When it happened to me, I dismissed it as an anomaly. The government – while trying to access the private emails of my company’s 410,000 users – made material misrepresentations to the courts in a coordinated campaign to portray me as obstinate and uncooperative. Their intent? To manipulate a judge into accepting an unconstitutional legal theory. It cost me my business.

Barrett Brown, whose investigative journalism frequently embarrassed the DOJ and FBI, wasn’t quite so lucky. Last week, he was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by another two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay $890K in restitution. That was the penalty for pleading guilty to three charges: “accessory after the fact”, a charge he faced for attempting to negotiate redactions in the stolen data, “obstructing justice” because he moved his laptop from a table to a cabinet, and “threatening a federal agent” in a video posted on the internet. The justification provided for his harsh sentence was a “trafficking in stolen authentication features” charge, for sharing a hyperlink to a public website, that the prosecution dropped before his plea.

I first heard about Barrett Brown when he was arrested in 2012, but I quickly lost track of his case. I began following more closely when I learned the same FBI agents involved with my case were also at the center of his. I found it disturbing that the same strategy used against me – making material misrepresentations in service to a false narrative – was being used against Barrett. I can only assume they have used that strategy on others.

While I can’t speak to Barrett’s case detail, he claims (and I believe) that the government made at least 41 false statements against him. During his pre-sentencing allocution, for instance, Barrett reminded the court that, at his bond hearing, a federal agent swore “that I have lived in the Middle East, a region I have never actually had the pleasure of visiting.”

It reminded me of a similar, easily disproven, statement made in my own case: “After knocking on his door, the FBI Special Agents witnessed Mr. Levison exit his apartment from a back door, get in his car, and drive away.” It’s true that my apartment had a back door which led onto a balcony, but I lived on the fifth floor. Let me assure you, I cannot fly: at the time, I was recovering from a torn ACL and could barely jump.

To quote Barrett: “When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history, [which] break the rules to get the villains, and [in doing] so become villains themselves.”

I have struggled with the decision to speak out in Barrett’s defense: his well-documented personal problems and penchant for reckless antagonism make him a hard person to defend. But one of Barrett’s more admirable talents was the ability to expose misconduct by the people we entrust with power. His work fearlessly focused on topics nobody else would touch. While I can’t defend actions that even he admits were “idiotic”, I feel I have to defend his rights.

There is a growing trend of politically motivated prosecutions, built upon “creative” interpretations of the existing laws and which rely upon material misrepresentations to prejudice the courts.

I did not realize until it was too late how the once-seemingly trivial misrepresentations in my own case affected the court’s perception of me, and how this perception would lead to the court finding in the government’s favor. During a hearing to consider the arguments in my appeal, the presiding judge asked if I had been charged with obstruction of justice because of how the events had been conveyed. That’s when it hit me. The government’s narrative had convinced a sitting circuit court judge that I was guilty of a crime when I was not. I believe that assumption is what led the appellate court to dismiss my case on a contrived procedural technicality, without consideration of the substantive legal arguments.

Barrett faced the same fate. At his sentencing hearing, while justifying a sentence which fell in the upper range of all possible outcomes, the judge said Barrett was “was more involved than what he wants the court to believe.” The judge even enhanced Barrett’s sentence for his use of “sophisticated means,” or his ability to cut and paste a hyperlink.

Barrett Brown and I don’t have a lot in common: I’m a clean-cut, successful American entrepreneur, and, at the time of his arrest, Barrett was eking out an existence as an independent journalist while attempting to cope with a series of personal problems. We were both singled out by the government for what they thought we could – and would – tell them about other people. When we resisted, they twisted our words, our actions and the law. The result has been a set of disturbing court decisions that may give the government the ability to selectively prosecute anyone they wish. This time it was a journalist. Next time it could be you.