Today, a judge in Dallas will decide the fate of journalist Barrett Brown, who is being sentenced in a case that has been fraught with controversy and deplorable conduct by the Justice Department from its beginning in 2013. Brown, who author Barry Eisler profiled earlier today, was one of the very few reporters covering intelligence contractors and their role in mass surveillance of citizens around the world for years before we ever heard the name Edward Snowden.
Director Brian Knappenberger, whose film The Internet's Own Boy was just short-listed for an Oscar, has released to us this previously unpublished outtake interview of Brown from his previous film We Are Legion. Brown's description of these shadowy contractors and the necessity of journalists to uncover their secrets is uncanny, given the interview was conducted almost two years before the first NSA leaks from Snowden. Watch Knappenberger's clip above.
