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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".
- specialp 12y ago
  Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? If the FBI said well our evidence is a confidential informant that would not be valid as the defense has a right to cross examine witnesses and evidence. This guy pled guilty. Maybe it was due to fear of courts handling tech cases, or maybe it was due to the fact that there was a large amount of evidence that he committed a crime that was not simply reporting.
  - CamperBob2 12y ago
    Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? Under the doctrine of parallel construction, as revealed in the Snowden disclosures, there is no way for the court to know if illegal NSA wiretaps or other surveillance activities were involved. The fruit of the poison tree is now on sale at your local justice supermarket.
    - specialp 12y ago
      By that logic every single case that the FBI prosecutes is fruit of the poison tree. I am in no way in support of NSA activities, but in order to make your claim you need some proof unfortunately. If it were ever proven that the FBI regularly uses NSA warantless wiretaps to aid in convictions of US citizens there will be many cases overturned.
      - mentat 12y ago
        Unfortunately that proof is made systematically unavailable, hence the injustice.
      - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        Every case prosecuted by the FBI ever since parallel construction started is fruit of the poison tree.
        FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        To downvoters: the truth hurts, doesn't it?
        CamperBob2 12y ago
        I'd rather they downvote me, than try to blackmail me and drive me to suicide like they've attempted to do in the past with other US citizens. (Oops, now I'm conflating the NSA and the FBI -- I'm sure someone from their fan club will be along to remind me of that important distinction.) It's as if they honestly don't understand why it's their responsibility to show they've reformed, and not our responsibility to show that they haven't. Life is just one big TV script to these people. Oh, well... if they had enough imagination to contemplate what will happen when the next J. Edgar Hoover gains "Total Information Awareness," they'd be even more dangerous.
      - CamperBob2 12y ago
        Sorry, but on this topic, the Snowden disclosures decisively shift the burden of proof away from me. Read them, then moderate.
        csandreasen 12y ago
        Two points: 1) the parallel construction headlines were not from the Snowden disclosures, they were from documents independently obtained by Reuters[1]. 2) This is what the original article actually had to say about NSA involvement in parallel construction (emphasis mine): "Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE." ... "Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst." [1] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc=932 http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc...
  - tptacek 12y ago
    He didn't just plead guilty; he conceded several of the facts in the case as early as his effort to have the initial indictments dismissed.
  - fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
    >Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? Okay please stop this nonsense. It is not necessary or reasonable to expect any individual to be able to collect of provide evidence that the most well-financed, most-powerful spy agency ever known to exist has spied on them and that the government (DOJ) has illegally used information obtained that way in a prosecution against same. It's not unprecedented, and it's not as if it is even possible to discover every case of this happening. >This guy pled guilty. Maybe it was due to fear of courts handling tech cases Or maybe because any individual is hopelessly outmatched by the state in a case such as this.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      Non-falsifiable argument is non-falsifiable.
      - defen 12y ago
        http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...
        harry8 12y ago
        This was down voted with no response. ;-)
      - tedks 12y ago
        Sure it's falsifiable. The falsification test is that when the NSA/DEA/FBI are stormed by the citizenry in the same manner as their moral and spiritual predecessor, the Statsi, if those files contain no mention of doing such things, it is less likely that they occurred. There is always a possibility that the NSA could exchange information entirely covertly between itself and the DEA, but I think this is unlikely to be totally ironclad. The comment to which you reply is pointing out the very real asymmetry in ability between a citizen and the amalgamated federal government. It is, in fact, unreasonable to put the burden of proof on the much less able party when there is real evidence showing that the NSA->DEA information flow does in fact exist, and could potentially be used in any case. It's not likely to have been used in this case, because Brown seems to have indeed made real threats and probably plead guilty because of that. But that doesn't change the unreasonability in the general form of argument the comment grandparent makes.
- tptacek 12y ago
  Why would NSA need to provide wiretap information in a case where the ringleader of the criminal conspiracy Brown is charged for being involved with directly ratted him out?
ingler 12y ago
He pled guilty to avoid getting reamed even worse. There's no justice here. It's just an exercise in power in order to send a message.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  So you are aware of all the evidence then? I mean, otherwise this is just complete supposition. Plus, you know, he conceded a lot of the facts in the indictment at the point he tried to have the indictment dismissed, so ...
  - ingler 12y ago
    It goes beyond supposition when the tactics of Federal prosecutors are examined in wider scope. The sentence doesn't fit the crime.

