Background: Barrett Brown is an American activist, author, and freelance writer/journalist. His work has appeared in the Guardian, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, Businessweek, True/Slant, Skeptical Inquirer and many other outlets. He has appeared as a guest on MSNBC, Fox News and Russia Today and as an interviewee in three recent documentary films: We Are Legion, Future Radicals, and Terms and Conditions May Apply.
He is the founder of Project PM, a distributed think-tank which researches and reports on matters related to the intelligence contracting industry. More recently, he has been misrepresented in the media as a spokesperson for the hacktivist collective known as Anonymous. He’s a co-author on Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny, and had been working on additional books, with topics such as the failures of American media punditry and the early history of Anonymous, while maintaining a blog. Previously, Barrett had served as Communications Director for Enlighten the Vote.
Although Barrett had a serious side, he was also noted for his irreverence and use of humor, satire and hyperbole, demonstrated through writings for National Lampoon and The Onion and is often described as a modern-day Hunter S. Thompson.
Having previously been raided by the FBI on March 6, 2012 and not arrested or charged, on September 12, 2012 Barrett Brown was again raided and this time arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was online participating in a Tinychat session. He was subsequently denied bail and detained without charge and adequate medical treatment for over two weeks while in the custody of US Marshals. In the first week of October 2012, he was finally indicted on three counts. related to alleged activities or postings on popular websites such as Twitter and YouTube.
On December 4, 2012 Barrett was indicted by a federal grand jury on twelve additional counts related to data from the Stratfor breach. Despite his lack of direct involvement in the operation and stated opposition to it, he faces these charges simply for allegedly pasting a hyperlink online. On January 23rd, 2013 he was indicted a third time on two more counts, relating to the March 2012 FBI raid(s) on his apartment and his mother’s house.
After some of the worst charges were dropped, Barrett entered a guilty plea to 3 counts for which he now faces 8.5 years max in prison. He is currently detained in Seagoville, TX while awaiting sentencing, which will occur on January 22, 2015.