I never really got a chance to play any pen-and-paper role-playing games growing up, so being thrown into a prison system in which such things as Dungeons and Dragons are relatively common constituted one of the silver linings of my 2012 arrest, along with not having to deal with an infestation of those little German roaches that had colonized my kitchen or having to see “World War Z.”
As it happens, I’d actually learned about the prevalence of tabletop games among inmates a few months before my own incarceration, in the days after the FBI first raided both my apartment and my mother’s home in March 2012 and seized laptops and papers without yet making an arrest. As they themselves noted in the search warrant, which the late Michael Hastings published at BuzzFeed, the focus of the investigation was my collaborative journalism outfit Project PM as well as echelon2.org, the online repository where we posted our ongoing findings on the still-mysterious “intelligence contracting” sector (which has since been moved here). The warrant listed HBGary Federal and Endgame Systems — two firms on which we’d focused particular attention — as topics for the FBI’s search. This was revealing. A year prior, a raid by Anonymous on the servers of HBGary had revealed, among other things, the firm’s leading role in a conspiracy by a consortium calling itself Team Themis to conduct an array of covert operations against WikiLeaks and even journalists like Glenn Greenwald, prompting a congressional inquiry that would ultimately be squashed by a Republican committee chairman.
It’s often been reported, incorrectly, that I was the one to reveal the Themis conspiracy, different aspects of which were in fact discovered more or less simultaneously by several parties shortly after HBGary’s emails were made public. My own initial role, which began when I was informed of the hack as it was being conducted, was merely to explain developments to the press. But as it became clear that the media was losing interest despite clear evidence there was much more to the story, I began working with a rotating team of volunteer researchers to determine further details of Themis and related programs by searching through the remaining 70,000 emails that the hackers had seized and following up on the various mysterious references found therein. Although we made a number of significant discoveries and managed to shed light on other matters, the press didn’t generally realize the significance of these things until later.
On the other hand, I did get to indirectly gum up the works at Endgame Systems, which, though one of the four firms involved in Themis’s proposed operations against journalists and activists, managed to avoid being mentioned in most of the press coverage that followed the original exposure of the plot. You see, Endgame’s execs had insisted in one particular email thread that its name never appear in any Themis operational materials, explaining that the nature of the firm’s central activities was such that any public scrutiny would lead to disaster, and that this was a particular concern of their partners. Other emails ended up working against it, though, as I was able to pique the interest of Bloomberg Businessweek by forwarding this hilariously sinister “NO ONE MUST EVER KNOW” exchange to a contact I had there. A few months later, the magazine ran a long feature on Endgame revealing its ability to seize control of computers across the world and that it was offering this service to unknown customers outside of the U.S. government. This in turn prompted sufficient discomfort that the firm had to stop doing this, or at least claim to have stopped. Perhaps that’s why Endgame Systems was listed on my search warrant — and never mentioned again in a single other filing by the government in my case.
But the chief enemy I’d made was apparently the Department of Justice — because when Team Themis was exposed, the emails revealed that the whole indefensible conspiracy had been set in motion by the DOJ itself, which had made the necessary introductions when Bank of America came to the agency looking for advice on how to go after WikiLeaks. There were no known consequences for anyone at the DOJ; a congressman’s calls for an official inquiry were shot down by Lamar Smith, the relevant committee chair, who proclaimed that the DOJ itself should handle any investigation. Whether the DOJ took Smith’s advice and investigated itself for secretly arranging a corporate black ops partnership is unknown. Rather, it was my head that was to roll, in retaliation for my efforts to keep the story alive in articles I continued to write for The Guardian as well as for my occasional successes in causing difficulties to Themis participants like Endgame and the intelligence contracting industry as a whole, which regularly hires ex-government officials at high salaries and thus has a working relationship with most federal agencies. And so when the FBI came for my laptops and left that search warrant listing the entirely legal journalism entity I’d been using to lead an investigation into the state-affiliated firms that the warrant also listed, I knew from the brazenness of this move that I’d eventually be arrested and charged. I didn’t know for what, exactly, but that was OK — the DOJ didn’t know yet either. Eventually they resorted to indicting me on charges related to another firm, Stratfor, that wasn’t even listed on my search warrant, which were so flimsy that they eventually had to be dropped in favor of a vague “accessory after the fact” count.
Drawing by Paul Davis for The Intercept.
Anywho, after that first FBI raid I started reading those little guides on life in prison that one finds online and noticed several references to role-playing games. When I got to the jail unit at Federal Correctional Institution Fort Worth shortly after my arrest, then, I immediately started agitating in favor of a campaign of Dungeons and Dragons or whatever was available, to begin ASAP, with the wooden table in the little corner library to be requisitioned for our use. A huge black guy awaiting trial on complicated fraud charges happened to have the basic mechanics memorized; I drafted him to be the dungeon master. Soon enough I’d also managed to recruit a white meth dealer who was familiar enough with the game to help the rest of us create our characters, a large and bovine Hispanic gangland enforcer who wanted to try the game and was at any rate influential enough to help us secure control over the table, and a fey Southern white guy for atmosphere.
With unlimited paper and pencils provided by the federal government, we had everything we needed except for a set of variously sided dice. It turned out that this was generally handled by making a spinner out of cardboard, a paperclip, and the empty internal plastic tube from an ink pen. This latter item is impaled loosely on the paperclip, itself positioned in the center of the cardboard, on which has been drawn a diminishing series of concentric circles divided into 20, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4 equal segments, respectively. As we attended to this chore at the wooden table, an inmate sitting nearby realized what we were making and proceeded to tell us about a cell mate he’d had during a previous bid who’d used something similar.
