His Name Is Barrett Brown

"Some of the most important things that have... had the most far-reaching influence and have been the most important in terms of what’s been discovered, not just by Anonymous, but by the media in the aftermath, [are] the result of hacking. That information can’t be obtained by institutional journalistic process, or it can’t be obtained or won’t be obtained by a congressional committee or a federal oversight committee. For the most part, that information has to be, you know, obtained by hackers." 

-Barret Brown, from the documentary film We Are Legion      

          In a case that presents broad ramifications for journalists, activists, and even ordinary internet users, journalist and activist Barret Brown faces over 100 years in prison for sharing a single link.

"So, I have no choice left but to
defend my family, myself, my girlfriend,
my reputation, my work, my activism,
my ideas, the revelations that my friends
are going to prison. So that we can
have a chance to get out for other people.
So That they would matter."

          For years now, many throughout the nation and world have consistently brought attention to the illegal, unconstitutional actions of the U.S. govt in its efforts to institute greater security through the control and dissemination of information. We have learned from outlets like WikiLeaks of a great many things, including details of U.S. activity in Afghanistan and Iraq, dirt on shady bank dealings, and, well, you name it. Recently, whistle-blower Edward Snowden, a former employee of Booz Allen Hamilton, a private contractor working with the National Security Agency, revealed after receiving an approved order from the FISA Court to obtain the records of millions of Americans from Verizon the existence of a massive program of intelligence collection and data-mining in the U.S. Naturally, he has been on the run ever since, looking for asylum, and although he may find refuge in Venezuela, as yet he has not formalized any agreements with the Venezuelan govt. Wikileaks founder Julian Asange has been holed-up in the Ecuadorian embassy in the U.K. for over a year. And, of course, who can forget the case of Bradley Manning, a U.S. solder who leaked the documents on the war in Afghanistan now oh-so-long ago (He's still in prison, BTW, just now getting his day in "court"). Similarly, most of us, those who pay attention at least, know of the amorphous group Anonymous and their cyber-activism and hacking of targets ranging from Mexican drug cartels to governments worldwide; a few of us know of their involvement in aiding and facilitating the Arab Spring.
          These facts are generally known, some more than others, oft discussed in internet fora and chat-rooms, publicized by the cyber and dead-tree press both.
          Less well known, or at least less well publicized, is the interesting and tragic story of journalist and activist Barret Brown, who although not a hacker himself often acted as a spokesman for Anonymous, disseminating information worldwide to journalists as well as the general public. Brown has been jailed now for nearly a year, and faces a likely sentence of over 100 years for trumped-up charges of credit fraud that are being used to obfuscate the true significance of his actions and distract from the nature of the activities for which he is actually being persecuted.

          Where to begin this tale is a murky question at best. Thankfully, The Nation magazine recently ran a rather in-depth article on the matter by Peter Ludlow, professor of philosophy at Northwestern University, so I will not try to sum it all up for you here.
          Suffice it to say that Brown, who has written for such reputable outlets as Vanity Fair, The Huffington Post, The Guardian, and many others, became involved with Anonymous in 2010, after becoming intrigued by their philosophy and the potential they and other like actors present. As quoted by Ludlow, Brown praised the diffuse and anti-hierarchical organization, writing “I am now certain that this phenomenon is among the most important and under-reported social developments to have occurred in decades, and that the development in question promises to threaten the institution of the nation-state and perhaps even someday replace it as the world’s most fundamental and relevant method of human organization.” He soon thereafter became active in helping the group publicize and de-tangle the (astonishing) mass of their hacked information.
          The meat of the charges against Brown stem from a series of events in 2011 sparked by statements made by Aaron Barr, CEO of the the private intelligence firm HBGary, who publicly threatened Anonymous, leading to the group's massive hacking of HBGary's servers, emails, and even Barr's private iPad. The action against HBGary, however, achieved perhaps more than Anonymous had envisioned. Among the hacked emails were found a series of communications outlining prospective disinformation campaigns, including plans to implement a program by which the U.S. military could create and manage numerous online identities to sow the seeds of "grassroots" support for desired policies, and other more overt actions against WikiLeaks and its friendly journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, who writes for The Guardian, a prominent progressive news outlet.
          Brown, in an attempt to sort through the vast amount of information provided by the hack, started the online group ProjectPM, a collective effort involving the general online and journalistic community to analyze and scrutinize the some 70,000 emails from the HBGary hack as well as other information gleaned by Anonymous in other actions. Ludlow writes, "Under Brown’s leadership, the initiative began to slowly untangle a web of connections between the US government, corporations, lobbyists and a shadowy group of private military and information security consultants." I won't go into this all here, as the information is already outlined in The Nation article, but the emails reveal connections among and clandestine plots by Bank of America, General Dynamics, Koch Industries, Wells Fargo, the DOJ, and many others. The revelations also shed light on concerted efforts to spread disinformation and discredit reputable journalists.
          Later that year, an Anonymous group, AntiSec, hacked another private security company, Stratfor Global Intelligence, releasing a nearly 5 million internal company e-mails in which were found discussions of prospective renditions and assassinations, among innumerable other mundane and not-so-mundane matters. Brown, in a seemingly innocuous, or at least relatively innocuous seeming, move, copy-pasted a link to the hacked Stratfor emails into the irc channel for ProjectPM.
          It was not until Brown began investigating Endgame Systems, however, that he began to really draw the ire of the powers that be. Soon thereafter, the FBI raided both his apartment and his mother's residence. Endgame, for the purposes of simplicity, is a private information firm that provides its clients information and exploits for computer systems throughout the world. ProjectPM has the following to say: 
 

