That Dallas man would be Barrett Brown. From lubbockonline:
A North Texas man linked to the worldwide hacking group Anonymous is facing federal charges for YouTube videos and Twitter postings in which he taunts the FBI and threatens to ruin one agent’s life.
Barrett Brown was taken into federal custody in Dallas last month, but authorities wouldn’t say why he was being detained until Thursday, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced a three-count indictment against him.
The 31-year-old Brown is charged with Internet threats, conspiracy to make publicly available restricted personal information of a government employee and retaliation against a federal law enforcement officer.
The indictment lists several tweets in which Brown talks about having a “plan to kill every government you meet” and taunts the FBI. It also quotes from a YouTube video titled in part, “Why I’m Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith.”
Not sure what to make of this: Brown is indicted for threatening to ruin the life a government employee. But when a government employee agreed to enlist the help of the (now indicted) Barrett Brown, a man clearly of interest to the feds for his connections to the hacker group Anonymous (however tenuous that connection), to help ruin the web presence of a private citizen who depends on that web presence for his livelihood (and with whom the government employee in question had had a very public internet feud, and had vowed elsewhere to harm professionally), such behavior is met with dismissal or rationalizations. Or worse still, silence.
Conclusion? It must be nice being a government employee, especially one involved in law enforcement. Because government employees involved with law enforcement are presumably de facto virtuous.
So you see, it’s not the salary; it’s the perks!
Jesus. How some of you out there can look yourselves in the mirror every day fascinates me. Honestly.
(h/t Mike LaRoche)
If I don’t look at myself in the mirror, I won’t be able to see what a fat, bald, old loser I’ve become. I would just have to take my wife at her word.
ADA Frey may just have leapt out of the frying pan and into the fire, yo.
Pamela Geller — in contradistinction to Barrett Brown — has been succeeding most excellently at her activist work. She punches through another bureaucratic roadblock in Washington D.C. and wins a judgment today, forcing WMATA to place her ads by 5 p.m. next Monday. Take that anti-First Amendmentists.
I’ll have you know, SIR, that in order to extend the useful operating life of my nervous system I only look at myself in the mirror once every other day for period of less than a minute to check for black heads, mussed hairs, crude oil streaks, spinach in the teeth, and ticks.
What’s a mirror?
It’s a thing that hangs on the wall. Evil queens ask ’em stuff.
It’s almost a shame that Barrett got put on ice just as he’d begun doing something useful. Meanwhile, our Public Servant is under duress but has found all sorts of help. Again. But not criminals this time. Weird, huh?
How long until Ken finds himself unable to represent Mr. Frey?
Defending against frivolous litigation from litigious cyber-scrunts is one thing. Going toe-to-toe with Uncle Sam is a different kettle of fish.
I wonder how frank Pat has been about his dealings with Brown?
Haven’t you heard? It’s not illegal if the government does it. “Prosecutorial discretion” means they get to choose which laws to prosecute you with. And it is literally impossible to breathe in today’s America without being in violation of at least three felony-level laws (useful to extort compliance in case you don’t want to play along with their games).
Pitard. Hoist. Bang. But if it gets ignored (as I suspect it will be), that will also get buried by the media, and no one else will know.
Don’t you know that American Celebrity Runway Singer Idol is coming up next?
A double-edged sword: he doesn’t check that weapon when he quits his work shift. Without someone else telling him when to cool his jets, he bloodies friends and foes alike.
Naturally. Defend the put-upon Frey. Who was in contact with a now indicted harasser agreeing to have said harasser sick a notorious hacker group on my website.
Lovely. Everyone run to the defense of the good and honorable man!
I hate the blogosphere.
He’s a defense attorney?
DA’s are supposed to be about more than just winning a conviction of anybody it is convenient to do so to. I know my glasses are rose tint tonight.
OT: Anyone seen Jarrett or Huma lately.
Forget it, Jeff. It’s lawyer-town.
Fuck Frey. Karma is a bitch. He will eventually get his.
Frey is suffering what’s commonly known as karma, the Buddhist law of moral causation. Or, if that Buddhist crap isn’t your cup of tea, he’s gotten a dose of ‘what goes around, comes around’. A song by one Justin Timberlake, but that’s unlinkable AFAIC.
Some Frank Zappa, instead. Time for a swim, Frey.