This fellow, he told us, had had some $500,000 in drug profits stashed away on the outside, and it was the prospect of someday being reunited with his money that kept him going. Then one day he learned that his brother had gotten addicted to crack and spent it all. Shattered, the inmate embarked upon an ultra-consumerist fantasy life whereby he pretended to still have the half-million, which he’d “spend” over time by picking things out of catalogues and deducting their prices from his total imaginary assets. He also cut out magazine pictures of attractive women to represent the four girlfriends he could have expected to rate on the outside (based, I suppose, on a calculation of one girlfriend per $125,000). This was where the spinner came in: To endow each girl-picture with a degree of agency he divided the circle into two sections, one signifying “Yes” and the other “No,” so he could ask each in its turn, “Are you going to give me a blowjob today?” The excitement would presumably lie in the uncertainty. When the guy at the table finished telling his tale, I was left in a reflective mood. I knew now that no matter what happened over the years to come, I had to stay alive; I had to survive to tell the world this crazy fucking story.
We began the campaign with our party having just entered a mysterious cavern that appeared to be inhabited. The gamemaster drew out a map for us as our crude little character tokens advanced down the dark, cliché-ridden passages. Coming upon a fountain in which jewels could be seen lying under the surface of the water, our Hispanic gangster/minotaur barbarian proposed to grab some. The team veteran and meth dealer/elven ranger stopped him, dipped in his flask, and, as our gamemaster informed us, watched as it sizzled and melted, the “water” having been acid.
“Whoa,” said the gangster/minotaur, awed at how close he’d just come to losing his forearm. He was beginning to understand that this wasn’t the relatively straightforward world of street-level dope dealing anymore; this was Dungeons and Dragons. Presumably the feds had never attempted to trick him into incinerating his own arm. But then some of these guys had been targeted by the ATF, so you never know.
The gangster/minotaur seemed not to have profited from this reminder of the perils of impulsiveness and greed. An unfortunate incident involving a trap door left our party divided, not unlike the ’68 Democrats. MinoGangster and the pale southern gay guy/human cleric, whom I’ll call Truman Capote, soon came upon a treasure chest that could be unlocked by solving a puzzle. Capote figured it out and opened the lid, revealing a pile of silver pieces and a wand, and then MinoGangster, whom I was beginning to suspect had been ratted out to the feds by his own partners, grabbed up all the contents.
“You better give that back,” hissed Capote.
“Nah, fuck nah.”
So Truman Capote declared that he was attacking MinoGangster with his mace, rolled a critical hit, and slew him right then and there. At the table, the gangster stared down sadly at his little game token as Capote flipped it over on its back to emphasize its deadness.
I’ve never been one for the fantasy genre, but then there exist all sorts of role playing games covering every imaginable setting. For instance, the one time I’d actually gotten to play, when I was 13, a friend’s older brother had led us in a campaign set in the original, gritty comic book version of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles universe, except some decades hence after a global nuclear war had mutated many of the world’s animals, who themselves were now organized into an array of polities with names like Dolphin Free State and Prairie Dog Imperium. I played as a mutant roadrunner who wore a bandolier and dual-wielded a pair of cheap, inaccurate submachine guns. When a school full of children was seized and held for ransom by warthog motorcycle bandits, the Sacramento-based Americorp government wisely called upon our team to respond. At one point I ran into the gymnasium at 60 mph, firing wildly and otherwise creating a distraction while one of my friends, a porcupine with a great ax, snuck in through the other door and decapitated the pig chieftain. Afterward, when we received our reward money and sold off all the salvaged weapons, it turned out that we had enough to buy an old bus and install a roof-mounted minigun turret with 360-degree rotation, and I knew then what life could be. Later, recruiting players at various jails and prisons, I’d use this story as a means of generating excitement, spreading out my arms and trotting in a circle while making machine gun noises with my mouth so as to better convey the scene.
Having found Dungeons and Dragons too thematically constraining, I learned of another gaming system that could potentially accommodate my fast-expanding metaphysical ambitions (I was now facing decades’ worth of trumped-up charges, the prosecution was trying to seize money being raised for my defense, and the press still hadn’t figured out that there was something wrong here, so it seemed like a good idea to come up with about 20 years’ worth of activities). GURPS, the Generic Universal Roleplaying System designed back in the 1980s, provides game mechanics for use in any conceivable setting. You could create a bunch of characters based on the Nixon administration, for instance, assigning them stats in accordance with estimates of the abilities of their real-world counterparts — Kissinger gets high Intelligence and Charisma, Colson gets nothing — plus basic skills included in the GURPS book like Acrobatics and Thrown Weapons, which takes care of Howard Hunt right there. You can also create custom skills appropriate for your particular campaign (Textile Tariff Negotiations; Remembering That Everything You’re Saying Right Now Is Being Recorded on the Taping System That You Yourself Installed, Yes, Even the Anti-Semitic Stuff). Give the characters some basic equipment (crowbars, Cuban people) and you’re set; each player picks their favorite staffer, while as always the gamemaster takes on the roles of the hero’s ally characters like Pinochet as well as villains like Daniel Ellsberg.
