Anonymous Says DDoS Attacks Like Free Speech

Hacktivist collective Anonymous petitions the White House to make DDoS attacks part of First Amendment protections. Shutdown attacks are akin to Occupy protests, group argues.

Can the Anonymous hacktivist collective hack the First Amendment?
A
petition
filed this week with the White House seeks to decriminalize distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, making them a legal form of protesting. In other words, it would extend the First Amendments protections to protect peoples right to
disrupt websites
.
Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), is not any form of hacking in any way, claims the We The People petition request. It is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage. It is, in that way, no different than any occupy protest.
According to the petition, instead of a group of people standing outside a building to occupy the area, they are having their computer occupy a website to slow (or deny) service of that particular website for a short time. The petition also calls for anyone
jailed for a DDoS-related crime
to be immediately released, and the related charges to be expunged from peoples arrest records.
[ For the latest on the ongoing John McAfee saga, see
McAfee Strikes Back: Spyware Sting Targets Belize Government
. ]
While the identity of the person who created the petition is partially anonymized -- its ascribed to Dylan K of Eagle, Wis. -- members of the Anonymous collective are clearly backing the petition. We Need Your Signature! Make, distributed denial-of-service (DDoS), a legal form of protesting, read a Friday
YourAnonNews Twitter post
.
For the White House to respond to the petition, the request needs to garner 25,000 signatures by Feb. 6. By Friday morning, however, the petition had received only about 2,000 signatures.
The First Amendment enshrines both the right to freedom of speech and the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The DDoS petition, then, implies that current laws should be updated to protect peoples right to disrupt websites. With the advance in internet techonology (sic), comes new grounds for protesting, reads the petition.
The request highlights the fact that that there are currently different rules governing website shutdowns vs. interrupting businesses in the real world. For example, in many Western countries, protestors can choke the entrance to a business -- or even
city streets
-- for a few hours, and its legal. And the digital equivalent of that, a DDoS attack that takes a website offline for a few hours, is illegal, said Mandiant VP
Grady Summers
at last years RSA conference in San Francisco. The prosecutions of numerous people
involved in DDoS attacks
-- or in some readings, protests -- further makes that clear.
If the petition gathers sufficient signatures, and the White House responds, would DDoS fans have any chance of seeing website disruptions get classified as a form of protest? Most likely Congress would need to pass a law that protects DDoS attacks as a form of free speech. Given that federal legislators cant even agree on a bill to
protect peoples privacy rights
online, good luck scheduling a DDoS discussion.
In the meantime, law enforcement officials will no doubt continue to prosecute DDoS attacks. But FBI officials have said theyre not unaware of concerns over peoples right to protest online, and emphasized theyre required by law to
protect peoples civil liberties
, including online.
That is a huge concern for us ... and there are a number of challenges associated with this, said Eric Strom, unit chief for the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit Cyber Division at the FBI, at last years RSA conference. One of the chief challenges, he said, is that many people who launch DDoS attacks
are minors
.
How does the bureau gauge when online speech or protests cross a legal line? If theyre just complaining about something, or an issue, they have every right to do that and certainly we dont have a problem with that, he said. Its when they take that step across the line, to make a point ... [and] they hack into a system, or go after say someone in law enforcement and their families … obviously were going to take a big interest.
Hack.me is a free platform to build, host and share simple and complex vulnerable Web applications. Find out more about it in this free
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Anonymous Says DDoS Attacks Like Free Speech