Convicted journalist gets 2 years for helping Anonymous alter online LA Times story
A former web producer for KTXL was sentenced Wednesday to two years in federal prison for providing log-in credentials that helped the hacker group Anonymous alter a Los Angeles Times article.
Both the Fox-affiliated station and the newspaper were owned by the same company at the time, and prosecutors said Matthew Keys, now 29, acted in retaliation for losing his job at KTXL a few months earlier.
Although the maximum possible sentence for the crime was 25 years, attorney Jay Liederman, who represents Keys, argued that he should get no time. Liederman called his client an “immature 22” when the crime occurred in 2010, and pointed to the fact that the alleged Anonymous hacker has never been criminally charged, according to Courthouse News and the Sacramento Bee.
“He shouldn’t be doing a day in jail,” Leiderman told a Los Angeles Times (sub. req.) reporter following Keys’ jury conviction last year in the Sacramento case. “With love and respect, [The Times’] story was defaced for 40 minutes when someone found it and fixed it in three minutes. What do you want, a year a minute?”
However, the government argued that Keys had intended to do more harm and had acted from narcissism and with malice. “He’s not a journalist, he’s a terrorist,” said a former KTXL news director in a letter read into the record Wednesday by assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Segal.
Liederman said after the hearing that the defense will ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the sentence while Keys is appealing.
“When we do appeal, we’re not only going to work to reverse the conviction but try to change this absurd computer law, as best we can,” said Keys in a tweet within minutes of his sentencing, Courthouse News reports.
He was apparently referring to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986, which established the basis for the felony conspiracy charge for which he was convicted. Liederman told the judge the statute is “horse-and-buggy law in a jet-plane society,” the Bee reports.
Keys will also be required to pay restitution, but the amount has not yet been determined.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “Did feds pick ‘low-hanging fruit’ by indicting editor in Anonymous hack attack on ex-employer site?”
