An anti-abortion computer hacker who stole the personal details of 10,000 women from Britain's largest pregnancy advisory clinic has been sentenced to almost three years in prison.
James Jeffery, 27, was a member of the hacking collective Anonymous and had intended to publish the names, email addresses and telephone numbers of thousands of women, which he had taken from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) website.
"An unborn child does not have an opinion, a choice or any rights," Jeffery wrote. "Who gave you the right to murder an unborn child and profit from that murder?
"The product abortion is skilfully marketed and sold to the woman at a crisis time in their life. She buys the product, finds it defective and wants to return it for a refund but it is too late."
"You stole the records of approximately 10,000 women. Many of them were vulnerable women, vulnerable simply because they had had a termination or because of their youth or because their family did not know about their situation.
"You were proud about what you had done - you boasted about it on Twitter.
"In my view, it is significant that the online name you used on Twitter was that of notorious criminal Pablo Escobar."
In mitigation, lawyer Shaun Wallace, told the court that Jeffery had entered the website to test its vulnerability, adding: "The more curious he became, the less responsible he became."
He said that Wallace was not a staunch anti-abortionist and that the statement pasted by him on the BPAS website was "cut and pasted from Google".
Speaking about Jeffery's threat to publish the database of personal details, the judge said: "You only have to think for a few seconds of the terrible consequences had that threat been carried out."
"The sentence that I impose is both to punish you for what you have done and to send out a clear message of deterrence to anyone tempted to commit similar hacking offences."