Raw Interview: Frederick Brennan

Barrett Brown
3 min readAug 10, 2022

--

For later use

  1. During your trip with Cottle to DC last year, were you ever concerned that he might be arrested over the series of high-profile hacks he’s claimed responsibility for over last couple years? Why or why not?

I’ve never been to Washington DC

2. Can you clarify the degree to which you were present during Cottle’s trip to the US? Did you accompany him to DC itself as some have suggested, and/or to Philadelphia, or to any other major city?

If you search my tweets you’ll see that I barely saw him as he fucked up the hotel rental lol I live in Atlantic City, he stayed at an AirBNB in Ventnor City to see me, and I met him precisely once… DaleBeran was there the whole time, incidentally, not that it matters

3. Did you meet Cottle’s other associate Distributed Denial of Secrets editor-in-chief Lorax Horne, whom he’s claimed to have flown in with him from Canada, on this or any other occasion?

Nope, assuming that’s @bbhorne, but I would meet them if they wanted to

4. Have you seen the archival data showing that Cottle’s chan site had a message board known as “pedo” well before the point at which he and others around him have previously claimed it to have been set up?

No, but even if that’s true, I’m quite satisfied with the evidence of him not being in jail not having been charged getting a natsec letter when he requested his records from whatever the Canadian DHS is

Follow up: Are you aware that people sometimes avoid or reduce sentences for crimes by making deals to cooperate with police, that this is a widely documented practice within the hacker community in particular, and that several people you know are documented to have done this?

Of course I just don’t know that that happened in Cottle’s case… and I don’t think you do either. Given that he’s done a lot of illegal shit in his life, it’s highly dubious to me to claim w/o evidence (because any such deals are sealed) that the deal was to avoid charges of X

If you’re aware that not being in prison is not evidence that one has not previously been charged with a crime, then why is it your chief argument that Cottle has not previously been charged with a crime? I’m kind of an idiot so you’ll have to bear with me here.

I’m not making any particular argument, just that I think the weight of the evidence is in Cottle’s favor and not yours. I don’t particularly care about the issue; I have no ongoing relationship really w/him but also no major beef w/him so I don’t know why we even discuss it.

5. Have you dealt at all with Cottle’s other recent associates such as Neal Rauhauser, Elizabeth Shaw, Emma Best, Anisha Kothari, John Jackson, or Gregg Housh?

Neal a long time ago, I discovered he was a fed and generally unhelpful so cut that off Libby a bit more recently, but I haven’t heard from her in ages either after she failed to show up to record a podcast that was here idea Emma dunno, Anisha dunno, JJ dunno, Housh know of only

6. Can you briefly describe your role in Gamergate?

[No answer]

--

--