The War on Hacktivists: 100 Years in Prison?

The “most transparent administration” has now become the largest threat to whistleblowers the United States has ever seen. With the re-authorization of the FISA Amendments Act, the domestic surveillance state has gone into high gear against anyone wishing to expose government or corporate corruption.

We have heard about many of the most influential whistleblowers such as Bradley Manning and William Binney who revealed their information not to destroy the United States by aiding an enemy, but to protect the values upon which the United States was founded and help to ensure the freedom of those they were sworn to serve.

However, the case of Barrett Brown might be the most alarming yet.

The Anonymous collective of online hacktivists has become a serious thorn in the side of governments and corporations. One could argue that their activities are leading to a further clampdown on Internet freedom, and serve as nothing more than controlled opposition, but there are many factions and some are clearly doing their work in an effort to expose legitimate threats to privacy and freedom, such as the recent data leak showing that Bank of America is trolling the Internet.

Penalties for the release of such compromising information are entering the realm of the absurd and are clearly designed to stifle any thought of doing so. Barrett Brown is looking at over 100 years in prison for his alleged role in the Stratfor data dump. According to Christian Stork from WhoWhatWhy.org in his interview with Abby Martin below, Brown’s heinous activities include copying and pasting a chatroom link. What has resulted is nothing short of lunacy in any country claiming to be the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.