Matthew Keys Convicted of Leak Resulting in LA Times Hacking

Reuters journalist Matthew Keys was arrested back in 2013 over claims that he’d helped the activist group Anonymous compromise and deface the LA Times by handing over login information for its parent company, Tribune.

Keys said he was researching Anonymous at the time of the Los Angeles Times hack and denied giving Tribune login credentials to hackers. Keys had just left a job at a Tribune-owned television station after words with a dispute with a supervisor.

Keys went on to work for Reuters as the agency’s social media editor, but was let go after he was charged in 2012.

His attorneys say any adjustment was a relatively harmless prank that did not merit charges carrying a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

During his defense, Keys and his lawyer argued that this entire case was not about hacking, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation taking revenge against a journalist that did not want to cooperate and give up his laptop for inspection when they first came to him, forcing them to get a warrant instead.

Keys said that when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents executed a search warrant at his home in 2012, he was under the influence of medication and was directed by an agent to write the statement.

A story on PBS in the US said Tupac Shakur, who was killed in 1996, was actually alive in New Zealand, according to the BBC. Keys will face sentencing on January 16, 2016.

The end result was the adjustment of a Los Angeles Times article for less than an hour. The altered story was live for about 40 minutes before an editor noticed and fixed it. After he was terminated from the company, Keys began communicating with members of Anonymous, a now largely disbanded group notable for its high-profile hacks in 2010 and 2011. Recent reports suggest that he is willing to plea bargain with authorities and willing to serve jail time, if allowed to return to the United States.

Commenters seemed to focus less on freedom of the press than the severity of the punishment that may be meted out to Keys. In a post-conviction interview Keys stated that he felt that he was made an example of because of a separate probe in which he refused to cooperate with investigators and that he had published a story citing unnamed sources, which he refused to reveal.

Keys was dismissed from Reuters after the indictment.

The government will probably seek a prison term of less than five years, said Lauren Horwood, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento.