[tptacek]

You're not wrong to read it this way. I might be a little knee-jerk on threads like this. It is very, very apparent that skepticism about the Wired/Boing Boing narrative on this case is a minority view. Also, my current programming project involves advanced stat and calculus, two things I suck at, so I'm extra procrastinate-y today.

I guess my question is: so, we all agree that failure to prosecute CIA torturers and torture-preneurs is a travesty.

Now what? What does that have to do with Barrett Brown?

Is it just that we should militate for more prosecutions? I'll sign that petition. But I don't feel like that's a fringe issue; I hear that concern everywhere.

[coldtea]

>I guess my question is: so, we all agree that failure to prosecute CIA torturers and torture-preneurs is a travesty. Now what? What does that have to do with Barrett Brown?

One connection is that what Barrett Brown did before he got punished was basically hurt the same military-industrial-intelligence complex that put those torturers in place.

(Regardless of if one can find 10 other technical legal violations in his actions to hypocritically punish him for. So yes, I'm saying that the "justice system" cares more for threats of that kind than what he supposedly was sentenced for. It's not like its unconceivable for the law to be hypocritical, as some assume).

I don't even agree that the "CIA torturers" should be prosecuted (well, they should, but only as mere cogs doing their job). It's not like they were some "rotten apples", activing on their own. And it's that seeing of this as a more general phenomenon that connects it with cases like Barrett Brown's (and Mannings, et al).

[tptacek]

Uh, what? Stratfor is not the military-industrial complex. The military-industrial complex, along with serious foreign policy journalists, made fun of Stratfor. And, of course, neither is its subscriber base.

[coldtea]

>Stratfor is not the military-industrial complex.

No, it's just a tool it uses and with ties to governments, foreign diplomacy, policy makers etc. And it's not only about Statfor, it's about sending a message against this kind of journalism and against meddling with this kind of institutions and interests.

Whether "serious foreign policy journalists, made fun of Stratfor" doesn't say much. They also make fun of the CIA as incompetents who couldn't predict things like the fall of the Soviet Union and so on...

[tptacek]

You don't think it's dangerous to suggest that we should decriminalize attacks on private journalism outlets simply because we don't like their perspective on our issues? That's what people who bomb abortion clinics think.

The military-industrial complex did not "use Stratfor as a tool". The military-industrial though Stratfor was a bunch of tools.

Here's ex- Atlantic and WaPo writer Max Fisher (now at Vox) on Stratfor:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/str...

Here's Daniel Drezner from Foreign Policy:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/future-imperfect

http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/02/27/wake-me-when-wikileaks-p...

[tedks]

>Now what? What does that have to do with Barrett Brown?

Governments are seen as evil when they are seen as the large bullying the small.

This is an example of that pattern.