Barrett Brown, a self-proclaimed spokesman for Anonymous, has
been hit with new charges by authorities in Texas for concealing evidence.
It’s the third round of charges in a case that his former
attorney describes as an attempt to silence the outspoken and provocative
activist.
“Clearly they’re more worried about what they perceive as his
egging people on to go after defense contractors and secret spy organizations,”
says Brown’s former attorney Jay Leiderman. “Barrett believes in privacy for
individuals and transparency for corporations and government. The government
doesn’t like his belief system. And Barrett was effective in expressing that
belief system.”
Brown is being charged with two counts of obstruction, which
stem from a raid on his apartment in March 2012. According to the indictment,
Brown “did knowingly and corruptly conceal and attempt to conceal records,
documents, and digital data contained on two laptop computers.” He was aided and
abetted by someone the indictment refers to as “KM,” who is believed to be his
mother.
In an account of that raid that Brown posted online last year, he
described going to his mother’s residence after suspecting the feds might be
planning to raid his apartment. Three FBI agents arrived at his mother’s
residence seeking additional evidence.
“They told me that they’d executed a search warrant at my
apartment and that the door had been broken in the process,” Brown wrote in the
account, “and then asked me if I had any laptops with me here at my mom’s place
that I wanted to give them. I responded in the negative, and they left.”
According to Brown, the agents gave him a document saying in
part that they were seeking records pertaining to Anonymous and to HBGary, a
security firm that got hacked in 2011 by members of Anonymous.
Leiderman says that authorities did get the laptops “and they
got them with some reasonable ease. This was not a mastermind of hiding things.
Which makes these charges all the more absurd and unnecessary.”
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