Barrett Brown



Barrett Lancaster Brown is an American journalist, essayist and activist. He is a former associate of Anonymous, he claims to be a former prison gang leader and openly talks about using heroin and meth.

According to Brown, Anonymous has been taken over by US Intelligence. Anonymous is being used to hack the enemies of the deep state, Peter Thiel and neonazis, all of which he claims are after him and part of why he's requested asylum in the UK. He claims to have been interviewed by Russian intelligence.

In January 2015, Brown was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison for the crimes of accessory after the fact, obstruction of justice, and threatening the government officials of the threatening a federal officer stemming from the FBI's investigation into the 2012 Stratfor email leak. As part of his sentence, Brown was also required to pay almost $900,000 to Stratfor.

Pursuance Project
In 2017, Brown launched the Pursuance Project, which aimed to unite transparency activists, investigative journalists, FOIA (US Freedom of Information Act) specialists, and hackivists in a fully encrypted platform. In 2018, Brown raised over $50,000 for Pursuance Project on Kickstarter. In February 2020, Brown shut Pursuance Project down, writing that Pursuance would resume work later that year funded via settlements from libel suits.

In a December 2020 update, Brown said they used the money but that they weren't able to make a prototype. He also discussed his abuse of methamphetamine a year and a half earlier, noting it elevated his work and his ability to wreak havoc on elements of the press and police agencies. He also discussed going to rehab. Brown said that his drug use and time in rehab was one reason Pursuance hadn't been updated.

Association with Anonymous
In November 2011, Brown said that 75 names of members of Zetas drug cartel would be released if a member of the Anonymous group who had been kidnapped was not set free. Brown said the member was then released and that there was a truce between him and the drug cartel for the moment. Others have said the kidnapping was fake, noting a lack of details and police reports.

Some media outlets have presented Brown as a self-proclaimed spokesperson for Anonymous, which he disputes, saying "it doesn’t work that way." Brown has said he renounced his links with the group in 2011. In December 2011, Brown told reporters that Anonymous had hacked millions of emails from Stratfor, a geopolitics publisher and consultancy, over Christmas and that they would be released by WikiLeaks.

Arrest and trial
On October 3, 2012, a federal grand jury indictment was returned against Brown on charges of threats, conspiracy and retaliation against a federal law enforcement officer. Various tweets, YouTube uploads and comments made by Brown before his arrest were cited as support within the indictment. A magistrate denied bail because he was "a danger to the safety of the community and a risk of flight."

As of September 4, 2013, Brown was under a federal court-issued gag order; he and his lawyers were not allowed to discuss his case with the media, lest it taint a jury. The lead prosecutor said that Brown tried to manipulate the media from behind bars for his benefit, that Brown's attorney "coordinates and/or approves of his use of the media," and that most of the publicity about Brown has contained false information and "gross fabrications".

In May 2021, he was arrested in east London, having been there since November 2020 to claim asylum. He was arrested for allegedly overstaying his visa and incitement offenses related to holding a protest banner which said: "Kill Cops".

Social media
Brown's Twitter account, @BarrettBrown_, has been permanently banned from Twitter four times. The first three bans were overturned and described by Twitter as errors after journalists inquired, but the fourth was not. The fourth and final ban was prompted by Brown tweeting that Julian Assange should not be on trial but that he would "deserve to die by other, cleaner hands" if he knew of Erik Prince's alleged ties to Roger Stone.