“The allocution I give today is going to be a bit different from the sort that usually concludes a sentencing hearing, because this is an unusual case touching upon unusual issues. It is also a very public case, not only in the sense that it has been followed closely by the public, but also in the sense that it has implications for the public, and even in the sense that the public has played a major role, because, of course, the great majority of the funds for my legal defense was donated by the public.”

— Barrett Brown, at his sentencing allocution.

On Thursday, Barrett Brown, the journalist and activist sometimes supposed to be connected to the hacker group Anonymous, received a 63-month prison sentence from a federal court in Dallas, Texas. The court also ordered Brown to pay $890,000 in restitution and fines. Brown’s prosecution traced back to the hack of private intelligence firm Stratfor in 2011.

Brown was not accused of actually hacking Stratfor himself. Rather, the government targeted Brown for sharing a hyperlink to the stolen information. Specifically, while in a chatroom, Brown copied and pasted a link to the files stolen from Stratfor. The collection of files Brown linked to included credit card information. Prosecutors alleged that Brown knew the files contained credit card data when he linked to it.

This initial act set off a series of unfortunate events — multiple indictments (in October 2012, December 2012, January 2013), FBI raids of his and his mother’s homes, a series of meandering YouTube videos. Initially, the dozen charges Brown faced carried a total of more than 100 years in prison. However, in April 2014, he struck a plea agreement with prosecutors. The deal required Brown to plead guilty to charges stemming from threatening an FBI agent in a video posted online and obstruction of justice in a federal investigation.

Brown is not an altogether sympathetic character in the eyes of many observers. He did, after all, act foolishly (and, well, criminally) in the aftermath of the government’s initial raid, whether the raid was proper or not. Nevertheless, Brown’s individual transgressions shouldn’t distract from the nature of the government’s accusations against him. Nor should they distract from the very real First Amendment concerns those accusations raise.

The hyperlink Brown posted was available to the public at the time he posted it. It was obtained through lawful means. The linked-to files contained documents related to intelligence-gathering performed by Stratfor, in its capacity as a contractor to the U.S. government. Barrett Brown and other journalists were actively investigating government efforts of this sort and reporting on what they believed were the privacy implications of those efforts. But the prosecutors challenged Brown’s right to claim First Amendment protections due to journalists.

In his allocution, Brown said:

“Every journalist in the United States is put at risk by the novel, and sometimes even radical, claims that the government has introduced in the course of the sentencing process. The government asserts that I am not a journalist and thus unable to claim the First Amendment protections guaranteed to those engaged in information-gathering activities. Your Honor, I’ve been employed as a journalist for much of my adult life, I’ve written for dozens of magazines and newspapers, and I’m the author of two published and critically-acclaimed books of expository non-fiction. Your Honor has received letters from editors who have published my journalistic work, as well as from award-winning journalists such as Glenn Greenwald, who note that they have used that work in their own articles. If I am not a journalist, then there are many, many people out there who are also not journalists, without being aware of it, and who are thus as much at risk as I am.”

Kevin Gallagher, the director of the Free Barrett Brown campaign, told the Guardian, “Basically, if you share a link to publicly available material without knowing what’s in it — maybe it could contain stolen credit card info — you could be prosecuted.”

While Gallagher’s description may be simplistic, he is right to be concerned about the evolving landscape of laws governing online communications, privacy, and cybersecurity. Keep this in mind as experts debate President Obama’s new legislative proposals on cybersecurity, which he touted during his recent State of the Union address. Brown’s case serves as potent reminder of how thin the line can be between cybersecurity and overcriminalization.

Even if the federal government has wrongfully targeted Barrett Brown’s speech in this case, his journalism (and satire) continue unabashed. Barrett Brown issued a statement following his sentencing:

“Good news! — The U.S. government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex. For the next 35 months, I’ll be provided with free food, clothes, and housing as I seek to expose wrongdoing by Bureau of Prisons officials and staff and otherwise report on news and culture in the world’s greatest prison system. I want to thank the Department of Justice for having put so much time and energy into advocating on my behalf; rather than holding a grudge against me for the two years of work I put into in bringing attention to a DOJ-linked campaign to harass and discredit journalists like Glenn Greenwald, the agency instead labored tirelessly to ensure that I received this very prestigious assignment. — Wish me luck!”

Tamara Tabo is a summa cum laude graduate of the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University, where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the school’s law review. After graduation, she clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She currently heads the Center for Legal Pedagogy at Texas Southern University, an institute applying cognitive science to improvements in legal education. You can reach her at tabo.atl@gmail.com.