Barrett Brown is an American activist, author, and freelance writer/journalist. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Huffington Post, Businessweek, and many other outlets. He has appeared as a guest on MSNBC, Fox News and Russia Today.

On September 12, 2012 Barrett Brown was raided and arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was 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.

Read a full description at freebarrettbrown.org

#1

There was a reporter from Texas
Who found out some shit on Abraxas
They launched Tinychat
And sent in a rat
And swatted the guy's solar plexus

Be Carfeful What You Retweet

The world is divided into those that have heard about and care about Barrett Brown, and those who have not, and do not.  What is noticeable is that those that have heard of Barrett, really do care about him, and in unpicking his case, you come across many grown men and women (barriticus included) who become endlessly bogged down in the most ridiculous name-calling, paranoia and in-depth battles in what we may term as The Information Wars.

Caution! These are the kindah tweets that can land you ass in jail.

Hi everybody.  We all use Twitter, and we all know about how you get banned from it. 

But what do you have to tweet to get your house raided?

There's Twitter Jail — And There’s Federal Jail.

The articles here posted will encourage you to behave in a cooperative and unrevolutionary manner on social media, most especially Twitter, by showing you how a series of seemingly legal tweets can be combined into a portmanteau of sin, enough to have you sent to Texas jail.

These five articles will afford you the chance to examine Barrett Brown's tweets so you may be judge of his actions, although not his fate.  If you find what you read objectionable, please act, although don't tell anyone that I told you to go on a homicidal anti-Federal rampage.

The Internet loves Barrett Brown. The future loves him even more. #Anonfamily doesn't forget. Ever. All memory is made of love & pain.

(Tweet from @Pacific_Justice)

How to Get Arrested on Twitter

Getting arrested for tweeting has never been easier and once this case is done with, we’ll all be sharing recipes and knitting patterns — exactly what the Internet was designed for.

"Democrats do not fear Republicans who fear no Democrat, but both will learn to fear anarchists now that net gives us revenge."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skiybqany2E

Anyway, the logs that follow are from a day or 2 days before the raid (on Barrett Brown), please attract attention to what Barrett Brown was trying to reveal, I was a non anon and happy, and I was content talking to Topiary as friends on my phone and staying out of the war on the corruption infecting the US government, but thanks to this 'coincidence' I've been lead to this realization that they're trying to cover up what Barrett Brown was going to release.

 To mark the fact that Barrett Brown has been in prison for 300 days, I wanted to share some thoughts on that final tweet of his. Barrett's arrest was dramatic and its details become more pertinent every day.  Barrett's case is not unrelated to that of Edward Snowden, for example, because his work concerned private security contractors . . . until he was arrested.

The character Howard Beale at the end of the film Networkbreaks the rules of mainstream journalism by addressing his audience as real people. In a rousing final speech, Howard Beale played by Peter Finch, implores the viewers of his news show to see through the story to the truth of the situation.

Following the ill fated horror of The Clipper Chip, and the Communications Decency Act, Bill Clinton remarked in 1999:

'We are alreday seeing the first wave of deliberate cyber attacks - hackers breaking into business and government computers, stealing and detroying information, raiding bank accounts, running up credit card charges, extorting monyer by threats to unleash computer viruses.'

This portrayal of hackers as sociopaths and criminals is excatly what the haxor disliked.  Even then and still today, hackers are linked to technological failures, and as long ago as that, hackers were portrayed as the enemy of society. 

For example, it doesn't take a hacker to gain access to emails or other documents, as more often than not it is employees of companies who abuse their access and violate privacy.  Disgruntled employess, organised criminals, industrial spies and foreign or domestic intelligence operatives are not hackers, but the 'lone hacker' is something of a myth. 

Hackers are not the miscreants we are now led to belive they are, but over the years we've come to see this portrayal that anyone creating havoc on a computer network - is a hacker.  This then leads to the situation inn which the guys that DO do this sort of thing calling themselves hackers.  We can't award any evildoer with an internet connection the title of hacker.  Wea lready have too much ill-thought out legislation and unwarranted fear.

Rebel Evolution by Anna Zetchus Smith is a feature-length documentary divulging a political narrative that will be unfamiliar to most — activists from the far left who have through disillusionment, or in some cases, practical thinking and experience moved to the right.

Lest full blown conflict breaks about between the two camps however, there is a thread in Rebel Evolution which questions these stances to begin with, but the tendency of the film is to show how the group of activists questioned have through their own experience.

There are three stories here — that of Brandon Michael Darby who found far-left activism too violent when he began to become involved in such groups — Out and Proud Conservative Republican Kevin DuJan who suggest that he may have been pushed further right by the lack of tolerance he experienced when he mixed in more liberal and left wing circles — and  homeless activist Ted Hayes who suggest that having run the gamut of all political beliefs, from left to right.

Although ostensibly about Brandon Michael Darby, a former leftist turned FBI informant whose political journey has much to tell us about the nature of patriotism, activism, and freedom in contemporary America, there are others such as homeless advocate and activist Ted Hayes.

Christ knows what it's gunna be but there is something to be learned from our collective experience of the Westboro Baptist Church.  Armed with nothing other than hate and the masochistic desire to troll the fuck out of every living thing that ain't Westboro, they've achived global fame and the sort of Internet traffic most would be envious of.  Yep, for a group with only 40 members, Westboro has achieved a lot.

Who is Topiary? The exact identity of this mysterious figure from the darknet is unknown to all but the most hardcore of the popo who have been interrogating various teenagers and informants on the subject since 1971, when the internet began.

Still, with extreme hacking prowess, Topiary, or the many and various Topiaries, Topiarists, and other 30 year old virgins and unemployed neckbeards, managed to free the world from ignorance by introducing the concepts of zero punctuation and butthurt to social media, and sql injecting huge websites where they had no business. 

This is nothing to do with the #freetopiary book, but serves to illustrate how rumours can get out of control.