But Brown’s defense attorneys portrayed him as an investigative journalist who posted a link to stolen data that was already in the public domain, as a way of exposing corporate wrongdoing. They said Brown exaggerated his role in the underground hacking group Anonymous and took credit for activities he played no role in.
I spent a minute talking with BB shortly after the HBGary silliness. I was hanging around for the OpKochBlock and the Wisconsin silliness. He was always in IRC, literally all day at the ready. Really friendly and he always answered private queries. A huge bullshitter though.
Right after the HBGary Federal hack, tons of anons started pouring through the emails. It wasn't until after it was discovered that there were a bunch of juicy shady shit in the emails that BB began to 'organize and direct people'. That's around the time he changed his ProjectPM from some weird obscure ArabSpring operation (some African country, Tunisia or something), to a project that focused on the shady tech "security" corporations. A noble cause if you ask me.
The fact that he asked me to join his "team" with ProjectPM a week prior, only to give it a complete face lift a couple weeks later set off my bullshit alarms. He was always talking about doing great things, but couldn't seem to get any of his ideas the go viral enough for Anon to notice. He struck me as a fame seeker (namefag) so I distanced myself a bit.
BB was an opportunist with a silver tongue. By the time he 'organized and lead' anything HBGary related, it had already been done by Anons. They already spread the information widely, had a working keyword searchable index, and had already gleamed from the emails most of the shitty shit HBGary was up to. All BB did was encourage everyone to put it on his Wikipage (and they did) and then tried to persuade Anons to target other security firms (Booze Allen, Endgame). That's when I left, destroyed my hard drive, and he got goaded into his current situation by the FBI led Lulzsec Stratfor hack. A shame really.
BB also stopped a false-flag operation on a Westboro Baptist Church honeypot, and also was responsible for chasing away some of the first OWS organizers when they were trying to organize #dayofrage that eventually spawned OWS; because he was worried that it would attract the feds. Ironic.. :(