Barrett Brown (video still)

Writer and journalist Barrett Brown has been charged by the U.S. attorney with conspiracy to reveal private information about a government employee, Internet threats and retaliation against a federal investigator.

Mr. Brown, who has sometimes been referred to as a spokesman for Anonymous, was arrested on September 12 at his Dallas-area home after he posted a series of bizarre and rambling videos on YouTube titled, "Why I'm Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith."

In one of the videos Mr. Brown, whose mood appeared to change from relaxed to enraged from one moment to the next, made direct threats against Agent Smith and implied he would investigate the agent's children.

Brown was taken in by Dallas Pd & turned over to the Feds the next day.

Back in mid-September The Daily Dot published the full video of the TinyChat session during which Barrett Brown was arrested by the Dallas County Sheriff's Office, as well as a link to the Pastebin transcript of the event. He was picked up by the FBI the next day:

As for Mr. Brown's actual status with Anonymous, the hacktivist collective's most active Twitter stream, @YourAnonNews, appears to reflect conflicting feelings among other Anons about Mr. Brown's relationship with them:

#Anonymous "spokesman's" (read: egofag) YouTube meltdown led to arrest | pulse.me/s/dwQ0h

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) September 22, 2012

Write Barrett Brown: Barrett Brown #45047177 Mansfield Law Enforcement Center 1601 Heritage Parkway Mansfield, TX 76063 #FreeBB

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) September 18, 2012

A letter allegedly written by Mr. Brown has been published on Pastebin. In it he alleges that there is much he can't disclose and that he has been injured and is not receiving proper treatment. Mr. Brown also appears to obliquely reference Agent Smith again:

Apparently I am not just a danger to the fragile FBI agents who have taken to threatening my mother and fracturing my ribs in the course of heavily-armed raids on my uptown Dallas apartment, but must be prevented from explaining to my associates, followers, and even enemies why I have again been subjected to violence and indignity.

Near the end of his message, Mr. Brown writes that he regrets nothing. He concludes that once he regains the freedom he didn't do anything to lose, "it is war, on paper as always, but war."

Barrett Brown (video still)

Barrett Brown, who has often stepped forward as a kind of spokesguy for Anonymous, was arrested during a live chat late Wednesday night. Wired reports the incident occurred as Mr. Brown chatted with his girlfriend and several others on TinyChat:

"Two minutes into the recorded chat session, loud voices can be heard in the background of Brown’s residence while the woman in the room with him is in front of the computer screen. She quickly closes the computer screen, but the audio continued to capture events in the room as the FBI appeared to be strong-arming Brown to put handcuffs on him. Brown can be heard yelling in the background."

Some who were chatting with Mr. Brown at the time had no idea what was going on, whether it was a prank or not, but Mr. Brown was indeed booked into the Dallas County Jail before midnight Wednesday. A spokesperson for the Dallas County Sheriff told Wired Mr. Brown had been "removed from the jail" Thursday morning and taken elsewhere.

A kind of tiresome transcript of the chat session has been posted on Pastebin--you can skip the lulzy shenanigans by scrolling down to the end to see Mr. Brown's chat companions trying to figure out just what the hell happened.

Mr. Brown's arrest comes after he published a strange 13 minute and 31 second video on YouTube titled "Why I'm Going to Destroy FBI Agent Robert Smith Part Three: Revenge of the Lithe" (see below).

In the video Mr. Brown appears to threaten an FBI Agent named Robert Smith and seems to imply a threat toward the agent's children. Family ties inspired Mr. Brown's wrath. In colorful terms he states that his mother is under investigation by the U.S. District Attorney and "chickenshit" FBI Agent Robert Smith for obstruction of justice.

Mr. Brown also says "we are now investigating" Agent Smith.

In the video's description, Mr. Brown writes, "Send all info on Agent Robert Smith to barriticus@gmail.com so FBI can watch me look up his kids."

"It's all legal, folks," he continues, "Palantir chief counsel Matt Long already signed off on it when Themis planned worse."

