De facto Anonymous spokesperson Barrett Brown, alleged computer hacker, will be detained in prison one full year before a trial.
Brown’s federal trial for one indictment has been delayed, now slated for September 3, 2013, with trials for his second and third indictments scheduled to start on Sept. 23.
Last year, Brown was arrested on Sept. 12 and has been in law enforcement custody nearly six months since.
Last March, FBI agents had raided Brown's Dallas, Texas home with search warrants for computers that contained information pertaining to, among other things, the Anonymous collective, offshoot LulzSec and a number of private businesses investigated by both groups as well as Brown’s own Project PM, an independent think-tank he designed in part “to develop new methods by which to use the internet for positive change and to encourage others to adapt such methods.”
The day after the March 2012 raid, Brown wrote that the FBI “fully intended to take a certain laptop, and did” when the feds raided his mother’s house shortly after the first incident.
He also said federal agents threatened him and his mother with conspiracy to obstruct justice for the next few months, spawning Brown to lash out at the FBI in a series of YouTube videos and Twitter posts in September 2012.
“I know what’s legal, I know what’s been done to me… And if it’s legal when it’s done to me, it’s going to be legal when it’s done to FBI Agent Robert Smith — who is a criminal,” claimed Brown in one of the clips uploaded to the Web.
“That’s why Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids... How do you like them apples?”
Hours after that video was uploaded to the Web, a SWAT team raided Brown’s apartment in Dallas and placed him in custody for nearly one month -- before charging him with threatening a federal officer.
Behind bars, though, Brown’s legal issues escalated.
In custody, the Justice Department unsealed two separate indictments against Brown:
In December, Brown was charged with sharing an Internet hyperlink that contained over 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders' identification information and the authentication features for the cards.
In January, Brown was charged with obstructing justice by “knowingly and corruptly conceal and attempt to conceal records, documents, and digital data contained on two laptop computers,” as he hinted nearly a year earlier.
Jeremy Hammond, a hacker and activist from Chicago, has been imprisoned over one year awaiting trial for charges relating to the Stratfor hack.
Federal prosecutors accuse Hammond with spearheading the hack as a member of the two groups, Anonymous and LulzSec.
If convicted, Hammond faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.
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