05/06/13 – Christian Stork – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
Our first guest today is Christian Stork.
He is a reporter for WhoWhatWhy at whowhatwhy.com.
Welcome back to the show, Christian.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, thanks.
How are you doing, Scott?
I'm doing great.
Appreciate you joining us today.
Who's Barrett Brown?
Well, this will begin a very long story for your listeners, but Barrett Brown is a man currently in detention right now in Dallas, Texas, facing charges that accrue up to over 100 years.
These are three separate indictments, one for threatening a federal officer using an online video over YouTube, but the other for linking to a cache of emails that had been stolen by the hacker group Anonymous, which Brown was just analyzing as a journalist, and the third one for obstruction of justice for hiding evidence in a raid conducted on his house.
Now, ostensibly, these charges are not related to his work as a journalist except for the linking aspect, although the government seems to claim in that charge that he was somehow part of the hack or facilitating illegal work that came out of the hack.
That being said, he was not part of the hack quite explicitly, and he had advocated publicly that the supposed illegal activity that the government was claiming he had part in, which was the use of private credit card information of people that was listed in the emails, he had explicitly advocated against doing that, much to the chagrin of Anonymous members.
So his entire rap sheet at this point is ostensibly unrelated to his work as a journalist, but it's his work as a journalist which seems to be so interesting to the government, largely because the trove of data he was analyzing and dissecting had to deal with cybersecurity firms who do heavy work for the federal government and basically their ability to sell themselves to other private companies as a sort of dirty trick squad that can sabotage their enemies and engage in PR operations and other sordid deeds, some of them illegal, some not, basically at the behest of the largest bidder.
All right, now, so there's a lot there.
Let's start, let's go back to the credit card information there.
That seems an important thing.
We're talking about Barrett Brown.
He was the sort of pseudo half unofficial spokesman for Anonymous, which itself is an unofficial, not real sort of a thing, just a name of a lot of different people who come and go and, you know, are internet activists and hackers and such.
Now, so on the question of this credit card information, this is obviously, you know, a very serious charge, but you're saying that other than just the fact that he had actually recommended publicly, recommended against including that information in the hack or in the leak of the hack or whatever, however you, I don't know all the terminology, but you're saying also that best you can tell there really is no evidence that he was involved in that.
This looks to you like just the prosecutors trying to add on charges, but you don't think they even have a case for the credit card charge at all.
Is that right?
And again, you're not this guy's best friend or something.
You're a reporter on this.
Yeah, I mean, I'm not his best friend, but I think it's clear in the way the government is pursuing not just his case, but other cybersecurity cases of recent import that there's a large gray area in U.S. cybersecurity law that is being exploited by the government to oppress a lot of these people in ways that I don't think is dignified.
So I may not be his best friend, but I think it's quite clear from the facts I report that the case is specious at best.
Now regarding the credit card information, that information, I mean, whatever Broward Brown's intent was in linking to that information, now keep in mind, he didn't link exactly to that information specifically, nor did he link to the overall trove of emails because the trove of emails itself was so vast that it had been broken up into separate files by Anonymous before being released online.
Now what he did was copied a link to a certain segment of that trove, which contained credit card information, but not exclusively.
It also contained a whole bunch of other information, but the user data, Anonymous members had recommended that people look at the user data and basically contribute to charities of their choice using the credit card information of people who had some sort of client relationship with Strat or a private intelligence firm.
Oh, excuse me.
Yeah, this is actually from a different link because the charges against Barry Brown are so convoluted.
The Project PM itself was studying a trove of emails from a private security firm known as HBGary, but within the indictment itself, the link to the credit card information, because Project PM had expanded beyond that initial trove of emails and into basically an investigation of the private security intelligence industry that has exploded since 9-11.
And as part of that investigation, they had released or they were studying a bunch of information that had been obtained from the private security firm Stratfor.
Now Stratfor is sort of like a CIA or a wannabe CIA for rich corporate clients.
It really doesn't do much except for publicly funded, or excuse me, not publicly funded, publicly sourced documentation.
It's really no more different than what you would get if you put a bunch of reporters and a Google search engine in the same room.
