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Prosecutors say Matthew Keys, pictured here, used digital media such as Twitter to thumb his nose at the legal system. | AP Photo Feds seek 5 years prison for journalist in hacking case

The Justice Department is seeking a five-year prison sentence for a journalist convicted of giving the hacker collective Anonymous login credentials used to deface a story on the Los Angeles Times website in 2010.

Prosecutors are complaining that Matthew Keys, 29, a social media maven who worked for two TV stations and the Reuters news agency, used digital media such as Twitter to thumb his nose at the legal system in the wake of the guilty verdicts a federal jury in Sacramento returned against him last year.

"He expressed contempt for the jury’s verdict," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Segal wrote in a sentencing memo filed Wednesday. "Minutes after the verdict, [Keys] tweeted, 'That was b---s---.'”

"It is exceptionally rare to see a defendant engage in an after-verdict press campaign to undermine public confidence in the jury’s verdict." Segal wrote. "It is a direct attack on the work of the jury and the validity of the verdicts. It undermines respect for law at a time when the public seems more willing to credit strongly worded criticism of traditional institutions."

The government also calls Keys out for arguing publicly that authorities came after him because of his reporting. “There’s no question I was targeted and falsely charged because of my work as a journalist," Keys wrote in one tweet prosecutors submitted to U.S. District Court Judge Kimberly Mueller.

Keys' pro bono defense team calls the proposed prison term wildly disproportionate to his actions and their impact. The extensive defense filing details Keys' journalistic activities on a wide array of subjects, including the National Security Agency, the Syrian Electronic Army and police shootings.

Keys' lawyers asked the judge to sentence their client to probation, possibly with a period of house arrest.

"The events here do not merit a sentence that includes actual imprisonment," wrote defense attorneys Tor Ekeland, Jay Leiderman and Mark Jaffe. "Matthew was significantly less culpable than any other participant in the criminality of Anonymous during the entire 'Hacktivist Era' of the collective....When compared with each and every other conviction, his actions were de minimis [sic] compared with any even remotely similar case."

While the defense argues that a five-year sentence would be excessive, it's substantially shorter than probation officials recommended. They found that federal sentencing guidelines urged a seven-year, three-month term.

Keys sentencing is scheduled for March 23. In theory, he could receive up to 25 years in prison, but judges usually sentence at or below the guidelines range.

Regardless of the sentence, Keys' defense team is planning an appeal, arguing that a federal law used to convict Keys—the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act—was misapplied and that the dollar amount of damages prosecutors ascribed to Keys' actions is grossly excessive.

Josh Gerstein is a senior reporter for POLITICO.