Barrett Brown Was Charged for Linking to an Anonymous Website, While Covering the Stratfor Global Intelligence Case

Culture

Barrett Brown, a journalist covering Anonymous-related activities for news outlets like The Guardian, was slapped on Friday with 12 charges including linking, identity theft and fraud related to the Stratfor Global Intelligence hack — reported ReadWrite Social. 

According to Dallas News, the indictment reads, "in that Brown transferred the hyperlink 'http://wikisend.com/download/597646/stratfor_full_b.txt.gz' from the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel called '#AnonOps' to an IRC channel under Brown’s control called '#ProjectPM,' said hyperlink provided access to data stolen from the company Stratfor Global Intelligence, to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers."

ReadWrite Social claims that Brown, who allegedly is also writing a book about Anonymous, "shared a link that thousands of people have shared before him." And that "Brown is not charged with hacking into Stratfor [...] just linking." 

Read more on ReadWrite Social.