Law & Disorder / Civilization & Discontents

Scenes from the Sabu sentencing: “I’m not the same person you saw three years ago.”

All further indictments dropped and no more prison if the hacker stays out of trouble.

Monsegur leaving his sentencing hearing in Manhattan today.

NEW YORK—"I'm not the same person you saw three years ago," Hector "Sabu" Monsegur told Judge Loretta Preska during his sentencing hearing in Manhattan today. Monsegur, one of the key members of the LulzSec hacking cooperative, was attempting to convince the judge to accept the sentence recommended by both his lawyers and federal prosecutors: seven months of time served. In the end, Judge Preska agreed, adding a year of supervised release in which Monsegur would have to avoid crimes, drugs, and weapons while having a key logger installed on his computer.

Despite several years of digital mayhem, Monsegur qualified for leniency because of what everyone involved—the judge, the feds, and his own lawyer—repeatedly termed "extraordinary" cooperation in taking down LulzSec. The feds argued that Monsegur's actions led to a number of guilty pleas around the globe.

Most of the details of the cooperation were laid out in documents filed last week by the federal prosecutors. Nevertheless, additional details came out during the sentencing hearing. For example, Monsegur's around-the-clock cooperation was necessary because of LulzSec's international membership; he simply had to be available to discuss things with members in Europe and elsewhere. And once the monitored chat sessions wrapped up, Monsegur would have to debrief the FBI regarding who he communicated with—their role within LulzSec, their particular skills, and so on.

The environment Monsegur inhabited offline, where several of his family members were imprisoned for drug dealing, didn't seem to be filled with the sort of people who cared much for computer hacking. Nevertheless, people in his community recognized the concept of someone working with the government, which resulted in a number of threats being made to him and his family members. Monsegur's brother even suffered an assault. Perhaps as a result of all that, the court's audience included only three of his family members.

The threats also triggered a crisis in Monsegur's personal life. Many of the charges he was facing were the result of stolen credit cards that were used, in part, to support his young cousins who ended up in his care while their mother was in prison. At the height of the threats, the state's protective services attempted to remove the daughters from his care, setting off a scramble among the government officials he was working with. They eventually succeeded in maintaining his guardianship and relocating Monsegur and several family members. (Prior to this, the children had already been approached by a reporter who entered their school without permission.) During the sentencing, Judge Preska stopped to "note the extreme care for his young cousins" as a factor she considered in his sentencing.

For their part, the federal prosecutors had little to add to the documents they'd already filed. In contrast, Monsegur's defense lawyer initially appeared to be re-arguing the case, portraying him as a bit of a Robin Hood figure. She noted that he helped people maintain Internet access during the Arab Spring crackdowns and that some of LulzSec's actions were meant to "increase government responsiveness." She referred to the group's defacement of numerous websites as leaving "lighthearted calling cards."

Although Monsegur's lawyer later said that she wasn't there to argue the significance of his crimes, one of her points was later echoed by the judge: "He did not break these systems, he revealed vulnerabilities." The costs of fixing those vulnerabilities, which were considered in the sentencing guidelines, would have to be spent anyway. Another factor that the judge considered was that the feds weren't even investigating some of the crimes he admitted to. Those admissions both increased his risk under sentencing guidelines while also contributing to the general impression of honesty that called for lowering his sentence.

In the end, Judge Preska was impressed by Monsegur's "turning on a dime and doing good and not evil" and his "extraordinary cooperation." She sentenced him to the seven months he served after an early violation of his initial cooperation agreement. (During this time served, Monsegur set up a class to teach basic computing skills to his fellow inmates, something else that made an impression on the judge.) In addition, Monsegur will have a year of supervised release for each charge, but he must serve those years concurrently, meaning he faces a year of avoiding further legal trouble. During that time, he and his premises can be searched at his parole officer's discretion, and he'll have a keylogger installed on his computer. The federal government also indicated that it identified all his assets for a future restitution hearing, and the feds asked to drop a number of indictments that were also in progress.

For his part, Monsegur spoke of three years of changes, soul-searching, and hard lessons. Judge Preska wrapped up the proceedings by telling Monsegur, "you obviously have great skill," saying that she looked forward to him putting it to good use.

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