Responding to the sentencing of Barrett Brown, Hanni Fakhoury and Nadia Kayyali of EFF write, in part:
But the lengthy sentence Brown received today was not primarily driven by the charges surrounding the Stratfor hack. Of the 63 months, only 15 months were attributable to the Stratfor hack. The bulk of the sentence—48 months—was for threatening the FBI agent, something that Brown himself admitted in a statement at his sentencing today was a mistake. There is no question that threatening violence to an FBI officer is illegal. But that action was caused, in part, by an extensive government investigation that turned out to be resolved with a relatively light sentence compared to the prison time Brown was facing for the underlying charges related to the Stratfor hack brought by the government.
In other words, the substantive criminal charges that brought the force of the federal criminal justice system on Brown ended up being less serious than the charges based on Brown’s reaction to the scrutiny.
Read more on EFF.