Federal prosecutors this week recommended a five-year sentence for a former Thomson Reuters journalist who assisted hackers in defacing the Los Angeles Times website in 2010, saying he had made “false, self-serving statements” and “expressed contempt” for the jury’s verdict in the case.
“A sentence of five years imprisonment reflects Keys’s culpability and places his case appropriately among those other white collar criminals who did not accepted [sic] responsibility for their crimes,” prosecutors wrote in their Wednesday filing about Matthew Keys, 29.
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“Keys’s network crime caused far more damage than even a very large-scale postal theft. The fact that Keys carried this out as a formerly trusted insider, digitally, while covering his tracks through a foreign proxy server, makes him more culpable, not less,” they add.
Keys, who worked as a deputy social media editor for Thomson Reuters, provided credentials for the Tribune’s network to members of the hacking group Anonymous, encouraging them to target it and other media outlets, like Fox News.
When one member of the hacking group said he was opposed to attacking media, prosecutors noted that Keys singled Fox News out. “FOX News is not media, it’s ‘infotainment’ for inbreds. I say we target them,” Keys told the group.
That was bullshit.
— taiane (@MatthewKeysLive) October 7, 2015
Prosecutors also objected to Keys’ continued use of social media to express his objections to the legal proceedings against him. “”He expressed contempt for the jury’s verdict,” they wrote, noting that minutes after the October verdict, Keys said on Twitter, “That was bulls***.”
“Matthew Keys committed a serious crime that requires strong deterrence,” attorneys concluded. “In his crime, he targeted an institution that our Democracy has a special interest in protecting. In his post-verdict defiance, he targeted the justice system itself. All of this conduct merits strict punishment and indicates a character that warrants the same.”
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Sentencing is scheduled for March 23.