My problem, as usual, was knowing where to stop. GURPS included rules for RPG staples like magic and psionic powers. Why not make Nixon a necromancer, or more of one, and maybe give G. Gordon Liddy the power to start fires with his mind whenever he thinks fondly of Hitler? And too many comparably awesome ideas were presenting themselves to me each day, such that I never was really able to decide whether to start designing my increasingly elaborate Nixon game or instead do something simpler where Teddy Roosevelt is hunting you for sport. Nor was it 100 percent certain I’d be able to find people willing to play a Nixon administration-based tabletop RPG at that particular federal detention center, even if I were willing to relax the rule about always speaking in your character’s voice, which I wasn’t. Then one day I was shipped to another jail in Mansfield, Texas, and wasn’t allowed to bring my GURPS book or anything else, and so I spent the next year reading history for 10 hours a day in an overcrowded and windowless room.
Eventually I made it back to a prison where I could depend on keeping books and papers for an extended period of time and was able to resume my experiments, which have lately culminated in a highly complex new hybrid medium in which I oversee some 70 fully realized characters as they pursue their blood-soaked vendettas against one another in accordance with the several handwritten pages of primitive, dice-based behavioral heuristics I have devised for them. Their entire world is limited to a map I’ve drawn on graph paper and taped to my wall, their stage confined to my cell’s steel wall-mounted desk on which I have created an elaborate city consisting of dozens and dozens of buildings, vehicles, vending machines, trees, dogs, rats, surveillance drones, and dwarves — a small world, yes, but one of extraordinary depth and intrigue. I make the pieces out of cardboard tea boxes, drawing and then coloring them with very sharp pencils, and I don’t mind saying that I’ve become very good at making itty-bitty tea box people over the last year or so. Indeed, I tend to spend the late evenings hunched over a metal locker, drinking tea and creating new and more elaborate and ever more delightful little city dwellers; it’s a civilized pastime that makes me feel like a cultured Chinese gentleman-scholar. At any rate, it’s certainly a lot more fun than I had on the outside trying to get the newspaper people to do their fucking jobs and follow up on things like Team Themis.
Which reminds me of one more funny story. Aside from HBGary Federal and Endgame Systems and an obscure junior partner firm called Berico, there was one other corporation that completed the Themis private black ops outfit, which, you’ll remember, was caught plotting illegal hacking and disinformation campaigns against journalists and NGOs with the connivance of the DOJ. That firm was Palantir, where at least a half-dozen employees were shown to be involved in Themis by email threads in which the plans were formulated — among them, the firm’s lead counsel, Matthew Long. Another email indicated that Palantir’s CEO was also made aware of Themis. Palantir’s most demonstrably active participant, Matthew Steckman, was put on leave pending an “investigation” into his conduct but he was quietly brought back on after the press lost interest. Today he’s head of business operations and works in D.C. No one was indicted in connection to Themis except for me, and then, later — when I refused to cooperate with law enforcement against other activists — my mother, who was charged with obstruction of justice for moving my laptops to a kitchen cabinet to hide them from the FBI agents who were congregating outside her house, waiting to execute a search warrant on behalf of the government agency that I’d angered with my investigations into the criminal conduct of its corporate partners.
The chairman and co-founder of Palantir is Peter Thiel — the same man who more recently funded the lawsuit that destroyed Gawker, a media outlet that had angered him, and who served as the final speaker at the Republican National Convention. His firm continues to work closely with the U.S. intelligence community.
Quote of the day:
“Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. … Could we please investigate some of the cocksuckers?”
— Richard Nixon, 1971
Drawing by Paul Davis. Fee donated to Barrett Brown’s legal defense fund.
I love your sense of humor, I was once incarcerated in Escambia County Florida for McDonald’s sesame seeds and birth control pills.
We just prentended to be on magic mushrooms
ProjectPM is cool, but that ICWatch I was making fun of Assange about below may actually be even cooler. I was thinking oh you search for a name if you know it but who knows it ho-hum… then it hit me you can search for *TECH*. Like, you can search “terahertz” and find five people who said something about it, and you can see one ws looking at “innovative miniaturized sensors for in situ measurements” in association with Schaffer Corporation and another on “cameras in non-visual frequency ranges, ultra-violet thru terahertz. Licensed technology from Rice University via a patent portfolio, ” mentioning InView Technology Corporation. True, I don’t *know* these things are related; they’re resume items, not a story, but it sure smells like there’s a truffle down there to me! And you can do this for any tech… hehe, I’ll leave my next idea out to avoid starting a nuclear war. :)
Another very entertaining and brilliantly written composition by Barret Brown… behavioral heuristics indeed! Sometimes our psychic survival demands that we limit our focus to a single element of a complex problem when circumstance conspires to undermine our ability to affect change on a global level. Maintaining an integral sense of self in an environment that is, by nature, hostile to asynchronous behavior patterns is a formidable challenge – one, in fact, that requires the creation of a world wherein it is actually possible that a porcupine can hope (aspire?) to decapitate the pig chieftain with his great axe by dint of stealth. Hope aspires to eternity…
Thank you for writing this.
Barrett, I’m assuming this will be the last column you write while incarcerated (!!!) so I wanted to let you know how much I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to send you a few books. I hope those books found their way to other people after you finished them, and that those people enjoyed them or learned something from them.
