14 DAY TRIAL // The legal defense team of the famous activist Barrett Brown has filed another motion to dismiss the indictment related to him sharing a hyperlink that pointed to data stolen by hackers from Stratfor.
According to Brown’s lawyers, the indictment is “fatally flawed because it fails to allege an essential element – ‘the transfer of authentication feature’ – altogether, and it fails to allege that Mr. Brown ‘transferred’ anything other than a hyperlink.”
The defense argued that the activist simply republished a publicly available link that caused a publicly available file to become available to others. The court is asked to dismiss the indictment because the government fails to allege an offense.
The court is also asked to dismiss the charges because they “penalize conduct protect by the First Amendment” and they’re “unconstitutionally vague and overbroad.”
Many digital rights groups, including the EFF, fear that the prosecution of Barrett Brown threatens the right to link and could criminalize routine journalism practices.
The problem in this case is that Brown has never actually been accused of taking part in any hacking activities. He is said to have conspired with Anonymous to overthrow the US government, but the allegations are based on a few tweets and he has not been accused of hacking anything.
Brown simply copied a link posted by Anonymous hackers on an IRC channel and pasted it on the channel of his own project, Project PM.
Journalists often include links to data leaks in their stories, even if sensitive information is involved. So if Brown is prosecuted, routine journalism practices could become crimes.
In case you’re wondering what the “authentication feature” mentioned by Brown’s defense in this latest motion refers to, the EFF has a good explanation:
“The statute criminalizes knowingly transferring an ‘authentication feature’ known to be stolen or taken without lawful authority. ‘Authentication feature’ means any ‘symbol,’ ‘code’ or ‘sequence of numbers or letters’ used to authenticate a means of identification.
And ‘means of identification’ is defined as ‘any name or number that may be used alone or in conjunction with any other information, to identify a specific individual’ including a ‘unique electronic identification number, address, or routing code.’”
As far as the other charges are concerned, Brown’s lawyers are trying to show that the “message” sent to FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Robert Smith in a YouTube video did not constitute a real threat.
The complete motion to dismiss is available on the website of the Free Barrett Brown Group.