Barrett Brown Signs Plea Deal in Case Involving Stratfor Hack
Barrett Brown, whose case became a cause célèbre after he was charged with crimes related to the Stratfor hack, has agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors, according to court filings.
Prosecutors filed a motion this week in a Texas court agreeing to seal the plea agreement, which the court granted (.pdf).
Brown’s attorney, Ahmed Ghappour, won’t discuss the matter, due to a court-ordered gag, but another document filed by the government this week (.pdf) hints at the nature of the deal.
In the document, which supercedes two of Brown’s previous three indictments, the government charges Brown with two crimes: allegedly assisting the person who hacked Stratfor after the fact, and obstructing the execution of a search warrant targeting Brown.
The first charge is a new one and relates to assistance Brown allegedly gave the person who hacked Stratfor “in order to hinder and prevent [his] apprehension, trial and punishment.”
According to the government Brown worked to create confusion about the hacker’s identity “in a manner that diverted attention away from the hacker,” which included communicating with Stratfor after the hack in a way that authorities say drew attention away from the hacker. The hacker is not named, and it’s not clear if it’s convicted Stratfor intruder Jeremy Hammond, or an earlier hacker who’s known to have penetrated the company first.
The obstruction charge relates to an attempt by Brown and his mother to hide a laptop from authorities during a search of her home in March 2012. Brown’s mother was separately charged with obstruction and given six months probation.
The two charges greatly reduce the amount of time he could face at a sentencing hearing, which previously had been estimated at more than 50 years.
Brown’s earlier indictments were poised to become a First Amendment test case. He was charged with 12 counts centered around a link he posted in a chat room that pointed to a file containing data stolen in 2011 from the intelligence firm Stratfor, or Strategic Forecasting. The data, stolen by Hammond, a member of the loosely affiliated Anonymous collective, included company emails as well as credit card numbers belonging to subscribers of Stratfor’s service.
Brown didn’t steal the data but simply copied a hyperlink from one public chatroom and reposted it to another.
Eleven of his charges accused him of aggravated identity theft for possessing and trafficking in stolen authentication features — which authorities identified as the three- and four-digit card verification value (CVV) printed on the back of the cards.
Last month prosecutors dropped these eleven charges against Brown, after his attorney filed a motion to dismiss on grounds that Brown’s alleged conduct did not violate identity theft statutes as written.
The twelfth charge, for access device fraud, had remained in place. That one accused Brown of illegally possessing the stolen cards — presumably cards that were found on his computer after he downloaded the Stratfor cache himself.
But that charge has disappeared from the superceding document the government filed this week, which replaced the indictment. In its place is the new charge for accessory after the fact.
Brown is scheduled to be re-arraigned, on the charges on the superceding document, on April 29 in Texas.
Brown is also facing charges related to threats he allegedly made against an FBI agent. It’s unclear if the plea agreement will cover that indictment as well. If it does, and the two cases are combined, Brown’s maximum statutory sentence would likely be five years.
Brown has been in custody since he was arrested in 2012 while in the middle of an online chat.
