“Make DDoS a legal form of protest.”
Hacking/protest group Anonymous has petitioned the Obama Administration to recognize DDoS attacks as a legal form of protest.
The petition suggests that, rather than being a form of hacking, DDoS attacks are more like a form of ‘occupy’ protest (a recognised legal form of protest), arguing that “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 the release of those who have been jailed for DDoS “immediatly” [
sic
], and for their records to be cleared of any charges relating to DDoS.
Some of Anonymous’s high-profile DDoS attacks have included an attack targeting UK government websites in protest of the treatment of
WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange, as well as
attacks against
financial institutions
PayPal
,
MasterCard
and
Visa
for halting the processing of
WikiLeaks
donations, attacks against Iraeli websites in protest against Israel’s bombing of sites in Gaza, and attacks against a range of music industry sites in protest against their actions to curb Internet piracy.
One of the hacker group’s latest threats is an attack against the BBC in protest of its handling of the recent Jimmy Savile scandal as well as the licence fee the Corporation levies on all UK TV users. According to a 51-second video posted on
YouTube
, the group plans to launch an attack on 1 June 2013.
At the end of last year,
Time
magazine named Anonymous among its ‘100 Most Influential People in 2012’. While not in the top 10, the group was ranked 25 places above Barack Obama. However, in order to receive an official response to its petition from the Obama administration, the group will need to collect 25,000 signatures before 6 February 2013. To date, the
petition
has a total of 845 signatures.
Posted on 10 January 2013 by
Helen Martin
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