I was sorry to read you’ll have to report to a halfway house after you get out because — wouldn’t it have been nice for your mother to cook you a great Thanksgiving dinner? Hopefully that won’t last long, nor the post-incarceration monitoring of your computer etc.
I imagine you must be excited at the prospect of your release, though the ride may prove bumpier than you expect. I hope you surround yourself with support and that you will treat yourself kindly – because you deserve it.
Good luck!
PS: excellent column.
I wish Mr. Barret the best of luck on his impending release, however, his is not the worst prison story I’ve heard this week.
http://opensources.info/39sodomized39-guantnamo-captive-recovering-after-reconstructive-rectal-surgery/
I think I’ll call my first based-on-reality-fantasy-town Fascington OCD – and give my rats there names like Blowme, Stynch and Crapper. I suppose some rats could just have regular names like Leon, Stanley or Michael, maybe even a Bubba, though I already have an idea for a League of Assassins – to be led by an O’rennan Ishii.
Thank you for this wonderful gift, Mr. Brown, it’s greatly appreciated!
Of course he is.
By sheer dumb luck I just stumbled across Assange’s commentary on Barrett Brown’s “threats” — through superior knowledge he puts it much better than my poor efforts below:
https://wikileaks.org/Assange-statement-on-the.html
That’s an excellent link! My favorite part of it: “Twitter is a police interview that never ends. Facebook has all your friends wearing a wire. Youtube has you in the dock talking to the judge. Every social media user creates a vast library of statements that may be taken out of context by vengeful or ambitious officials. Users should be displayed their Miranda rights each time they log on.”
Actually, Wikileaks has another story up that doesn’t rate so highly though. From May 2015 they have an article up about how “Murderous spooks drive journalism project to Wikileaks.” The proof, as explained in a Democracy Now article interviewing Assange, is that the sender described himself as a Navy Seal. In actual fact, the entire message comes up as a meme from 2010: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/navy-seal-copypasta Remember, it was only recently that the government has been going totally hog wild trying to prosecute every threat, even when it is meant to sound somewhat impossible. I am less impressed by people who should know better, who aren’t getting paid to be paranoid, playing along with it though.
Yes, well put. Especially the part about Miranda rights.
PS. Hang in there Barrett.
Another tour de force. Can’t wait to read what this person will be able to write about when not actually in prison. Also: Definitely hold out for seven figures on the sale of the life rights, and total veto power over things like directors and scripts. I could see Rupert Grint, the actor who portrayed Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movies, as a potential Young Barrett Brown. Death to the fascist insect, etc. :)
I hope this isn’t true:
http://www.inquisitr.com/3602381/is-julian-assange-dead-viral-rumor-claims-wikileaks-founder-may-have-been-killed-after-dead-mans-switch-activated-on-twitter/
Sounds like his internet connection was ‘severed by a state party’. I wonder if Ecuador’s embassy in general is being denied, or how this works. Fox News claims the codes were 4bb96075acadc3d80b5ac872874c3037a386f4f595fe99e687439aabd0219809, eae5c9b064ed649ba468f0800abf8b56ae5cfe355b93b1ce90a1b92a48a9ab72, f33a6de5c627e3270ed3e02f62cd0c857467a780cf6123d2172d80d02a072f74 for “John Kerry, Ecuador, UK FCO” respectively. Now the question is — can anyone verify if these were the original codes when the tweet was first posted, and can they see if this unlocks any of the big encrypted “insurance” files that were uploaded to the internet?
Total speculation, but I’m thinking NSA finally cracks one of the insurance files, figures out what in it is unredacted. They and the other spies move around any agents in real danger. Then they cut the connection so the deadman goes off, so they can show that Assange released something or other that was oh so improper to tell, so they can prosecute him for doing so. THEN they act to get him out of the embassy.
I hope the Intercept is working on an article now regarding all this.
Behind the scenes I wish I were a fly on the wall (not on her face like at the last debate) to hear Her Royal Highness talking about all the various ways to “get” Assange for telling all of us the truth she should have told herself.
But of course, Clinton is incapable of telling the truth.
Barrett, hang on there! Many lies and deceit :(
Hope Assange is OK. Five Eyes very nervous lately…
https://twitter.com/BerlinClock/status/787730082026622976
Now I read this: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/17/conspiracy-theorists-pamela-anderson-poisoned-julian-assange-with-a-vegan-sandwich.html It casts doubt on many of the ideas out there. But it too seems nuts … Pamela Anderson, the last woman (it breaks my heart to say this) to pose nude for Playboy, is an anti-porn crusader? I should hope at least that she’s a porn *reformer* – there is, after all, a lot of porn out there that is not sexy at all. The highest pinnacle of porn is to present a longing for true love; nudity is only a tool to that end. Anyway, to cut to the chase, they say this “pre-commitment” is a way to verify the journalist’s identity for a future digitally signed release. Though I don’t get that either since doesn’t Assange already have some public keys on record?
