"...are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it."
I find the choice of the verb "steal" rather bizarre, particularly given the slant of this article. If leaking information is theft, then the New York Times is a frequent recipient and trafficker of stolen goods. I'm not necessarily criticizing their decision to steal the Pentagon Papers, but I think it would be cool if they returned them.
If the information can be considered newsworthy then there are several legal protections that kick in that make getting convictions difficult and the government isn't likely to bother. Especially if it would hurt the mutually beneficial relationship between government and the news media.
Brown has done things that put him outside of mainstream news media, many of these actions were quite illegal. He's not in trouble for sharing leaked documents. He's in trouble for sharing credit card numbers and information that can be used for identity theft. I'm pretty sure that type of information is not newsworthy and not for sharing.
If he had scrubbed that information then I would imagine there wouldn't be an issue. That and stop threatening FBI agents.
I was surprised to see Aaron Swartz's name not mentioned once...the parallels between Brown's and Swartz's cases -- at least in the post-indictment phase and the seemingly disproportionate charges -- are hard to ignore.
Ridiculous max sentences which almost never happen do not work well together with plea bargains.
I get why people are concerned with plea bargains, but I don't understand why people think that defense attorneys are not familiar with the concept of federal sentencing guidelines. Even a public defender (especially a public defender?) should be able to explain the basics of sentencing to their client when their client is considering a plea.
Really?
http://www.righto.com/2013/09/9-hacker-news-comments-im-tire...
http://freebarrettbrown.org/fundraising-drive/
I don't know how far they've gotten in the meantime, but I'm happy to see this issue getting more attention.
Meanwhile, the new Project PM website --wiki.project-pm.org-- appears to be back up! I'm hoping to do some cross-referencing of the various releases of the past few years. See if anything has been missed or passed over.
Saying that the Feds are charging Barrett for the crime of "posting a URL" is like saying that the Norwegian police would be charging Breivik for "pulling a metal lever" hundreds of times. I mean sure, he did that, but that's not what the claimed "crime" is.
Imagine a guy gets passed the key to a storage locker by his friends, and is told that the storage locker holds stolen trade secrets, credit cards, etc. This guy had nothing to do with the theft itself, but he knows about it.
Let's say further that this guy duplicates the key and mails it to a gang to do with as they will. If providing that gang access to that locker is illegal then homeboy here has certainly "aided & abetted" in that behavior, even though he did nothing more himself than a) duplicating a key (normally legal) and b) using the mail (normally legal).
The author brings up the point that newspapers have to deal with this issue, but it's not really as much of an "issue" for them at all, as being passed classified data is not inherently illegal, and newspapers still make an effort to avoid printing information which would be dangerous if publically-available. Even the NYT/Guardian's recent reporting about NSA capabilities with regard to crypto didn't spill all the beans, and what links were posted by the newspapers were to documents that the newspapers screened for safety instead of a link to "all the goods".
But certainly the papers wouldn't publish credit card numbers of victims of an identity theft scheme, would they?
Likewise our intrepid, noble and completely objective storywriter uses the maximum legally-possible sentence as a FUD factor without so much as a single reference to the sentencing guidelines which would be used to determine an actual eventual sentence.
There is a question to be asked here: Should these types of forcibly-exfiltrated secrets have any special inherent legal protection? If no, then posting a link to that data should be fine (assuming no other legal protection category applies). If yes, then posting a link to protected data would certainly be a no-no.
The answer isn't obviously "no" either, by the way, otherwise our current protections against identity theft could hardly apply, not to mention the Privacy Act of 1974, medical record protections, etc. But it deserves a better answer than what we have now, which seems to be "throw whatever vague law might fit at it".
Because if not, then given the crimes he's been charged with (aside from those related to the threatening the FBI agent, of course), he doesn't have the mens rea to warrant a conviction, to my — IANAL — understanding.
(There's, I think, a further question in terms of whether or not, and to what extent, posting the URL to a chatroom intended presumably for the internal communications and coordination of Project PM counts as publishing them, but that's irrelevant to his mens rea.)
