Barrett Brown
Biography
Barrett Brown is a journalist who in 2010 founded Project PM, an open source website that analyzed government and corporates data dumps of information released by hackers. In December 2011, over five million emails from intelligence contractor Stratfor Global Intelligence were obtained by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. When the hacked information was made public Brown posted a link to the files on the internal group chat for Project PM. In December 2012 he was charged with identify theft for “providing access to stolen financial information," through posting the link due to credit card numbers being included among the millions of pages of leaked company documents. There is no evidence that Brown or any members of Project PM were aware the credit card numbers were included in the document release or evidence anyone attempted to misuse the credit card information, nor was anyone else ever criminally charged for linking to the information despite it being publicly hosted on Wikileaks and reported on by numerous major newspapers. In 2020 Brown fled to the United Kingdom after learning of sealed criminal charges against him in the United States and is currently claiming political asylum.
