Barrett Brown sentenced to 63 months in prison

"the far left"

While some of his defenders are on the left, some are right-wing libertarians, and I don't think it's really reasonable to make shallow politicized generalizations about who his supporters are. For the record, I am very far to the left and while I think the sentence was a bit over the top, I don't think he was innocent or was a noble person. I'd also like to see all the lizard squad kids (including Omari) nailed hard, and find Ulbricht despicable. I liked Mitnick when I met him, though.

To downvoters: the truth hurts, doesn't it?

Oh yes but you may have left out some context forming the basis of comparison, that the hack was breaking password hashes. Which were broken by Hector "sabu" Monseignor (sp?), who was taking orders from the FBI at the time and using FBI resources to break those hashes. Actual criminal conspiracy before the fact. Charges for that? I haven't heard of them, have you? What should the sentence for that criminal conspiracy be? What charges should be trumped up to get a plea? Or should the charges be left at none, because, um?

If you do put it in the context of nobody involved in the criminal conspiracies exposed at HBGary being charged let alone convicted, for example, you can't really pretend this is anything remotely resembling blind justice.

But yeah, the hack of stratfor didn't do anyone any real damage other than really shining a light on the snouts in the trough of "security consulting" in Washington. Those bozos were getting paid(!) but they leaked emails in the hack suggesting there was nothing to Assange's rape accusation. You can't leak that opinion if you're getting paid in Washington, it's counter to message. Makes everyone on the gravy train nervous. Bad for business.

The "justification" of this sentence, significantly more draconian than wealthy child rapists, like Epstein, whose deal was a very different one, still has this epic, horrendous, penetrating stench of "there is not one law for everybody in this land, the system is completely bent and nobody really believes otherwise."

Are you ok with it? I'm not really ok with it myself because revolutionary change is a horrendous thing, but it's what happened the world over if reform of endemic corruption is stopped. Ask someone from a country that has done that, they aren't nice stories for ordinary people.

But Holder isn't going to let police confiscate your property and money without charges anymore. Maybe. Perhaps. Holder decided just now in the land of the free. So there's that, right?

oh and while we're dealing with opinion 1) what journalist following the story wouldn't email HBGary? Who wouldn't tease a criminal organisation to get more information about the conspiracy in which they were involved? It's a massive story. 2) Incoherent rant, significantly less threatening than the plea bargain. He looks a mess and incapable of tying his shoes. I have trouble believing anyone would be scared by that. But interesting in the light of the number of death threats we see from people not in that state in the media, no? But the people receiving the death threats aren't liked by those with their snouts in so they're probably more credible so we need to let those go because Free Speech. 3) Warrant to search his reporting notes after he'd exposed the crooks. How do you feel about that? I'm not sure I'm entirely comfortable with it. What did they find when they searched? Well this was the best charges they could make stick and could only do that with plea bargain blackmail doubled down with frankly ridiculous sentencing. Pretty weak huh?

I haven't seen anything suggesting his intent was anything other than altruistic, nor anything to suggest the results of his actions unintended or otherwise were damaging to anyone who isn't crooked. But that last bit is just "my opinion" and what I really object to is the law being applied unfairly and unequally. The people running Sabu at the FBI, HBGary, Stratfor and all those highly paid, consultants in washington will disagree with me that he should have been found guilty and let go on time served with some mixed words from the bench, some praise for intent, some praise for result and some admonishment for recklessness.

> ...so by implication you're saying it's immoral to enforce laws against all lesser offenses...

After reading and re-reading the rest of this subthread, I think there's an error here. I don't see that shit_parade was saying that; they were just expressing frustration at what appears to be disproportionate resources dedicated to prosecuting the likes of Barrett Brown vs. resources dedicated to prosecuting state-sponsored torturers.

(For the record, I recognize that all moral issues aside, prosecuting state-sponsored torturers is a lot harder than prosecuting someone like Barrett Brown.)

I don't see anything in their comment that implied the morality of enforcing laws against lesser offenses.

Or maybe more clearly: "I wish those in power guilty of torture would be punished" is not quite the same as, "Those in power guilty of torture should be punished before anyone else is".

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.