Barrett Brown, a journalist formerly served as an unofficial spokesman for the hacktivist collective Anonymous, was sentenced Thursday to over five years in prison, after pleading guilty to federal charges of "transmitting a threat in interstate commerce," "for interfering with the execution of a search warrant," and to being"accessory after the fact in the unauthorized access to a protected computer."

 

After already having served over 2 years (31 months) in detention, Texas court in Dallas has sentenced Barrett Brown to 63 months in federal prison and also ordered him to pay a little more than $890,000 in restitution and fines related to the 2011 hack of Stratfor Global Intelligence.

 

Over a year ago, another federal judge sentenced Anonymous member Jeremy Hammond to 10 years in prison for making millions of emails from the servers of security firm Stratfor public. It’s Hammond who said that Brown simply linked to the hacked data.

 

Brown was arrested in 2012 and nailed with 12 cyber crime charges, including a fraud charge for spreading around the hyperlink to an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel where Anonymous members were distributing stolen information from the hack, including credit card details.