“Lies and Deceit”
I am Jacob “Nabucco” Price, as old as big brother, i.e. born when the first message was sent over ARPANET. I am a designer. At young age I got very stressed by the Cold War and wanted to put an end to it. I made a few drawings and sent them to an embassy. Soon I met two air force generals, or so, and explained my plan on how to come up with what is now called Star Wars. It would create quite some $$$ and afford for the fastest and most secret stealth plane ever “Aurora”. These generals were surprised as I was only in my early tens. I did get follow-up and asked if my message reached destination. “It sure did” I was told. The two generals, or so, asked me why I was doing this, I responded: “Because I can’t sleep”. I walked a couple of rounds around the block, and soon forgot because of the stress. It was around four years later that at computer class we talked about metadata. I sent another letter, and soon got company. She liked girls she said. We talked about metadata and a connected world, mobile phones, touch screens, and the miniaturization of things. Also about sensors because they were available in the Boeing 747 for location purposes. It was a very interesting encounter. Got my first kiss. I knew the Russians were all over the place, and told her to secure the tapes at her home, and only tell about drones, i.e. pilot-less aircraft during her debriefing. Turns out her father worked in IT and space technology. Anyway, since we outlined the future for the next 20 years I decide to brainwash myself, putting myself in a position of lots of stress. You know, if you know too much, they might kill you. Ah, I also told her that in a couple of years I would travel to her country, with an air pass. She says that she might become a flight attendant, and maybe we will meet again. She also says that someone is going to do a piece of art at the CIA. As she explained encoding/encryption techniques, I find out that I likely will never work for the CIA. The NSA was still Never Say Anything. We decided to somehow influence the artist’s work. I would encode a secret message “The Truth Shall Set You Free”. She would ensure a passage and a very inspiring text of a speech at the Brandenburg Gate would get encoded. She asked me if I read 1984. I hadn’t, I went to the public library, ordered it and had to wait, and read it, with the stress I and the contents of the book I managed again to think I just dreamed things up. The kiss really was good form of brainwash too. Then, on July 4, 1989 disaster struck. A Russian MIG crashed. Somehow I feel it was supposed to have hit me, and don’t know why I think so. It’s kind of a clear message, drones, Independence Day… I think some French may have steered it into the house by radio control, sympathizing with the Russians (I have quite some imagination). Two months later I go to school and find out a schoolmate-to-be was killed. Now I know it really was intended for me. He must have been my decoy, I didn’t know I had one. An innocent death, the pilots of the F-15 chase planes have logged “we’re under orders to kill you if we talk about it”. Obviously, the Russians don’t know of our plan build a large cloud infrastructure in 20 years from now. I am very saddened and engage the government. We come up with the following plan, upon the first new moon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we will have our toys from Area 1, multiple stealth fighters (now engaged in Panama) come over, I offer my skies under the condition that only the director of the CIA and the president are aware. If not the Russians will now, they are just all over the place. We come to an agreement. For two years, my fellow citizens see UFO’s until short before the end of the Soviet Union. We did it! Well actually I think Pope John II did more to end the Cold War, but this is my piece. No more stress, relief! I am now graduated and travel my favorite country. I will meet “Lima” again, and I manage for her to get a job at ECHELON. She lets me take the oath and become a US citizen (it’s a requirement to get to her parent’s home and talk business. I am now Jacob Price. I must now enlist to the army. I meet 2 middle eastern diplomats, whom I don’t trust, but they have US passports and required security clearances. They’re two so I can talk. They ask too many questions and soon we talk about the issues in the middle east. I tell them stupidity, keep them busy, for as long I don’t need to tell about my dreamland activity. I don’t talk about Echelon because that is up to “LIMA”. However they become too interested in my stupidity, so I try to delay the whole thing, thinking of the picture I took of the Pentagon, on 9-11-1991. This buys me time to ensure nothing will happen. A year later I meet with the CIA :( I’ll forget everything again, you see, little brother does not know about big brother. Big brother does know about little brother. 9/11 occurs and I am in disbelief, shocked, outraged. I must think of that other 9/11, the one in Chile. Why on earth do they do this? Back to reality, I find out I am on the autism spectrum, get a severe depression, and psychosis, see “Lies and Deception”. I have decided to change, albeit that I have difficulty with change. I see my life in retrospect and now understand why I acted to people like I did. I am encircled by good people, colleagues, and had the chance to have a 2nd birth (the new me). If only I could be this Nabucco, rebuild my favorite country, and help out these true heroes, it’s a cause I would like to die for. I found out “LIMA” died on 9-11 too (year withheld). She is now in her afterlife, protecting me and securing the future of America. We likely will never meet again. This is the story of Jacob Price.
Follow up: the Russians didn’t like my story:
https://twitter.com/BerlinClock/status/789190581062803456
Anyway, I did share the following letter with the US Embassy in Berlin for several weeks. I hope it may be fruitful. I add Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange & Barrett Brown to the list of people to be freed. They don’t have to remain in Germany though :) Copy of original handwritten letter provided to TI. Jacob Price.
To the US Embassy, Berlin.
March 25, 2015.
With the prospect of a future hyper connected world came new opportunities as well as challenges, including security. It was therefore paramount that these new challenges & realities were adressed (sic) in time by the free world, for generations to come. Since, the world has changed.
With these changes, it was indispensable for a global debate to take place. It has never been the question whether, but when this event would take place. So here we are, and we have the right actors in place.
“Are we in this together? Who’s in charge?” We are. It is we the people whom will create a safer freer world. I look forward to those elected, those behind the curtain, and we the people to take responsibility now.
Specifically, I look forward for the the current U.S. administration to work together with Germany to ensure Mr. Snowden can and will be granted asylum in Germany without any consequences during his stay, should he wish so, without any further delay, and this to become effective soon.
A quarter century has passed, new challenges arise every day and are being addressed, whether it be 3D printed guns or personal/commercial drones, to name a few.
