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Matthew Keys

Matthew Keys34 posts

Matthew Keys is an American journalist, who is the Managing Editor of Grasswire, a social news site. On October 7, 2015, he was found guilty of giving computer credentials to members of the Anonymous group who then hacked into his former employer. He was sentenced to two years in prison.

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12 Mar, 2018

Buzzfeed interview

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In an interview with Buzzfeed, Keys talks about his time in prison, where he spent his time refurbishing computers.

The case was serious enough to convict me, only for me to wind up refurbishing computers so the government can make money. The irony is not lost on me…I always assumed that I would be on the front lines when the shit did finally hit the fan. That’s not what wound up happening. Instead I ended up sitting back and watching the world burn.

Wants to return to journalism

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In an interview with Ars Technica, Keys says there will be no further appeal, that he did not commit the crime for which he was convicted, and that he wants to return to journalism.

I hope that I’m privileged enough to find work in journalism. I work hard, and I’m smart, but I do have an uphill battle going forward…I came to terms with the fact that I suffer from mental illness. Being online and constantly throwing myself into work—I wasn’t getting help. [Now] I’m eating better, I look better, I feel better. I still struggle with depression and anxiety…I would like to go back into journalism. I’ve had a very small number of people come up to me with leads and with prospective job opportunities. I’m currently tiptoeing around [Bureau of Prison] rules with respect to what I can and cannot do while I’m still here. So I am open to all offers; it’s a matter of when I can act on them. I think I could start acting on them now, but a lot of it is trial and error.

14 Apr, 2016

Guardian interview

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Keys is interviewed by The Guardian.

It’s fairly common knowledge at this point that this was a very heavy-handed prosecution. We have a real shot of narrowing the applicability of the law so that this doesn’t happen to anybody else. Regarding assertions that his crimes constituted terrorist acts, he added, “I think that anybody who has met me, anybody that’s followed my work would highly dispute that. I didn’t ask for this fight, this fight came at my door. It was an opportunistic prosecutor that seized the moment…Being able to continue working is very important to me. I’m not going away soon.

9 Oct, 2015

Case review

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Motherboard’s Jeong reviews the case and interviews both Keys and the prosecutor about the outcome. Keys:

[My] only crime is committing the act of journalism…Everything I’ve done since Day 1 as a journalist has been in the interest of the public. That hasn’t changed. The charges didn’t change that, the conviction won’t change that, either.

US Attorney:

The evidence at trial was that Matthew Keys gave a malicious online hacking group super-user credentials to the Los Angeles Times, and told them to… mess stuff up [actually “go f-ck some shit up]. And what he did after that when they didn’t mess stuff up enough to his liking, is that he took a link to an article that the Los Angeles Times had published, and said that this is why the Los Angeles Times must be ‘demolished.’ I don’t understand how any person, journalist or not, could consider that journalism or promoting the First Amendment. That is a serious threat to all the things that the First Amendment is supposed to protect.