But either way, the user data of clients, the credit card information, was part of a link that Brown had copied from a chatroom into another chatroom, to the other chatroom being a Project PM chatroom, which itself was a chatroom where journalists and activists like Barrett Brown congregated to help form this investigative effort, Project PM.
Now he has publicly stated that he was not fond of the idea of using the credit card information.
He never advocated against it, and apparently that should be confirmed through the court proceedings as the court investigates his online communications.
But that remains to be seen as the trial itself hasn't really reached any sort of discovery stage.
Right.
And now on the threat, if somebody watches the video of Barrett Brown talking to the FBI agent, looking into the camera, addressing the FBI agent that he uploaded, you might shade your eyes and shake your head and think, oh no, young man, that was a stupid thing to do.
But, and however, it is clear, is it not, that in context, his threats were not to actually physically harm anyone.
When he said the word, I forgot if it was destroy or what, what he meant was, I'm gonna basically do a level 10 Google search on your ass and put all your personal information up on the internet where anybody can find it.
That's his version of a violent attack, and that's hardly a felon to threaten to do that to a federal agent, correct?
Yeah, that's exactly how it, that's exactly how it looks on the surface of things.
I mean, to anybody who's under 30 who has a vague understanding of how internet jargon works, particularly among this, you know, hacker-esque community, what Barry Brown was advocating was doxing the FBI agent, which is shorthand for, basically exactly as you had mentioned, finding out everything you can about this person and publicly releasing it so that they feel unsafe or, you know, at worst, somebody could, you know, who even knows?
But doxing itself has been done multiple times to many other people, and it certainly doesn't reach the threshold for a felony threat against a federal officer.
Now, also, as you indicated, the word he used was destroy, and he was quite brazen in his language.
Like, again, as you said, the eye roll is certainly something that would accompany anybody who had viewed the video.
But that being said, you know, the level of, the fact that it's raised the level of a felony threat against a federal officer seems quite deliberately to be, have been a pretext for the FBI to initially hold him, which they did as part of a criminal complaint before they eventually levied charges a few weeks later.
And then, well, I'm sorry, because I know that you don't have a whole lot of time, and there are new developments to actually cover here, but it is such a good review of the case so far.
I want to go ahead and get to the obstruction on the laptops, too.
I mean, it sounds to me like mostly this is a charge of, you're under arrest for resisting arrest here.
Is it even clear that he hid laptops, or did the cops just not find them when they broke into his house?
You know, that remains unclear, and also the problem with analyzing a story like this is that so often the facts as we know them come out at trial, and currently what we have is just two different narratives.
We have the government narrative and we have Barrett's personal narrative, both of which, well, Barrett's narrative seems to be more corroborated by personal friends and those who were involved with him at the time.
Now, the laptop obstruction centers around the fact that during an initial raid on his house, back way before the video, it's actually what spawned the ire that is seen in the video, he had fled to his mother's house during the raid.
They approached him at his mother's house.
They did not have a search warrant for the mother's house initially.
They asked him if he had brought anything from his home to his mother's.
He said no.
They then came back to the mother's house with a warrant and found out that he had lied, that he did bring a laptop to his mother's.
Now, new developments have actually occurred on that front.
The mother just settled with the government approximately about a month ago that she pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction because they eventually did go after her and it remains unclear to what level she's cooperating in the case against her son, whether she's doing it perhaps so that he'll be given some degree of leniency in the prosecution.
Who knows?
But either way, the entire obstruction charge on that front seems fairly specious as well.
Man, alright.
So now, well, let's still put off the new developments a little bit more to the heart of why they're doing this to him.
You can talk about the website he was building for sifting through the uncovered information or whatever it is.
Why are they so hot to get Barrett Brown?
You know, I'm hesitant to speculate on that matter because the whole nature of the investigation is centered around evidence that the government claims that he somehow agreed to the government through these actions.
And so, you know, until it's proven that that isn't the case, I'm going to just lend the government the benefit of the doubt and say perhaps they actually did feel threatened or felt that a serious violation of criminal law occurred.
But that being said, the way governments around the world and also particularly in the U.S., largely since the WikiLeaks State Department memos were leaked, that you've seen a concerted effort by central power authorities across the world to clamp down on what they see as Internet activism.
Now, Brown's case, as you mentioned, revolves around showing the private-public partnership between large corporate firms and the government and in particular on the Internet through the cybersecurity industry.
