencing: “Good 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 wrondgoing 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!”

wahsd 12y ago
I like that guy. He has spirit that I only wish I had. I wonder if it is possible to fund his prison fund or something. I hope he publishes a book on the corruption of the prison system on the day that he's released and walks across the street of the prison to a book signing or something like that.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  I'm glad you asked. https://freebarrettbrown.org/ https://freebarrettbrown.org/ He writes here. He's written several articles about his incarceration. He is hillarious: http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/author/barrettbrown/ http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/author/barrettbrown/ There is an Amazon wish list somewhere too, but I can't seem to find it.

con-templative 12y ago

The US did poorly in 2014 Press Freedom Index, falling 13 places to 46th in the world: http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf http://rsf.org/index2014/data/index2014_en.pdf