Anonymous hacktivist Jeremy Hammond should receive the maximum 10 year prison term for defacing law enforcement and corporate websites and stealing 200 gigabytes of email and 60,000 credit card numbers from a private intelligence firm, prosecutors argued in a court filing today.

“Contrary to the picture he paints of himself … Hammond is a computer hacking recidivist who, following a federal conviction for computer hacking, went on to engage in a massive hacking spree during which he caused harm to numerous businesses, individuals, and governments, resulting in losses of between $1 million and $2.5 million, and threatened the safety of the public at large, especially law enforcement officers and their families,” the government wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Hammond is scheduled for sentencing in New York on Friday before U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. The 28-year-old Chicagoan pleaded guilty earlier this year to the keystone attack of the short-lived Lulzsec/AntiSec era: a damaging December 2011 intrusion into the servers of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting, Inc., where Hammond bulk-deleted files and stole 5 million private email messages, which he gave to WikiLeaks.

“Jeremy Hammond is a fine example of a socially responsible hacker”

— Richard Stallman

Unlike most large-scale hacks these days, Hammond’s intrusions were strictly not-for-profit. Hammond has a long history of liberal activism and direct action, including work for the anti-war group Food Not Bombs. In 2006 he was sentenced to two years in custody for hacking the website of a right-wing group. While in jail for that hack in 2008, he heard about Anonymous and became intrigued, his lawyers said in a court filing this month.

In 2011, he began staging protest hacks and data thefts against a range of companies and organizations tied to law enforcement and defense, including the FBI’s Virtual Academy; the Arizona Department of Public Safety; Brooks-Jeffrey Marketing, Inc.; Special Forces Gear; Vanguard Defense Industries; the Jefferson County, Alabama Sheriff’s Office; the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association; and Combined Systems, Inc.

His biggest success came at Stratfor, where he wiped out files and databases and stole 60,000 credit card numbers belong to Stratfor subscribers. At Hammond’s urging, Anonymous members promptly loaded up some cards with $700,000 in fraudulent donations to non-profit groups. Hammond also stole 5 million email messages, which have been trickling out of WikiLeaks as the “Global Intelligence Files” ever since.

“An equally important part is destroying their servers and dumping their user/address list and private e-mails”

–Jeremy Hammond

In its sentencing memorandum today, the government quotes from online chats in which Hammond encouraged Anonymous members to rack up charges on the Stratfor customer credit cards, and discussed his ambitions to obliterate the company.

“An equally important part is destroying their servers and dumping their user/address list and private e-mails with the goal of destroying the target,” he wrote. “I’m hoping bankruptcy, collapse.”

The government’s portrait of an angry, destructive intruder contrasts sharply with the description offered by Hammond’s defense team, who compare him to WikiLeaks source Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

“Jeremy saw working with Anonymous and Antisec as an opportunity to be like Chelsea Manning – to do his part to access information that needed to be shared with the people,” wrote defense attorneys Susan Kellman and Sarah Kinstler in a court filing earlier this month.

Hammond was undone by his admiration for a different hacktivist: Hector Xavier Monsegur, aka “Sabu,” a former computer security consultant and the ersatz leader of the Lulzsec hacking team.

Monsegur secretly turned informant after the FBI tracked him down in May 2011, and he became an agent provocateur, publicly cheerleading for hack attacks against private security contractors and law enforcement agencies. In this way he ensnared Hammond and the other Stratfor hackers, and even got them to transfer their stolen material to an FBI-controlled server.

With his prior hacking conviction and the high financial losses, Hammond’s guilty plea would carry a sentence of 12.5 to 15.5 years under federal sentencing guidelines. But under the terms of his plea agreement, he pleaded guilty to a single charge that has a 10 year maximum by statute.

His lawyers are asking for a sentence of 20-months time-served — a lower sentence than he received for his previous conviction. They’ve submitted to the court over 250 letters from friends, family, journalists, hackers and internet supporters, including such notables as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and free software pioneer Richard Stallman, who called Hammond “a fine example of a socially responsible hacker”.

“People should not be allowed to enter others’ computers without permission; but when punishing someone for virtual trespassing, we ought to consider his motive,” wrote Stallman. “Those who trespass as part of a nonviolent protest, either physically or virtually, should not receive severe punishments. Those who act neither for gain nor for malice should not receive severe punishments. Imagine where our country would be if the civil rights and antiwar sit-ins had been punished by years in prison!”

The government is unimpressed by the outpouring of support.

“Hammond’s history of recidivism and complete disregard for the law belies his current claim at sentencing that he will not re-engage in this same criminal conduct upon his release from prison,” the government wrote.

“Moreover, Hammond’s own statements prior to his arrest show that, contrary to his contentions now, Hammond was motivated by a malicious and callous contempt for those with whom he disagreed, particularly anyone remotely related to law enforcement, not a ‘concern with both transparency and privacy.'”