Monday, September 09, 2013
Barrett Brown cases raises possibility of prosecution for "merely" hyperlinking to classified or otherwise illegal materials
Generally, bloggers have come to feel safe with
hyperlinks, certainly in the copyright area.
It is true that it is possible to get sued for hyperlinking to libelous
content, but those incidents seem to be very rare in practice.
But a somewhat rogue journalist, Barrett Brown,
faces federal prosecution in Texas and conceivably decades in prison over a
hyperlink in his chatroom for “Project PM”, concerning Wikileaks
materials. One problem is that the
material he linked to gives away personal information (credit card info), so
the fibbies are adding identity theft to the prosecution, although Brown had no
interest in the personal information released.
He was trying to expose unseemly links between federal intelligence
agencies and defense contractors and certain lobbyists. David Carr has the details in the New York
Times Business Day Monday here. Trevor Timm and Hanni Fakhoury had
written about this for Electronic Frontier Foundation in July, here. There is a site for Barrett Brown
supporters here.
There are other complications in Brown’s story, all
of which could have made him a target for federal prosecutors. But it is frightening that a federal
prosecutor makes up a theory that a hyperlink, by “sharing information”,
amounts to a kind of illegal possession.
Still, one can imagine scenarios involving “intentional” linking to
child pornography without actually “possessing” it on one’s own hardware, or to
sites that traffic underage women, or pushing illegal pharmaceuticals. It’s obvious this is a very slippery slope
legally, ripe with potential overbreadth.
The Times points out that journalists and newspapers
link to classified information “all the time” and make their own judgments on
what to publish. I have linked to
Wikileaks before (when it was up). I
still have am embed of Bradley Manning’s 40-minute leaked video (sorry, Chelsea
Manning) in April 2010 on my “cf” blog with many page requests over the
years. No one has knocked on my
door. Am I breaking the law by linking
to a YouTube video seen by millions (outside of my own blog) but surely illegal
when uploaded?
Let me add, again.
I have received tips before that I thought were classified and that I
thought should not be released, and I have contacted authorities on these. But I use my own judgment. In my business, that’s all I can do.
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