Barrett Brown spent his 300th day behind bars this week, accused of using information acquired by the hacker group Anonymous to report on private intelligence firms, threatening an FBI agent, and committing credit card fraud by linking to a document that contained stolen credit card data. His supporters say the writer is being targeted for daring to investigate the secret world of security contracting.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing information Anonymous took from the firm HBGary Federal, Brown helped discover a secret plan to tarnish the reputations of WikiLeaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian,\u201d \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d reported<\/a> Thursday. \u201cBrown similarly analyzed and wrote about the millions of internal company emails from Stratfor Global Intelligence that were leaked in 2011.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDemocracy Now!\u201d talked with Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University whose article \u201cThe Strange Case of Barrett Brown<\/a>\u201d appeared in The Nation last month. Ludlow said: \u201cConsidering that the person who carried out the actual Stratfor hack had several priors and is facing a maximum of 10 years, the inescapable conclusion is that the problem is not with the hack itself but with Brown\u2019s journalism.\u201d<\/p>\n The charges against Brown could suggest it is criminal \u201cto even link to something or share a link with someone,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2018Democracy Now!\u2019:<\/b><\/p>\n httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bvl0pWKaZ14<\/b><\/p>\n