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".

specialp 12y ago
Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? If the FBI said well our evidence is a confidential informant that would not be valid as the defense has a right to cross examine witnesses and evidence. This guy pled guilty. Maybe it was due to fear of courts handling tech cases, or maybe it was due to the fact that there was a large amount of evidence that he committed a crime that was not simply reporting.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? Under the doctrine of parallel construction, as revealed in the Snowden disclosures, there is no way for the court to know if illegal NSA wiretaps or other surveillance activities were involved. The fruit of the poison tree is now on sale at your local justice supermarket.
  - specialp 12y ago
    By that logic every single case that the FBI prosecutes is fruit of the poison tree. I am in no way in support of NSA activities, but in order to make your claim you need some proof unfortunately. If it were ever proven that the FBI regularly uses NSA warantless wiretaps to aid in convictions of US citizens there will be many cases overturned.
    - mentat 12y ago
      Unfortunately that proof is made systematically unavailable, hence the injustice.
    - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
      Every case prosecuted by the FBI ever since parallel construction started is fruit of the poison tree.
      - FeeTinesAMady 12y ago
        To downvoters: the truth hurts, doesn't it?
        CamperBob2 12y ago
        I'd rather they downvote me, than try to blackmail me and drive me to suicide like they've attempted to do in the past with other US citizens. (Oops, now I'm conflating the NSA and the FBI -- I'm sure someone from their fan club will be along to remind me of that important distinction.) It's as if they honestly don't understand why it's their responsibility to show they've reformed, and not our responsibility to show that they haven't. Life is just one big TV script to these people. Oh, well... if they had enough imagination to contemplate what will happen when the next J. Edgar Hoover gains "Total Information Awareness," they'd be even more dangerous.
    - CamperBob2 12y ago
      Sorry, but on this topic, the Snowden disclosures decisively shift the burden of proof away from me. Read them, then moderate.
      - csandreasen 12y ago
        Two points: 1) the parallel construction headlines were not from the Snowden disclosures, they were from documents independently obtained by Reuters[1]. 2) This is what the original article actually had to say about NSA involvement in parallel construction (emphasis mine): "Today, the SOD offers at least three services to federal, state and local law enforcement agents: coordinating international investigations such as the Bout case; distributing tips from overseas NSA intercepts, informants, foreign law enforcement partners and domestic wiretaps; and circulating tips from a massive database known as DICE." ... "Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst." [1] http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc=932 http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97409R20130805?irpc...
- tptacek 12y ago
  He didn't just plead guilty; he conceded several of the facts in the case as early as his effort to have the initial indictments dismissed.
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  >Do you have any cases where NSA illegal wiretaps were used as evidence in court in a standard trial like this against a U.S. citizen? Okay please stop this nonsense. It is not necessary or reasonable to expect any individual to be able to collect of provide evidence that the most well-financed, most-powerful spy agency ever known to exist has spied on them and that the government (DOJ) has illegally used information obtained that way in a prosecution against same. It's not unprecedented, and it's not as if it is even possible to discover every case of this happening. >This guy pled guilty. Maybe it was due to fear of courts handling tech cases Or maybe because any individual is hopelessly outmatched by the state in a case such as this.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    Non-falsifiable argument is non-falsifiable.
    - defen 12y ago
      http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE...
      - harry8 12y ago
        This was down voted with no response. ;-)
    - tedks 12y ago
      Sure it's falsifiable. The falsification test is that when the NSA/DEA/FBI are stormed by the citizenry in the same manner as their moral and spiritual predecessor, the Statsi, if those files contain no mention of doing such things, it is less likely that they occurred. There is always a possibility that the NSA could exchange information entirely covertly between itself and the DEA, but I think this is unlikely to be totally ironclad. The comment to which you reply is pointing out the very real asymmetry in ability between a citizen and the amalgamated federal government. It is, in fact, unreasonable to put the burden of proof on the much less able party when there is real evidence showing that the NSA->DEA information flow does in fact exist, and could potentially be used in any case. It's not likely to have been used in this case, because Brown seems to have indeed made real threats and probably plead guilty because of that. But that doesn't change the unreasonability in the general form of argument the comment grandparent makes.
tptacek 12y ago
Why would NSA need to provide wiretap information in a case where the ringleader of the criminal conspiracy Brown is charged for being involved with directly ratted him out?

ingler 12y ago

He pled guilty to avoid getting reamed even worse. There's no justice here. It's just an exercise in power in order to send a message.

DannyBee 12y ago
So you are aware of all the evidence then? I mean, otherwise this is just complete supposition. Plus, you know, he conceded a lot of the facts in the indictment at the point he tried to have the indictment dismissed, so ...
- ingler 12y ago
  It goes beyond supposition when the tactics of Federal prosecutors are examined in wider scope. The sentence doesn't fit the crime.