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Journalist Matthew Keys Sentenced To 24-Month Prison Term For Helping Anonymous (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The former Reuters journalist convicted last year for aiding the hacker group Anonymous has been sentenced to 24 months in prison today. Matthew Keys faced up to a possible 25 years for three counts of hacking. Keys will be on supervised release and he is set to surrender on June 15th. In October 2015, Keys was found guilty for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act when he provided website login credentials to The Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Media-owned newspaper. In the past, he's worked for a companion Tribune property, KTXL Fox 40 in Sacramento, California, which gave him possession of the login information to the join content management system. As a result, Anonymous members altered one story on the Los Angeles Times website. He then went to work for Reuters, where he was fired from his position as social media editor after charges were filed in March 2013.
I'm surprised given the general attitude today that he got off so light. It's getting so this kind of thing is treated like terrorism or something similar by the authorities.
Disproportionate sentences like this don't enamor people to their government, or to put it another way "unjust laws serve to bring all law into contempt." The United States of Amerika indeed where the slightest act is met with ridiculous punishment. No wonder per capita the land of the free imprisons the most people in the world.
Shh.
Is the summery correct that were old cred to a place he used to work at? If so the times has nobody to blame but themselves.
No sir I dont like it.
"Keys .. denies the actions that he was accused of and has vowed to appeal the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, a process that likely will last a year or more .. He continues to maintain that the FBI is punishing him for his journalistic work of investigating the Anonymous collective and for not cooperating with the FBI when they contacted him in April 2011." ref
''When this court tries to make sense of what Mr. Keys did for a limited period of time, it was out of pique, it was out of anger at his former employer,'' US District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller said at the conclusion of the hours-long hearing.
''He arrogated to himself the decision to affect the content of a journalistic publication. In practical effect, at least with respect to the Los Angeles Times webpage, the effect was relatively modest and did not do much to actually damage the reputation of that publication. But the intent was to wreak further damage which could have had further consequences.''
As Ars reported earlier, Keys was accused of handing over a username and password for former employer KTXL Fox 40's content management system (CMS) to members of Anonymous and instructing people there to ''fuck some shit up.''
[The prosecutor] in his final statement to the judge, lambasted Keys, pointing directly at him several times.
''This is a person, for whom his own aggrandizement, is willing to attack any institution that threatens him: the press, broadcast media, print media, law enforcement, the jury system,'' he said. ''This wasn't mischief, this was a rage driven by profound narcissism.''
Journalist sentenced to 24 months in prison after hacking-related conviction
If this occurred in Russia, the US press would be full of outrage at a "journalist" being railroaded.
Calls would be made for Amnesty to investigate and Obama would call for a new range of sanctions to be imposed.
Instead, he'll just add to the already huge prison population of a country with over a quarter of the PLANET's population that are housed in cages.
Fancy being jailed for giving someone what should have been EXPIRED passwords.
Like giving your kids keys from old rentals and finding that they gave them to a friend that used them to steal a SNES from an old dwelling that didn't change the keys when you left !