[ageisp0lis]

He didn't dox an FBI agent or his family (indeed, he's charged for his speech and there's a motion to dismiss that indictment on First Amendment grounds too); he was under duress and coming off meds, and outraged at the legal threats against his mother. The allegations are "conspiracy to dox" rather than any successful act. Literally they said that someone did a Google search with the goal of making "restricted personal information" public.

He flipped out and lost his cool over constant government-sanctioned harassment. He's not perfect by any means—admitted substance abuse problems and a big naïve/foolish/arrogant streak—but still deserves sympathy.

I don't think he would have known there was a law on the books making it illegal to dox feds. Doxing abusive cops on the other hand is legal and happens all the time between Anonymous/Occupy and even journalists do it sometimes.

In order to convict on threats there needs to be a "true threat" of physical harm, a non-conditional statement made to a specific person. All he said was "if they come" he wouldn't be able to tell FBI from Zetas so he'd exercise self-defense. And he explicitly clarified when he said he was going to ruin the guy's life, he meant to expose him, not as a physical threat.

One can disseminate a link without knowing whats in it. Brown is on the record in many places as being opposed to spreading credit cards. He was against that kind of stuff.

[tptacek]

It's disingenuous to suggest that Brown had no actual intent to harm law enforcement agents while leaving out the fact that the indictment starts by establishing a pattern over multiple weeks of Brown making direct threats to them on Twitter, including threats of violence. The threats aren't (as I understand it) unlawful either, but the combination of threats and any actions in furtherance of them can be.

[ageisp0lis]

The indictment establishes a pattern of speech but doesn't establish actual unlawful offenses. No, I don't think he was threatening violence. The FreeBB people have written a bit about this. http://tumblr.freebarrettbrown.org/post/77390763109/debunkin...

[Zigurd]

I would find it very difficult to find any sympathy for the prosecutors and FBI agents in this case. They are bullies, and they have gotten far less blowback than they deserve for doing shitty unethical and likely illegal but for their immunity things like threatening prosecution of family members and intentionally inflicting financial ruin on a defendant's whole family.