Barrett Brown has spent 300 days in prison. His crime? Daring to investigate the highly secretive world of private intelligence and military contractors. Brown, a journalist with loose ties to the hacktivist group Anonymous, faces seventeen charges after helping to disseminate and document the information retrieved from the group's hack of the firm HBGary. 

Nation contributor Peter Ludlow joins Democracy Now! to untangle the web of private intelligence firms that were implicated in the hack and why they are so intent on criminalizing Brown’s reporting.

—Jake Scobey-Thal  

Read Peter Ludlow's piece, "The Strange Case of Barrett Brown" here.