Since news broke about Mr. Brown's arrest, @AnonymousIRC, one of the hacktivist collective's Twitter accounts, has kicked into gear, tweeting that "#Antisec retaliates on Barrett Brown arrestation" and linking to a Pastebin page that appears to drop names, addresses, emails, phone numbers and credit card information:

We have these 13 credit cards details as teaser, and aprox. right now (should be we think...) we would be dropping an undeterminate amount of credit cards potentially belonging to govt officials (just and only just, underterminately probable) potentially all around of undeterminate number of carding forums, black markets and other underground places. since we potentially believe only pros can do this well in the right way.

"Spend a lot," Anonymous writes, "Send flowers to Barrett!!!"

The FBI has not commented on the arrest.

UPDATE: Anonymous posted links to another revenge-motivated data drop on Thursday afternoon. The victims of this leak seem pretty random:

AntiSec retaliation: 3900 personal datasets from International Pharmaceutical Federation (FIP) leaked: bit.ly/PevbBT (via @57un)

— Anonymous (@YourAnonNews) September 13, 2012

We seriously want to know what an international association of pharmacists (truly international--the data is for pharmacists from as far away as Ghana as well as the United States) has done to make Anonymous angry, aside from one of  their kind possibly providing Mr. Brown with whatever he was on when he made the video below.

Image via AnonNCarolina2, Twitter

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun implementing a $1 billion face recognition program that will probably scare everyone outside of law enforcement.  NewScientist reports that the Next Generation Identification (NGI) program will lump iris scans, biometrics, DNA and even voice prints into one formidable profiling tool and some states are already using the program in a limited fashion. The whole thing will be in effect across the country in about 2 years. NewScientist addresses the privacy problem:

Ideally, such technological advancements will allow law enforcement to identify criminals more accurately and lead to quicker arrests. But privacy advocates are worried by the broad scope of the FBI's plans. They are concerned that people with no criminal record who are caught on camera alongside a person of interest could end up in a federal database, or be subject to unwarranted surveillance.

While NewScientist notes the FBI won't disclose anything about the algorithms used in the program, they report the "technology could be very accurate if applied to photographs taken in controlled situations such as passport photos or police shots."

NGI may light a new fire under Anonymous. The hacktivist collective has for some time been sounding the death knell for privacy online as well as in public, citing both the TrapWire surveillance system brought to light by hacked Stratfor emails and Europe's similar INDECT surveillance system. To Anonymous, NGI may just be the most concrete evidence yet that they have a point, and more people need to pay attention.

On Friday Anonymous announced #OpBigBrother and issued a call for worldwide protests by privacy advocates on October 20, 2012. NGI may be the thing they need to ensure the October protest is just the first of many to come.

DNSChanger oozed out of Estonia and may have fouled up as many as a half-million computers in the United States. The feds' temporary fix to keep the worm from propagating was to replace infected servers with clean surrogates.

Coordinating with the Estonian authorities who arrested those believed responsible for the worm, the FBI set up what amounted to a Maginot Line of temporary servers that would to give businesses and private individuals affected by DNSChanger time to cleanse infected systems. However, this may not have been enough to save all the afflicted. Cyber security journalist Brian Krebs writes:

Computers still infected with DNSChanger are up against a countdown clock. As part of the DNSChanger botnet takedown, the feds secured a court order to replace the Trojan’s DNS infrastructure with surrogate, legitimate DNS servers. But those servers are only allowed to operate until March 8, 2012. Unless the court extends that order, any computers still infected with DNSChanger may no longer be able to browse the Web.

[Internet Identity president and CTO Rod] Rasmussen said there are still millions of PCs infected with DNSChanger. "At this rate, a lot of users are going to see their Internet break on March 8."

According to Mr. Krebs, Internet Identity believes DNSChanger infected "half of all Fortune 500 firms, and 27 out of 55 major government entities."

Large network operators unsure as to whether their system is infected can contact the DNS Changer Working Group for assistance here. Private users may be able to ferret out a localized infection by following steps outlined here, at DCWG.org.

[Krebs on Security via RT]