Barrett Brown, the journalist and former associate of the hacking group Anonymous, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison by a federal judge on Thursday. He will likely spend more than two years in prison, given credits for time served.
Brown’s sentence was reported by the Dallas Morning News, the Daily Dot and other organizations.
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Despite his lack of hacking skills, federal prosecutors attempted to paint a picture of Brown as a mastermind behind Anonymous actions. Brown’s own private chat logs were particularly damning, with an FBI agent reading in court in December his boast of leading a “revolutionary” faction of an investigative journalism project, according to the Intercept.
It was another of Brown’s online taunts that led to the most serious charge against him. In September 2012, he posted
