Barrett Brown's sentence is unjust, but it may become the norm for journalists

[Panich52]

On January 22nd, investigative journalist Barrett Brown was sentenced to an obscene 63 months in prison, in part for sharing a hyperlink to a stolen document that he did not steal, and despite the fact that he was not guilty of a crime for linking to it. The attempt to paint merely linking to information as criminal has serious repercussions and represents a dangerous precedent for the practices of journalists. More troubling for press freedom, however, is the White House's proposed expansion of the CFAA, which will make it much easier for prosecutors to charge journalists with publishing hacked documents in the future.

http://boingboing.net/2015/01/26/barrett-browns-sentence-is.html

[msanthrope]

1. You do realize he pled, right? And threatening an FBI agent and his children

will get you time in the pokey.

Barrett could have gone to trial....but if you check out his YouTube vids, you'll see why he didn't.

[MADem]

2. He negotiated a plea deal. He decided to not take his chances in court.

The hearing followed a plea deal negotiated with prosecutors last spring, in which Brown agreed to plead guilty to charges related to threats he made in a YouTube video against an FBI agent named Robert Smith, as well as to a misdemeanor obstruction charge for attempting to conceal two laptops when FBI agents arrived at his mother’s home to execute a search warrant. A third charge, accessory after the fact, stemmed from an offer Brown made to the hacker Jeremy Hammond, to contact Stratfor to see if the firm wanted redactions of the hacked materials. Brown faced up to 8 ½ years in prison for these charges.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/17/barrett-brown-sentenced/

[woo me with science]

3. K&R