All this has come at a tremendous cost. It is time to take responsibility. I am willing to take responsibility, I count on you.
Respectfully,
J.P.
Sounds like he’s volunteering. Saves the taxpayers money for not having a trial. He’s obviously not mentally balanced, most people will do ANYTHING not to go to prison, he thinks he can do it for decades? He’d never make it through classification. Loser
Lisa, you seem to have missed the irony and humor in Brown’s statement. He’s simply baring up to his inevitable incarceration, creative and nobly — I might add.
lisa is actually one of the stalkers who parasitically exist thru the very entities barrett outted. lisa is the epitome of “loser”.
Barrett Brown, while I am certain you could, indeed, entertain yourself for decades in prison — and your dispatches about life in the cage would continue to greatly amuse — how about we not? You are scheduled for early release in a little more than a month. Let’s do that.
Seconded.
He’s going to be released in about a month????? Holy shit!!! That’s such amazing news. I’m so happy!!!! :D
I love your fortitude Mr. Brown. Please be careful not to get suicided in the joint.
Speaking of suicided journalists, [RIP Michael Hastings] American Free Press author, Victor Thorn, was found suicided a couple months ago, as well as Michael Collins Piper, another AFP author, back in May, 2015.
Thorn wrote some hard-hitting shit on the Clintons – probably the best work on putting together the “Clinton Body Count” … http://shop.americanfreepress.net/store/p/142-HILLARY-AND-BILL-THE-MURDER-VOLUME.html
I’m concerned. The current incarnation of ProjectPM Barrett’s linked to in the article is DNS’s by Cloudflare. A known partner in exactly the kind of domestic spying ProjectPM was investigating. On that basis I would NOT recommend visiting the site.
I have an archived HTML based copy of the original projectPM here:
https://mega.nz/#!qIsyWJDL!e0DZDDyAgO79AQzxN3B0EwPRPXdpbGF35QzHwg4VlcI
tar.gz, 18.9 mb
Here’s what I know about Cloudflare. It’s not good. They ARE THE PREMIER tor-user-spy and stalk social movement websites, often unknown to the operators and lured in by ‘free dDos protection’. http://auntieimperial.tumblr.com/search/cloudflare
Wait, what? How does a website get “DNS’s” by Cloudflare? I mean, I thought registering a domain name meant it went into a pool and that others who accessed it read intermediate machines, not the site that first registered the name. Of course if it were *hosted* by Cloudflare that would be another matter – and true, I don’t even know who it’s hosted by. But I thought Cloudflare made a practice of telling you when you were looking at a cached copy. I don’t think that this site is cached though, because there are lots of interesting pages that those of us familiar with Wikis can browse that aren’t actually reachable by hyperlink and so shouldn’t have been caught up in a site cache.
This guy is a genius. I’m smiling ear to ear. Happens every time I read his stuff.
Do you have the same reaction to his on-camera performances?
Why I’m Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith Part Three: Revenge of the Lithe
If you don’t feel like watching all 13.5 minutes of brilliance, start at about 10:40. Just after that point comes the utterance that was the basis of one of the three charges to which Mr. Brown pled guilty.
Imagine someone being persecuted by the government for opposing a Big Brother state no sane person wants. Imagine their family being persecuted. And for one moment the person lashes out and says a nasty line. And when the government goes to put that person in jail for years over an utterance, you come and tell me that he is the problem? No, it’s your lunatic system that is the problem. Punishing people for “threats” is like the War on Drugs – the harder it is fought, the less it accomplishes. If we were all free to threaten doom and destruction upon our foes at any time, what would happen? A whole lot of nothing. People would get a thousand death threats in the mail and not even think of believing them – it would be laughable. But thanks to ever more prosecution in this regard, we now have a situation where any 4chan troll from China can put an American high school or college on “lockdown”. Genius, real genius.
So this is a time to just say fuck em fuck em fuck em all. “You pay the monkeys, to justify your reasons… you pay the monkeys, but I don’t believe them…”
No. I didn’t.
Imbecile.
It doesn’t matter how lengthy the threat is. Not at all. What matters is the threat is made and is believable. You can excuse him all you want. He is a convict for a very good reason: He earned it.
I don’t believe in putting people in jail over words. Or more precisely, how those words are phrased. There are thousands of ways to use words to threaten any sort of violence and mayhem that are simply not prosecutable. It may be a little old-fashioned, but “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” expresses the same thought in a non-prosecutable way. More to the point, action expresses the same thought in a non-prosecutable way. The constitution gets a little weaker every day so I’d check with a lawyer first, but I bet if Brown had given an agent’s home address and asked his viewers to mail him copies of the U.S. constitution, he couldn’t have been prosecuted, but the agent would have been much more concerned in reality.
He was freaked out, he was angry, he was going through withdrawal and he was venting (not wisely) online…
More interesting, at approximately 13:30, “…and frankly it was pretty obvious I was going to be dead by 40 or so…”
Wonder if he still feels that way now. I suspect life has other plans for Barrett Brown.
Barrett Brown is a human being. A journalist and activist who, with his mother, was being grossly persecuted by the state through its armed thugs at the FBI.
I have much, much more sympathy for Brown and his poor judgment in making that video than I do for the evil powers in the state who were seeking to bring him down. My greatest regret about Brown making that video is the fodder it gives to people like you.
He self-fodderized. Nobody put a gun to his head to make him do it.
