Hacktivist group Anonymous, known for hacking websites of high-profile organizations, is petitioning the U.S. government to make distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks a legal form of protest as protected by the First Amendment.
Anonymous is filing the petition on the grounds that DDoSing doesn't involve any illegal action, as it "is the equivalent of repeatedly hitting the refresh button on a webpage." The group believes equates DDoSing to be the digital version of an "occupy" protest, as DDoSing significantly slows or stops the flow of traffic to a site.
"As part of this petition, those who have been jailed for DDoS should be immediately released and have anything regarding a DDoS, that is on their 'records', cleared," it reads.
Thus so far, the petition has garnered a little over 2,000 of the 20,000 signatures that it needs to gain the attention of the Obama administration. The group has until February 6 to get the required number of signatures. Considering the popularity that Anonymous has had on the Internet, garnering over 80,000 subscribers on YouTube and over 800,000 followers on Twitter, the group should have no problem in getting the required amount of digital signatures.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Anonymous-Petitions-DDoS-White-House,20408.htmlA group of five people with a bot net does not make a sufficient representation of the will of a nation.
The anonymity of the internet I think precludes this from being a viable form of protest.
Arguments that the 'owner' of an IP address may not be held responsible for the actions coming from that IP address undo the viability of this.
If you can coordinate enough people to make a connection to a website and hit the refresh button and DDoS a site, surely you can coordinate enough peole to write to their local member to make a difference.
I think many people may agree with a lot of what anonymous does, but they don't care enough to take any action for themselves.
