Put aside the rest of his character defects. The fact remains, if found guilty, this journalist-activist is going to serve more time FOR POSTING A LINK TO HACKED MATERIAL than the guy who actually did the hacking.
Hope and fucking change, everyone!
Because Mr. Brown has been closely aligned with Anonymous and various other online groups, some of whom view sowing mayhem as very much a part of their work, his version of journalism is tougher to pin down and, sometimes, tougher to defend.
But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents.
Journalists from other news organizations link to stolen information frequently. Just last week, The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica collaborated on a significant article about the National Security Agency’s effort to defeat encryption technologies. The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden, a private contractor working for the government who this summer leaked millions of pages of documents to the reporter Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian along with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post.
By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”
And the magnitude of the charges is confounding. Jeremy Hammond, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to participating in the actual hacking of Stratfor in the first place, is facing a sentence of 10 years.
Fascism is alive and well in Obama’s administration. They didn’t start the NSA police state, but they sure have embraced it.
There is no real justice from this administration.
And, while it’s obvious Obama is deeply paranoid, I’d love to know what made him this way….
However, for anyone who is on the Obama and his cronies’ shit list they’re liable to have the book thrown at them. Wow. What a sad, sad perosn to be our president.