A federal court in Dallas on Thursday awarded five years and three months imprisonment to journalist-activist Barrett Brown for three separate felony offenses that were related to the cyber security attack of the geo-political think tank Stratfor.
While pronouncing the judgment on Thursday, US District Judge Sam Lindsay ordered Brown to pay USD 890,250 in restitution.
Brown was charged for his involvement in the cyber attack against Austin-based Stratfor in December 2011.
The 33-year-old scribe was incarcerated ever since his arrest in September 2012.
The decision came as a big disappointment for Brown’s supporters who were hoping to see him out of jail, owing to the fact that he has already served for long in prison.
The Dallas-based journalist is accused of identity theft as well as trafficking in breached information after he republished a hyperlink that landed to a trove of internal emails and customer data that were stolen during a hacking of the Austin-based geopolitical think tank Stratfor.
Brown assumed the international fame while straddling the line between activism and journalism.
He was pleaded guilty in April for becoming an “accessory to the crime after the fact”. He had also admitted to all the allegations during the indictments that came later. Some of the allegations levied on him include: issuing threat to the agents of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) via a YouTube video that September and making attempts to conceal his laptops during an execution of a search warrant in March 2012.
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