US Journalist Covering Anonymous Gets Five Years in Prison for Sharing Link

MOSCOW, January 23 (Sputnik) – An American journalist has been sentenced to over five years in prison and nearly $900,000 in fines and restitution for his role in the hacking group Anonymous, the Guardian reports.

Barrett Brown pleaded guilty to threatening an FBI agent in an online video and providing a link to data which had been stolen from the private intelligence group Stratfor, which was hacked by Anonymous in 2011, according to AP.

"Good news! The US government decided today that because I did such a good job investigating the cyber-industrial complex, they’re now going to send me to investigate the prison-industrial complex," Brown responded to his sentencing in a statement.

Brown, a freelance writer for The Guardian, Vanity Fair and Huffington Post, faced over 100 years in prison, prior to accepting a plea bargain, according to the International Business Times. He expressed remorse over the threat, considering it "idiotic," according to Reuters, but believed that the prosecution over sharing links would create a chilling effect for "any journalist that uses hackers as sources."

According to the International Business Times, the link that Brown shared contained confidential emails and credit card information. He pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact for sharing the link with a hacker, and for hiding computers from the FBI agents who searched his home, according to Reuters.

Brown has already served 31 months of the sentence, and is being sentenced to another 35 according to the Guardian, as well as $890,250 in restitution payments and $225 in fines.