Justice Dept Moves to Drop Charges Against Journalist Barrett Brown That Could Criminalize Linking

trevor

Executive Director

In a win for press freedom, the US government moved to dismiss 11 of the 12 charges in their criminal indictment against journalist Barrett Brown today. The charges against Brown had been widely criticized for potentially criminalizing routine journalistic behavior and could have had far reaching effects on the rights of all Internet users to share hyperlinks. A group of press freedom organizations, led by EFF and including Freedom of the Press Foundation, alerted the Justice Department yesterday of their intent to file an amicus brief in support of Barrett Brown's First Amendment rights next week.

Brown was accused of merely sharing a link in a chatroom of thousands of pages of internal documents from the intelligence firm Stratfor that contained credit card numbers. The documents had been originally been posted by someone else, and the Justice Department has never even alleged Brown had anything to do with the actual theft of the credit card numbers or any of the other information posted online.

While we are relieved the Justice Department has decided to drop the charges, we wonder why it took so long. It was clear from the start that these charges directly implicated the First Amendment and had consequences far beyond his case. As EFF stated today, "Although this motion is good news for Brown, the unnecessary and unwarranted prosecution has already done much damage; not only has it harmed Brown, the prosecution—and the threat of prosecution it raised for all journalists—has chilled speech on the Internet." We certainly hope the Justice Department has learned a lesson in bringing this case and that the rights of journalists or anyone to share links online is not threatened again in the future.

Donate to support press freedom

Your support is more important than ever.

Read more about Press Freedom

UK grants Assange another hearing, avoids press freedom catastrophe — for now

Quote on press freedom impact of today's Assange decision

Appeal of convictions by NC journalists could impact reporters statewide

To protect the public’s right to know, the court should find that the press has a First Amendment right to cover police activity in public places

Congress can’t ban TikTok ‘just in case’

Barring the platform would set a precedent for all sorts of future censorship, including bans on foreign news sites