          People who have seen the company pitch its technology—and who asked not to be named because the presentations were private—say Endgame executives will bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems. Endgame weaponry comes customized by region—the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China—with manuals, testing software, and “demo instructions.” There are even target packs for democratic countries in Europe and other U.S. allies. Maui (product names tend toward alluring warm-weather locales) is a package of 25 zero-day exploits that runs clients $2.5 million a year. The Cayman botnet-analytics package gets you access to a database of Internet addresses, organization names, and worm types for hundreds of millions of infected computers, and costs $1.5 million. A government or other entity could launch sophisticated attacks against just about any adversary anywhere in the world for a grand total of $6 million...
          Endgame’s price list may be the most important document in the collection. If the company were offering those products only to American military and intelligence agencies, such a list would be classified and would never have shown up in the HBGary e-mails, according to security experts. The fact that a nonclassified list exists at all—as well as an Endgame statement in the uncovered e-mails that it will not provide vulnerability maps of the U.S.—suggests that the company is pitching governments or other entities outside the U.S.

Obviously not people with whom one should fuck, an organization peopled of course with ex-intelligence officials and systems analysts, connected at the highest levels. Of course, if a regular citizen were to engage in this behavior, he would be branded public enemy #1. However, I guess, since Endgame makes millions from its activities, and since its executives know the right people, it is allowed to conduct business unimpeded.
          Following the raids, Brown was taken into custody, and as previously noted faces over 100 years in prison, a sentence far in excess of those handed other hacktivists and journalists who had engaged in similar activities (see also this Guardian article). What are the charges? Is he being charged under the Espionage Act? The Cyber Crime Protection Security Act? Yet he did not engage in the actual hacking, instead simply disseminating information and analyzing data. So: no. Neither. Brown is being charged with credit fraud, because somewhere in the 5,000,000 Stratfor emails were a few unencrypted credit card numbers. 

          And here lies the real import of Brown's situation. 
          Despite the fact that Brown never directly profited from his activities, certainly not by exploiting the credit information in the emails, despite the fact that all he did was paste a link to the information in a private channel, and despite the fact that no verifiable fraud has occurred in connection with these activities, he is facing over a lifetime in jail.
          This prosecution is not about credit fraud. It is solely about the activities in which he engaged in his function as an investigative journalist and activist. It is about whom he knows. It is about whom he has helped and those he has outed as criminals, those who have felt pressure and who have been exposed due to his work promoting truth and fighting corruption, the criminal activities of the nations largest private corporations, government contractors, and the government itself. It is about his efforts to combat the disinformation and lies aimed at legitimate journalists and designed to hide the truth of government and private illegality from the public.
          According to Glenn Greenwald, "the pending federal prosecution of 31-year-old Barrett Brown poses all new troubling risks. That's because Brown - who has been imprisoned since September on a 17-count indictment that could result in many years in prison - is a serious journalist who has spent the last several years doggedly investigating the shadowy and highly secretive underworld of private intelligence and defense contractors, who work hand-in-hand with the agencies of the Surveillance and National Security State in all sorts of ways that remain completely unknown to the public. It is virtually impossible to conclude that the obscenely excessive prosecution he now faces is unrelated to that journalism and his related activism." And although Greenwald is one whom Brown had actively tried to aid and protect, he is nonetheless correct in his assessment.
          The draconian nature of Brown's prosecution is in direct proportion to the threat those in power, their subsidiaries and contractors, perceive not in Brown's behavior per se, but in that of every investigative journalist and activist, current or potential, with ramifications that could very well define the greater information sharing environment itself.
          It is clear to me, as I am sure it is clear to you, that this case represents the prospect of a political and legal climate in which people will simply be too scared to spread this sort of essential information, too scared to share links to sites that may or may not link "sensitive" information. No one man can scan millions of emails himself and determine which contain information like credit card account numbers. All Brown did was bring the veritable mountain of emails to the attention of ProjectPM members, with the sole intent of their aiding him in dissecting and analyzing the data, which of course would be a necessary first step in determining which emails are relevant to the public good, which are irrelevant fluff, and which may contain things like credit card numbers. That the DOJ is bringing this case against Brown under the pretext of credit fraud, when there was no actual fraud to begin with, is shameful. It is dangerous. And the precedent it will set if successful could be used against hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people, stifling the general discourse and enabling those who prefer their illegalities to go unmentioned to continue as they please.
          We need people like Brown, with the will and energy, the connections and ability, to get this information into the hands of those who can present it to the public in a comprehensible format. We need people like Brown to help ensure that our democracy is protected, to ensure that legitimate journalists are not discredited with fallacious information, to ensure that the nations largest banks, the largest tax evaders, the biggest corrupters of our republic and way of life itself, are not able to manipulate the flow of information and public awareness to their own benefit and to Our detriment.
          His is a case not as high profile as those of Manning or Asange; he has not drawn the media coverage of Snowden. Yet Barret Brown, an ordinary man who took it upon himself, to the best of his abilities, to see that the people of this nation and the world will not be hoodwinked, who was not afraid to deal with shadowy organizations like Anonymous, who put himself in the line of fire so that the people will know... His is perhaps the most important case of all.
          Brown represents the real possibility that normal people, not just army intelligence officers or data analysts for private government contractors, can actually hit Our enemies where it hurts, in their secrets. This is why he is being targeted in this absurd way, with these absurd charges. 
          His name is Barret Brown, and his fate may very well hold that of our republic itself.

          Information is Power. Knowledge is Power. Secrets must be brought to the light. And those who endeavor in the truth deserve our support. Brown faces life in prison because of actions he took in service to us all. We owe him the same.

update 07.13.13 : The ProjectPM website has become unresponsive as of this morning, likely due to increased interest in this matter in recent weeks. It was working just last night.
update 07.14.13 : ProjectPM is back in action.

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