Anonymous spokesman Barrett Brown faces new charges

Barrett Brown, a self-proclaimed spokesman for Anonymous, has been hit with new charges by authorities in Texas for concealing evidence.

It's the third round of charges in a case that his former attorney describes as an attempt to silence the outspoken and provocative activist.

"Clearly they're more worried about what they perceive as his egging people on to go after defence contractors and secret spy organisations," says Brown's former attorney Jay Leiderman. "Barrett believes in privacy for individuals and transparency for corporations and government. The government doesn't like his belief system. And Barrett was effective in expressing that belief system."

Brown is being charged with two counts of obstruction, which stem from a raid on his apartment in March 2012. According to the indictment, Brown "did knowingly and corruptly conceal and attempt to conceal records, documents, and digital data contained on two laptop computers." He was aided and abetted by someone the indictment refers to as "KM," who is believed to be his mother.

In an  account of that raid that Brown posted online last year, he described going to his mother's residence after suspecting the feds might be planning to raid his apartment. Three FBI agents arrived at his mother's residence seeking additional evidence.

"They told me that they'd executed a search warrant at my apartment and that the door had been broken in the process," Brown wrote in the account, "and then asked me if I had any laptops with me here at my mom's place that I wanted to give them. I responded in the negative, and they left."

According to Brown, the agents gave him a document saying in part that they were seeking records pertaining to Anonymous and to HBGary, a security firm that got hacked in 2011 by members of Anonymous.

Leiderman says that authorities did get the laptops "and they got them with some reasonable ease. This was not a mastermind of hiding things. Which makes these charges all the more absurd and unnecessary."

It's the third round of charges for the troubled 31-year-old, who was arrested last September in a second and dramatic raid that was captured live by a laptop web camera that was in the apartment where he was seized. The raid occurred while Brown and a woman identified by some as his girlfriend were participating in a TinyChat session online with other individuals.

The raid came after Brown posted a long and rambling YouTube video in which he talked about taking drugs and about retaliating against an FBI Agent named Robert Smith after he learned that his mother might be hit with obstruction of justice charges over the laptops. Brown threatened to "dox" the agent, by posting his address and other details online.

After his arrest, Brown was charged with making internet threats, conspiracy to make publicly available restricted personal information of a federal employee and retaliation against a federal law enforcement officer.

"So that's why Robert Smith's life is over," Brown said in the video he published. "When I say his life is over, I'm not saying I'm going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids," he said to the camera.

The video, titled "Why I'm Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith Part Three: Revenge of the Lithe" was accompanied by a note apparently posted by Brown that read: "Send all info on Agent Robert Smith to barriticus@gmail.com so FBI can watch me look up his kids. It's all legal, folks, Palantir chief counsel Matt Long already signed off on it when Themis planned worse."

Brown was  charged a second time in December for activity related to the hack in 2011 of intelligence firm Stratfor Global Intelligence.

He was charged with possessing and transmitting credit card numbers that were stolen in the hack. The charges stem from a link that he allegedly posted directing people to a cache of documents stolen from Stratfor. According to the indictment, that link constituted trafficking in "stolen authentication features." He was also charged with possessing stolen credit card numbers.

Brown has been in jail since his September arrest. A magistrate denied bail and Brown's legal team has not appealed the decision.

Leiderman notes that all of the charges filed against Brown have him facing now a possible maximum sentence of 100 years "for making YouTube videos, sharing a link and supposedly trying to hide two laptops."

"I would have thought in the wake of Aaron Swartz that the government might have learned something and might have thought twice about bringing the weight of the entire United States down upon someone when it wasn't warranted," says Leiderman.

Leiderman is referring to the case of 26-year-old coder and activist Aaron Swartz who recently committed suicide. His death is being attributed in part to the despair he felt over a looming federal criminal trial he was facing on hacking and fraud charges. The charges stemmed from Swartz allegedly downloading millions of academic articles from the JSTOR subscription database for free in order to release them to the public.

Source: Wired.com