Sweden to Make Denial of Service Attacks Illegal

paulraps writes "Sweden is to pass legislation making Denial of Service attacks illegal. The offense will carry a maximum jail term of two years, and is thought to be a direct response to the attack which crashed the Swedish police's web site last summer. Nobody was charged for that, but the fact that it came shortly after a raid on the Pirate Bay's servers was thought by many to be not entirely coincidental. Sweden's move follows the UK, which is even tougher on web attackers — there the sentence can be over five years in prison."

Comments

Not going to work

[Kaleo]

It damn well SHOULD be illegal, but unfortunately making it illegal isn't going to accomplish anything. Look at marijuana, it's illegal but everyone does it anyways. It will be unenforceable.

Pointless

[forgoil]

Take a quick look at everything that is illegal in Sweden, take a look at all the laws (seriously, do), and I can tell you that this doesn't really make a difference. Just because you make something illegal doesn't mean it will go away, something they refuse to realize in this country of mine...

Re:Pointless

[susano_otter]

I don't think laws are about preventing crime, so much as they are about setting up a "payback" system for crime.

I think of it this way: You take something from society, you should give up something of your own in exchange. Ideally, you should give up something that pays society back in exchange for what you took, but in practice this is difficult to manage. (However, in America at least, we do have civil courts for people who want to try to get paid back in this way.) Instead, societies over the years have settled on conventions of what is "just" for a person to give up, in exchange for the privilege of taking something away from society.

In this case, the Swedish people, as represented by their government, have determined that two years of freedom is a just thing to give up, in exchange for attempting a denial of service attack.

Imprisonment might seem like a strange thing to exchange for many crimes (including DDOS attacks), but over thousands of years, imprisonment is what most societies have come up with, as the best (or least bad, if you prefer) exchange for most crimes. Other exchanges include fines, confiscation of property, exile, torture, maiming, and execution, as well as combinations of these things.

It's obvious that many people will continue to commit crimes regardless of the deterrents put in their way. The justice system isn't called the "deterrence system", after all. But it's called the "justice system" precisely because it codifies these tradeoffs: take something from society, give up something of your own in return.

Tracking

[HomelessInLaJolla]

How do you suppose they'll handle compromised systems, proxies, or VPNs? If I root someone else's system and am knowledgeable enough to cover my tracks how do they propose to track me down? The FP also mentioned the Slashdot effect. How do you think they could handle a network of web pages which, when visited, all make requests from the targetted server (similar to pay-per-click scamming)?

Re:Tracking

[suffe]

They are politicians, why should this bother them? They'll just leave the problem solving to someone else. And as everyone knows, the legal system will only use the new powers to do good when it is evident that the found person is in fact the culprit. No one ever interpreted a law by its words rather then by its intention, did they?

Too bad

[cdrguru]

Too bad they don't understand that the Internet is a consequences-free zone.

You can do just about anything on the Internet and are safe from prosecution. Why? Because the Internet crosses international borders and we all know that international law enforcement is just about impossible. No two countries have the same laws, the same penalties or even agree that the same things are criminal acts.

So, Sweden can pass all the laws they want to, but it will have no effect unless every country on the planet agrees that DDOS attacks are a criminal act with at least two years in jail being an appropriate penalty this will have no effect.

What is likely to happen is they will track some stupid show-off bragging script kiddie to Canada where it will be declared that they aren't going to extradite because it would bruise the delinquents ego. Or, the perp will be tracked to Romania where the response will be "So?"

Under the right circumstances, the US would probably even shield a perpetrator.

No, unfortunately for many people the Internet is destined to remain consequences-free for a long time to come.