I can imagine, but it's not what happened. LulzSec shotgunned the release out onto the web, where everyone picked it up, not just Brown.
>Let's say further that this guy duplicates the key and mails it to a gang to do with as they will. If providing that gang access to that locker is illegal then homeboy here has certainly "aided & abetted" in that behavior,...
It isn't illegal. LulzSec is responsible for the release. Specifically, Jeremy Hammond has been charged and convicted with the actual crime of hacking into Stratfor and releasing the material. He was facing a life sentence and received 10 years and 2.5 million dollars in restitution upon pleading guilty. The liklihood that he could ever get that restitution dropped, via bankruptcy or other means, is minimal. Financially, he has effectively been given a life sentence. Brown no more aided and abetted anyone than Cryptome or any of the other numerous actors that linked to and received the link or, heaven forbid, downloaded the material, and yet Brown is facing punishment of similar magnitude to the guy who actually committed the crime.
>Likewise our intrepid, noble and completely objective storywriter uses the maximum legally-possible sentence as a FUD factor without so much as a single reference to the sentencing guidelines which would be used to determine an actual eventual sentence.
What typically happens is irrelevant. It shouldn't be possible for someone like Hammond to face life in prison, or Manning to face the death penalty, or Brown to face 105 years at all. To make that possible is to make a "lighter" sentence of 10 years for Hammond (and 2.5 million dollars), or 35 years for Manning, or 5 years for Brown, seem graciously reasonable. The constant whiny poo-pooing that "they won't really get that much," and cheeky linking to blog posts intended to inform the uninformed masses about the federal sentencing guidelines, is nothing more than noise. It truly intends to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
>There is a question to be asked here: Should these types of forcibly-exfiltrated secrets have any special inherent legal protection?
>The answer isn't obviously "no" either, by the way, otherwise our current protections against identity theft could hardly apply, not to mention the Privacy Act of 1974, medical record protections, etc.
It really is an obvious "no." Hacking into customer databases and pilfering the contents is a crime. A crime that has been tried in court with the accused convicted and serving time in prison. Once information is out in the clear, it makes absolutely zero sense to try and claim some sort of retroactive "special inherent legal protection." The protection already exists, with punishment for its violation. The crime is for putting documents into the clear, not propagating them, no matter their contents.
==========================================
http://cryptome.org/0005/stratfor-hack.htm
|
|->http://pastebin.com/f7jYf5Wd
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|->http://ibhg35kgdvnb7jvw.onion/lulzxmas/stratfor_full.tar.gz
This goes back to what I was saying about advocates being near to dishonesty, by the way. You probably read at some point Manning was facing the death penalty, and despite having years and years to correct your initial misperception, you continue to not only remember that incorrectly, but to parrot it as truth.
> Once information is out in the clear, it makes absolutely zero sense to try and claim some sort of retroactive "special inherent legal protection."
When Barrett pasted that link, was that information already publically available? I don't mean "a URL one could theoretically have wardialed"... did all the others in that IRC chat room already have that data, or did they not?
If that data were already out in public and he was simply referencing it I'd probably agree with your interpretation in this case. But if that data were 'news' to the rest of the chat room then it seems that 'hacking and pilfering' would apply, except that no hacking was needed in this case.
But either way involvement in criminal enterprises has always been itself a crime, to avoid diversion of responsibility in the way you would allow.
E.g. a bank robbery, the guy driving the getaway car gets in trouble too even though driving a car isn't illegal, otherwise you could split up your criminal ring in a kind of 'process separation' scheme and have only a few take the risk of the actual crime while the rest aid as much as they can with normally-legal activity.
How about inciting a lynch mob (you know, the kind that hang 'uppity' persons off of trees)? It's just speech, right?
I would point out that the charge itself doesn't have a problem with the link per se, as much as the data located at the link. If the link pointed to something completely innocuous (such as Wikipedia's front page) then even our overbearing prosecutor here would be laughed out of the courtroom if he tried filing charges.
So the take away from this is security by obscurity is now officially protected by law and linking to leaked information is illegal according to the government.
My America how far you have fallen.