And, you know, if you talk to any cybersecurity expert, they'll tell you that being a hacker and being a cybersecurity expert are one and the same, which kind of explains how there's this fault line developing on the Internet between hackers, activists on one end and cybersecurity experts on the other.
Because to be a cybersecurity expert, you only have to point out the flaws in a current security system, which involves, in itself, hacking.
So the skills for both professions are relatively similar.
Now, Brown, the way he was exposing that data clearly retained the ire of much of the companies in his crosshairs, much of the cybersecurity firms, which, frankly, you know, before I read and logged on to Project PM, I had never even heard of.
And now some of which remain household names, which, if they're not household names, they definitely should be because they are on the forefront of not only Internet monitoring techniques, but techniques used to manipulate other people over the Internet, whether it's through PR operations such as stock puppeting, where digital accounts are created on social media networks to make it seem as if there's popular public pressure for a certain policy or a certain initiative, as well as data mining, which is, you know, I'm sure to your listeners is nothing alien in terms of how the government can mine data from the Internet about us.
And the real question is, with these cybersecurity firms, the real question is, how are they able to access our data as private citizens and then sell their services to the highest bidder, whether in the private sphere or in the public sphere?
Right.
Well, and of course, the richer you are, the more capital behind your project and the more connected to the government you are, the more impunity you have for that kind of thing, right?
I mean, that's really the difference between a hacker and a cybersecurity expert, right, is one's got a government contract.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
That's the real difference.
Well, man.
So, now, the judge, what, confiscated his defense fund?
The money that he'd raised for his defense but then changed her mind about that?
Is that correct?
Yeah, the judge initially issued a order to confiscate about $20,000 that Brown had raised for his defense.
The only question where it gets legally gray is whether the judge even had the authority to do that confiscation in the first place.
Now, the funds had been solicited by an outsider who is currently, you know, running the Free Barrett Brown Twitter handle and basically the fight, aside from the legal counsel he's retained, he's more or less pioneering that fight and he had raised the money and it was held in an outside account with no connection to Brown Somehow, on a sealed financial affidavit which was presented to the court and prepared by Brown's public defender, the $20,000 were listed as part of Brown's finances.
It seems pretty natural for the judge to ask for Brown to use that money to pay for his public defender because, you know, people only receive help from a public defender if they believe that they can't afford a proper defense.
So, by seizing those funds, the government, I believe, sought to hamper his ability to mount a real defense because they were going to have to use those funds to pay the public defender for what he had already done and, as I mentioned, the financial affidavit, which lists the funds So, there's a whole lot of court politics going on in terms of different motivations for different players but it remains unclear whether the public defender listed that in the finances to have a nice payday or whether there was collaboration with the prosecution beforehand All that remains unclear, but luckily Brown was able to head it off the path by soliciting new counsel by the time that the hearing occurred to deal with those funds which was May 1st, just this past week and the new counsel because Brown, it's a counsel of his choice, he clearly has the prerogative to spend his defense money there and so doesn't even have the judge basically toss the motion by the prosecution to seize those funds and spend them on the original public defender Well, that's good, Elise I don't know I know it's silly to nowadays use this phrase, but still to me deep down somewhere it just feels un-American to me to have the entire national government's justice department up against an individual and then take his lawyer money away Come on, man, you're going to win anyway You can charge him with mail fraud for opening the box and accepting a coupon that somebody sent him for crying out loud They can do whatever they want with this guy At least let him have his measly $20,000 worth of lawyers, please Come on Yeah, well actually I hesitate to jump on to that synopsis for just one reason You said clearly that they're going to win but Brown's new defense counsel should at least provide some sort of spotlight on his case for the broader media to get involved and to highlight Oh yeah, how's that?
...of U.S. rendition to third world countries where his clients were allegedly tortured by security services, which we all know the allegedly doesn't even need to be added, but just for to be legally safe.
And then the other attorney which has even more of a public cred is Charles Swift Now Charles Swift is the former lieutenant commander in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the Navy, where he was the defense attorney for Salim Hamdan who was Osama Bin Laden's accused driver and in 2006 he successfully sued the U.S. government and earned a judgment from the Supreme Court of the United States that the military commissions as they were currently crafted at that time were illegal and violated the principle of habeas corpus.
