Barrett Brown Taken Back into Custody Before PBS Interview | Hacker News Reader

Barrett Brown Taken Back into Custody Before PBS Interview

theintercept.com

38 pointskushti11 comments

In other news... US ranked #43 for press freedom by Reporters Without Borders. https://rsf.org/en/ranking

Unsurprisingly, the US is in the "Fairly Good" bracket on RSF's index. This is despite the fact that it has a lower "abuse" score, which is based on documented incidents and not survey results, than Germany, the largest European country with "Good" status.

If you read the 87-question RSF survey, you'll see that it's pretty unlikely that the US will ever break into the top "Good" bracket, despite the fact that we don't have state control of the media (some "Good" countries, including Belgium, actually license journalists), the fact that we lead the world in the education of journalists (I'm not making a big deal about that --- the questionnaire does), and the fact that virtually everyone who wants to function as an online journalist has adequate internet access; the questionnaire is also full of subjective questions that have more to do with assessments by journalists of the culture. So regardless of the status of our laws, the fact that journalists fear cultural reputational damage for challenging power, for instance, is going to weight the US down.

Expect the score to drop precipitously next year, by the way: the questionnaire directly asks, in multiple questions, whether the government attempts to discredit the media.

I think the Trump administration is a travesty and that their treatment of the press is actually a significant indicator of how much of a travesty it is. But it's frustrating that the hallmark of a truly free press is its ability to continue functioning despite brickbats thrown from the administration. Our free press will be challenged in the next few years as it hasn't been challenged for many decades prior, and I expect our system will persevere. Despite that fact, our RSF score will drop as a result of us weathering those challenges.

So, I'm not a fan of the RSF methodology or really of any of these indices. But if you look at the underlying data I think you'll see that "ranked #43" isn't as interesting as it sounds.

There is no plausible set of circumstances in which Brown would have faced "100 years in prison". The press (and the DOJ) arrive at these false prospective sentencing claims by taking every individual count and adding them up. But that's not how federal sentencing works: under the sentencing guidelines, like charges group, and the sentence applying to the most severe charge defines the sentence. The severity of a sentence will have to do with a defined set of factors, including previous criminal history, actual harm done, remunerative intent, &c.

For more on this topic, Google "Popehat whale sushi".

https://www.popehat.com/2013/02/05/crime-whale-sushi-sentenc...

Popehat's math is lengthy - suggesting the sushi chef would get 2 years instead of 67.

By a similar ratio Brown would have got less than the 5 years he got with a plea deal.

If so, why did he take a plea deal and lose his day in court ? Was it just bad advice ?

[edit]Was Brown prosecuted : because of the severity of his crime; because he was easier to catch; or because he was embarrassing the powerful ?[/edit]

[edited]Whatever one's opinion of Brown, he certainly is a journalist and the Intercept is right to draw attention to his censoring and investigate if it is politically motivated or simply the result of a miscommunication about the forms he was given.[/edit]

We can read the indictment, stipulate that every claim in the indictment held up at trial, research his criminal history, and then match that up to the guidelines, which are easily Google-able. I don't know, and haven't done this analysis, but I doubt it's 10 years.

What I do know is that it's not 100 years, and that The Intercept isn't actually informing you of anything when they claim it is. You're no closer to understanding the severity of the charges he was facing after reading this article.

The parent comment was completely rewritten after I responded to it. I have no idea what the answer to whatever the current version of the question they're trying to ask is.

Apologies for the editing, very bad form on my part and thank you for taking the time to answer - I added edit tags to the additions.

It certainly puts a different light on things that he took a plea for 5 years instead of fighting it and risking 10, [edit] rather than 100.[/edit]

I will contact the journalist with Popehat's work.

Man. I remember growing up reading books about Nazi Germany and Russia where they had two classes of prisoner in their jails, political prisoners and 'common' prisoners (thieves, etc)

It sure feels fucking crazy to think the US has political prisoners in its own jails now.

For as long as the US has had prisons, it has had prisoners who claimed to be held for political reasons, and supporters who acknowledged and amplified those claims. Sometimes those claims are almost certainly true, as anyone who's spent any time volunteering with Amnesty surely knows. Other times, they are not. Barrett Brown would certainly prefer you to look at his conviction as politically motivated. But there's a lot of things Brown would like you to believe that are probably false.

Indeed, read up on Assata Shakur (I'm not even remotely qualified to discuss whether or not AS _was_ a political prisoner, but certainly such a controversy existed, and she's still living in Cuba)

Equally, from the bugging of Martin Luther King to the Committee on Unamerican Activities, it is inarguable that the government does sometimes take direct action against those whose views it regards as dangerous.

I was lucky to see a scene from "The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail"[1] when I was in junior high.

But really, if you consider that "politics" is the art of directing policy, and policy is just another word for legislation, technically all prisoners are "political" prisoners.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Thoreau_Spent_in_Jai...

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