I sympathize with Barret Brown; the NY times article unfortunately is rife with the attitude that 'journalists' (as in 'the class of people that gets that special 1st Amendment protection 'of the press') have certain characteristics or accreditations - whereas, his actions should be protected by the 1st amendment regardless of whether or not he is a journalist.
<i>"The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden..."</i><p><i>"...are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it."</i><p>I find the choice of the verb "steal" rather bizarre, particularly given the slant of this article. If leaking information is theft, then the <i>New York Times</i> is a frequent recipient and trafficker of stolen goods. I'm not necessarily <i>criticizing</i> their decision to steal the Pentagon Papers, but I think it would be cool if they returned them.
> <i>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...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.</i><p>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.
Why does this feel like Aaron Swartz all over again? In this case, I'm not even sure I see the crime, but in both cases the government chose to jump on "people they didn't like".
Single page:<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/business/media/a-journalist-agitator-facing-prison-over-a-link.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/09/business/media/a-journalis...</a>
These types of articles are depressing to me because they mask what could be a good moral and legal question behind claims which border on dishonest.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>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 <i>all</i> the beans, and what links <i>were</i> posted by the newspapers were to documents that the newspapers screened for safety instead of a link to "all the goods".<p>But certainly the papers wouldn't publish credit card numbers of victims of an identity theft scheme, would they?<p>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.<p>There <i>is</i> 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.<p>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".
The new Rolling Stone has a pretty decent (long) article about Barrett Brown: <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/barrett-brown-faces-105-years-in-jail-20130905" rel="nofollow">http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/barrett-brown-faces...</a>
I suggest representing "dangerous links" as numbers. use goo.gl or bitly, get the URL. turn it into a hex, turn it into one long integer. turn that integer into a series of simple mathematical equations involving additional and multiplication. one day the government is going to have to outlaw even simple numbers if they want to restrict information.
Yes that was a mistake on his part you should never threaten you should only do. Back on topic...<p>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.<p>My America how far you have fallen.