Heh. charles w beat me to it.
The old guy boned his daughter, and dumped water in the middle of a drought to drive the farmers in the Valley out of business so that their farms could be replaced with housing developments, and had a civil engineer murdered for looking into it, and sent one of his thugs to slice your nose with a switchblade when you looked too close, and then his daughter got a .38 slug through her skull for no good reason, and right after that the old guy without missing a beat took his granddaughter away while everyone was distracted by the gory death of his daughter, presumably to do her like he did his daughter.
You know — lawyer-town.
I wonder what that old guy is up to right now. Probably has a vibrant social life.
Did I mention I hate the word “vibrant?”
DA’s are supposed to be about more than just winning a conviction of anybody it is convenient to do so to.
I’m real fortunate to work in an office with a lot of those kind of DDA’s.
Obviously, I don’t work in LA county.
Before I found the article on lubbockonline.com (the website of our local newspaper, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal), I first heard the news about Barrett Brown’s indictment while listening to the local talk-radio station on my drive home from work. Quite surprising, to say the least.
serr8d, you were much more eloquent.
much more? Sorry I have had a few.
I’ve had a few. I’m thinking about having a few more.
Having a few right now. myself. Shiner Oktoberfest rules!
People like Barrett Brown tend to sing like birds when the heat is on. Good old Pat should probably start worry his name might come up.
I should have a few, but some ear infection or something has me puny. I laid out of work yesterday, did little but goof off on the box, and prolly need to stop this and crash. Sleep till Sunday or something.
I’ve some sympathy for Barrett Brown; more so than I have for that ObamaPhone gal. But if you think about it, both of ’em pretty much defined their own outcomes: OPG by her own abject stupidity because of her failure to take charge of her own life (don’t tell me she had no opportunity to do so!); BB by his lack of walking-around common sense. Smart as a whip, but the boy just doesn’t know when to shut up his fucking pie-hole.
He reminds me of…
Oh! I’ll leave you with this: the new Bond movie, ‘Skyfall’, has Adele performing the lead theme musics. Released today at 00.07..
but the boy just doesn’t know when to shut up his fucking pie-hole.
Well then he and Frey are birds of a feather, perhaps soon to be jailbirds, n’est pa?
Wadda we got Darleen? Collusion. Loss of revenue for Jeff. Libel of Jeff. Threats against family members and acquaintances.
What else?
Well, there’s douchenozzlery in general, but I doubt that’s a crime. But still.
If it was, Willie the racist hilljack skinflute player would get the chair.
Oh jeez. Don’t bring that twit up or he’ll start making guest appearances again.
The people he’s talking to aren’t interested in that subject. He’s got other dirtbag friends they’d much rather hear about.
I hope Barrett is okay I hate this for him
Holder’s lickspittle fbi pansies need to prioritize better I think
happy, BB threatened an FBI officer’s children, after talking big about the FBI agent himself. I don’t feel sorry for him at all. BB is too big for his britches, by half.
You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
For those who can’t bear the thought of poor Barrett Brown
enjoyingsuffering from the ministrations of Jamal and Bruno in Cellblock 17, there’s a Twitterer who is asking for donations, as well as a facebook page…https://twitter.com/FreeBarrett_
And his own personal hashtag!
https://twitter.com/i/#!/search/realtime/%23freebb
O.M.G.
https://twitter.com/AnonymousVideo/status/252912703478317056/photo/1
Oh man, serr8d. I literally laughed out loud.
I hope he goes on a hunger strike. For Freedom!
O get up real close and go, crap, what’s that? Turns out it’s the mirror itself and I realize that thing doesn’t just clean itself and blam! epiphany, the housekeeper really was doing regular stuff all along. The toilet gets stained all by itself now by the way water flows down, there’s little water flow stains all around in there. A month later, there they are again, and I’m all damn I just did that.
“Free Barrett Brown”…?
Don’t fall for it. I got a free Mumia and it wasn’t even worth what I paid for it.
This isn’t a new development, either. I seem to recall a certain deranged perfesser who made our host’s life rather difficult for a time some years ago. Local law enforcement insisted there was nothing they could do, ’til she started bothering them. Then she was “taken care of” with impressive efficiency.
Like you say: it’s good to be in law enforcement.
I hope he makes his escape by shooting himself out a cannon.