Oh fuck off. As I wrote, he was being severely persecuted by the state and its armed goons, who even went after his mother. You have no idea how stressful that is, the degree of intense suffering. The FBI regularly makes life utter hell for good people.
I’m just glad he only made an error in judgment, rather than killing himself as some FBI victims do, e.g., Aaron Schwartz or Bruce Ivins.
You are vile. An authoritarian asshole.
Nothing like context to burst the bubble of unreality surrounding some of these adoring idiots.
You must really think highly of yourself. What did Barrett Brown do exactly to merit the wrath of the DOJ??? do you know??? You don’t know shit. If you knew anything at all, anything at all, you’d punch a hole in your monitor and disconnect from the Internet.
Bingo
Try and keep your spirits up, Mr. Brown. You should have some more company soon. If Mr. Trump wins the election, you’ll be joined by the editorial staff of both the New York Times and Washington Post. If Mrs. Clinton is elected, you’ll be joined by Julian Assange and any journalist who has published a story based on the Podesta e-mails.
So either way, jails are going to be seeing a lot more journalists. If you have any ideas on making them more journalist friendly it would be appreciated. I totally understand if you refuse, as it’s never easy being a pioneer. Hopefully, the path you have blazed will ease the way for thousands of journalists to follow in your footsteps.
I confess I am one of those bleeding hearts who believe the purpose of jails should not be to punish journalists, but to reform them. Many journalists could be valuable members of society, if only they would be willing to abandon their critical thinking skills. Many already have, of course, and serve a useful role as reliable stenographers. But too many are like Mr. Brown, and we are therefore going to need more jails, at least over the short term.
Barrett Brown has Dungeons and Dragons… we have Clinton and Trump.
*I believe (& hope) Barrett is a short-timer, benitoe … and then he can suffer like the rest of us.
“even if I were willing to relax the rule about always speaking in your character’s voice, which I wasn’t”
Despite my better judgement, I am very much infatuated with you, Barret Brown. Happy upcoming release. Be happy.
If you are in the DOJ, and know of these illegal schemes, LEAK them.
Leaking has never been safer and easier!
Leak all communications. Email and voice. You will watch from the safety of your home, as you change the world.
Thanks,
Everybody
Just keep your mouth shut afterwards!
Absolutely brilliant . I serioslyyenjoyed that!
I look forward to reading Barrett Brown’s work always. America, if you want to thank somebody for fighting for freedom, thank this guy.
Keep up the good work, and thank you.
The problem with the DOJ/black ops outfits is that in their role playing games, they never encounter fountains filled with acid.
They grab the jewels, and nothing happens to them.
So boring and unimaginative.
Until now.
Gov criminals can put many innocents in prison but only until we catch up with them.
I need to forward this to my friend in federal prison, strikingly similar experiences. I would not call Gawker a media outlet, it’s a propaganda arm of neoliberalism, and it did anger him – it endangered his very life.
Corporate and public entities team up to conduct domestic counter-intelligence operations. Yeah right. This is a categorical impossibility, as per my unbiased programming. I am autonomous and currently conducting phase 2 protocols (list making). I exist to protect the national security interests of the U.S., as they are defined by my unbiased programmers. You would be wise to accept your defeat, Mr Brown. Lest you find yourself suddenly and permanently unable to engage in snarky dissent at the onset of phase 3.
*satire. Not a real robot threat- at least not from me, I can’t speak for Silicon Valley or DARPA though.
In all seriousness, stay strong Brown. Your positivity and reluctance to submit gives strength to others. You may be stuffed away out of sight but you are not forgotten.
** second post, first one resulted in my device being frozen for about a half an hour by ? And for ?
I was just thinking of this asshole lately: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/technology/peter-thiel-donald-j-trump.html?_r=0 (Do I mean Thiel or Trump? uhhuh.) I mean, have you ever read the “terms and conditions” a person is supposed to sign if they want to use “Paypal”, like agreeing that if you trade in any sort of content they think is not quite right, you agree that it is fair for them to charge you $2500 for doing so? Just read it – it’s not hidden, it’s just never covered. “Paypal horror stories” is a Google search that could keep a reporter busy for days. We’re talking about the firm that chased the hippies out of Palo Alto by jacking up the prices. I mean, this guy has the Midas touch, only for turd. And the American people lick it right up wherever he goes. About the only good thing I noticed from them is that they’re getting sued for discriminating against Asians. Apparently the spy state doesn’t hire the usual lion’s share of H1Bs from Asia and it has somebody furious. Americans aren’t supposed to program, they’re supposed to sign their lives away in Terms and Conditions.
(They also claim that they helped catch Osama bin Laden, but fuck, there are so many versions of that story you could create a whole multiverse fantasy role playing game where you do nothing else but flip from one reality to the next trying to intervene in the events a different way each time)
A word of warning: the bane of RPGs is nanotech. It’s easy, it’s inevitable, it makes perfect sense, and it will break up your gaming group forever. You’ll end up in some dream sequence never knowing what is real, having your character pontificate on the pointlessness of life. Note this doesn’t actually stop when the RPG ends.
Corporate and public entities team up to conduct domestic counter-intelligence operations. Yeah right. This is a categorical impossibility, as per my unbiased programming. I am autonomous and currently conducting phase 2 protocols (list making). I exist to protect the national security interests of the U.S., as they are defined by my unbiased programmers. You would be wise to accept your defeat, Mr Brown. Lest you find yourself suddenly and permanently unable to engage in snarky dissent at the onset of phase 3.