This is the famous Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld decision which I would like to think gave many civil libertarians a degree of hope during the Bush years when it just seemed like it was a one way path down the road to arbitrary detention and not even any due process even though the military commissions are obviously very flawed but that being said, Swift has a great record of representing the least defended, most hated prisoners currently in American custody and his choice to take on the Barrett-Brown case I think lends credence to the concerns that people like myself and Glenn Greenwald and others have been voicing which is that the Barrett-Brown prosecution is extremely dangerous not just for the freedom of journalists to investigate as they see forward but also in the ability of the American people to know what their government is doing to know what have very powerful security firms that contract with the government are doing and basically their right to know, essentially Well, and you know, yeah, like you're saying put yourself in this guy's shoes, the lawyer's shoes he figures it's a high profile case, he's going to get his face in the newspaper and on TV and he's going to kick the government's butt that's why he took the case because this is going to be fun, right?
Well, I mean I guess the relative term there, but Yeah, I mean for a defense lawyer Yeah, exactly It remains unclear how much he's going to get paid because as even Judge Stickney ruled at the May 1st hearing about the funds the court case itself is certainly going to cost upwards of $100,000 for Brown's defense so, you know, the notion that a defense team would take a case like this because it's fun and easy I think that remains I don't think that's exactly the case I think he took it because of the civil liberties concerns that it presents and because potentially it could carve out some sort of definite case law some sort of definite precedent setting trial in terms of cyber security law because that remains an extremely gray I think the government's case against Barry Brown itself is still an uphill battle for his defense team, but luckily with this sort of name recognition, he should be able to get the media attention on it that he deserves Right, yeah, you know I sure was pleased when I read your piece and saw that he's got such high profile lawyers as you mentioned that Homdan case is, you know, world historical where the Supreme Court put a limit on Bush and Rumsfeld's ability to just kidnap and imprison people and definitely at least they get one hearing before a judge in a black robe, right?
Not that Obama honors those decisions for all the injustices of the current American justice system, you know, a judge in a black robe provides a whole lot of due process for defendants as we just saw this past week, Paul, Kevin Curtis Kevin Paul Curtis, I forget the exact name this accused rice and mailer from Mississippi was essentially the DOJ sought to hold him quite arbitrarily when they knew their case was falling against them because they knew they had to put up a boogeyman for the media to clap their hands and say, wow, the FBI is doing its job but when the case was falling apart the FBI then sought to hold him for psychiatric evaluation and then for a whole slew of other reasons and a judge just dismissed it and said you can't do that so as stacked as the current American justice system is against criminal defendants, I'd like to think that even that one showing of a judge is such a crucial part of due process in America and Charles Swift is someone that we have to thank for that at least in the past decade of horrible atrocities being committed against constitutional rights right, yeah, absolutely, absolutely heroic and you know, just think about that too that the FBI is that concerned about their image that when they know they got the wrong guy, they'd rather clamp down than admit they got the wrong guy it takes a judge to stop them yeah, that's exactly right the government is always convinced in their usually in their initial case work and then even afterwards, it's always a PR op and that's why we have independent judges and independent courts who can overrule them and which that explains exactly why this whole notion of due process contained within the executive branch regarding drones and any whole other slew of national security concerns that explains exactly why that itself is a farce that it's a contradiction in terms that you can't have due process within the same agency that is pressing the charges, that is to say they can't adjudicate the case themselves when they clearly have a stake in it and I think that's something that we should be extremely thankful for in terms of how that's remained the case in U.S. criminal courts alright everybody, that's Christian Stork from whowhatwhy.com, thanks very much appreciate it, thank you very much Scott hey y'all, Scott Horton here for the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org CNI stands against America's negative role in the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict, the war party's relentless push to bomb Iran and the roles played by twisted Christian Zionism and neocon-engineered Islamophobia in justifying it all the Council for the National Interest works tirelessly to expose and oppose our government's most destructive policies but they can't do it without you support CNI's push to straighten out America's crooked course, check out the Council for the National Interest at councilforthenationalinterest.org and click donate under about us at the top of the page, that's councilforthenationalinterest.org hey y'all, Scott here.
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