66-year-old rock guitarist sentenced to 10 days in jail for role in Anonymous attack

Geoffrey Commander doesn't fit the standard Anonymous profile. He's a successful musician, earning his living by playing guitar for ELO and Elton John. At 66, he's also a good deal older than your average hacktivist. But according to the indictment handed down last October, Commander was one of a group of 13 defendants who disrupted the websites of Bank of America, Mastercard, and a number of anti-piracy groups as part of Anonymous's Operation Payback. Commander and his 12 co-defendants haven't had as high a profile as the PayPal 13, who were brought before court around the same time, but they're charged with the same crime: using a freely available web tool called the Low Orbit Ion Cannon to perform a denial-of-service attack.

Commander is currently living in England, but he was arrested after visiting the US on vacation, and sentenced this week. The judge downgraded Commander's charge to a misdemeanor offense, which merited only 10 days in prison. Commander said he considered the denial-of-service attack to be a form of protest after banks "brought the country to its knees," in his words. After discounting time served, that sentence will allow him to go free early next week.