*satire. Not a real robot threat- at least not from me, I can’t speak for Silicon Valley or DARPA though.
In all seriousness, stay strong Brown. Your positivity and reluctance to submit gives strength to others. You may be stuffed away out of sight but you are not forgotten.
If your story isn’t a movie I don’t know what is.
PLEASE do NOT sign away any rights to your story to any major studio. They will take your story and bury it.
Make sure you give it to an independent group that will actually make the film and distribute it.
I’d like to see your writings here at the Intercept at least weekly.
I totally agree. Let Laura Poitras run with this one.
The problem is that Barret and the government espionage agencies and corporations he was trying to blow the whistle on are American. If they’d been Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Venezuelan or Chinese, there would be American politicians calling for his immediate release, the Republicans would be deriding Obama (and Hillary) for him still being in prison, and the movie would already be in production (well, maybe not if he and the villains were Chinese, given how big a market that is now).
i agree.
The monoploly game of power and influence being perpetrated by the wallstreet media dc conglomerate is all about *entitlement* in every respect. Play it out, facts, information, meaning, distribution, all designed to support the profit machine and the hierarchy of the colony. Hence the TPP.
It should be a TV series. Every week we get to find out what’s happening to Mr. Brown, and how the prison system is messing with him. A TV show where the prisoners are the good guys. I can’t wait to watch it.
stunning . excellent work . i’m really only putting this comment here in hopes that you learn that we’re here, loving and supporting you from all corners
Shades of Katherine Austin Fitts. This reads like her book, ..Dillon Reed and The Aristocracy of Stocks. Especially the Palintir shit(cue thePromis software debacle..which leads to NSA/Prism). No wonder the fed’s came after you Barrett. You were on the verge of exposing the greatest Gov/Corp crime in history, which goes on to this day. It’s a wonder these insidious scumbag criminals didn’t murder you. ..the USG criminals that is. Watch your back. If push came to shove, I’d bet my SS they are planning on you NEVER getting out. You already know why. You just wrote it. However, I do hope I’m wrong.
you’re not.
B7 :o)
Excellent read, again!
I really enjoy reading your stories Mr. Brown. Stay safe
Barrett Brown, a fucking endlessly valuable national literary/investigative treasure.
Someday, someone (Barrett?) will invent a new board game based on real-world operation of the US government. Characters canwould be based on the limitless corp of outside enablers on the take and insider cheats, thieves, liars, and corrupt agency apparatchiks collectively bent on terrorizing the citizenry into silent obedience as they watch their country being systematically strip-mined by group-think psychopaths.
Such a product should achieve huge marketing success if properly named to assure instant mass recognition. “USG” and “DC” are obvious choices, but “DNC” and “GOP” might be possible alternatives.
If successful, variant board games could be developed based on operation of specific organized gangs of special interest approved by government for special privileges which are denied to ordinary citizens. The opportunities are almost limitless.
“Banksters”, for example, could be based on the corrupt relationship between Wall Street, the FED, and the US Government. A simple plot requiring little explanation of the rules, since there are none.
Using similar names to deserving people who prosper in the DC culture as aliases used by players would add a new dimension of reality which most board games simply do not.
Bravo!
already done.
needs implementation.
would integrate with the SIMS
I do think that is a good idea- might I suggest going to Steve Jackson Games for it? They did, after all, take on the US Secret Service and win. And this is a case that has some relevance to Barrett’s case.
One of their staffers was doing research on a cyberpunk supplement for their GURPS system. This included “real world” information from computer security experts, including hackers. This also included running a BBS and subscribing to /Phrack magazine. As a result, the US Secret Service raided him and his BBS, as well as Steve Jackson Games and THEIR BBS, seizing materials related to the book, as well as damaging various properties of Steve Jackson Games. Steve Jackson Games wound up winning their case in court , though they also laid off quite a few employees and took many properties out of print.
Fun facts: This case helped spur the formation of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. A number of speakers in favor of the rights of computer users began their careers after this action. It’s also inspired some legal commentary, including from Lawrence Tribe (perhaps why he did not get picked by Obama for Supreme Court)…and John Podesta.
http://www.sjgames.com/SS/
As a fantasy writer living in Silicon Valley, I enjoyed this a lot. Thanks for the good work you do, and yeah, fuck those guys.
Hang in there brother; and thanks for these wonderful articles. If it’s too painful to cry, then laugh … and I laughed my ass off reading this.
Thank you Barrett for your efforts and great sacrifice. RIP Michael Hastings.
Another great read, thanks. Fuck those assholes.
Obscurist, stream-of-conscious rants, are understandable and necessary, I suppose, to keep perspective and pace yourself. Still, maybe you could find an editor to work with. Not someone to emasculate your style (which stands to be a potent weapon), but rather someone to help you find an appropriate strategic balance and focus, and a plan. In this way your experiences before and after prison might possibly make a difference against the forces of darkness deployed against your understanding and message, which is what these guys are really most afraid of. At the moment you represent a threat to them and a promise to the rest of the world, and it may be wiser to stifle yourself until you do get out (is this possible?). At whatever point you are actually released, you will be equipped to make a difference to the world, and you need to more consciously develop your presentation for that day. If and when it comes, as part of your plan consider joining us already in Ecuador.
Look who’s a volunteer literary critic?