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Police Arrest Five Over Anonymous Attacks
nk497 writes "Five people have been arrested in the UK, accused of taking part in Anonymous' DDOS attacks in support of WikiLeaks. The five men — aged from 15 to 26 — are still being held by police for questioning. Met Police said the investigation was a collaborative effort between forces in the UK, EU and the US."
1. If they run a botnet or two, yes it might
2. And where does it say these 5 were all of them?
The protection this tool offered was designed around the fact that so many people were using it, it'd be impossible to arrest them all. This kinda falls down when there may be 500 Americans on it but just 10 Brits and you're one of the 10.
Also kinda ironic attacking people's freedom to do business with who they want in the name of protecting free speech.
So they sit on there arses while billions of pounds of financial cybercrimes are committed, trillions of spam sent, and then arrest some 15 year old for hurling a few packets in the name of free speech - fucking lame.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Tell the small mom and pop site that uses PayPal to do its business that losing a day or two of income is just a "prank" and not a serious crime.
Age doesn't determine the drawing line between crime and prank.
And there is more than one type of cop in the world. Some go after murderers, some go after embezzlers and some go after cybercriminals.
They said it like that because on occasion, its the EU or US that issues the warrant and the UK just executes it. This states that they actually had a role in the investigation besides just executing the arrest warrant.
Depends on how many machines they had in their control as well as the available bandwidth from each point of origin. Technically, it only takes one person to create a DDoS. And a very effective one at that.
Posting a link on slashdot often seems to do the job as well
Tell the small mom and pop site that uses PayPal to do its business that losing a day or two of income is just a "prank" and not a serious crime.
Try telling wikileaks that the government pressuring businesses to censor because it would be illegal for them to do it directly is fine and not a serious breach of the constitution.
And there is more than one type of cop in the world. Some go after murderers, some go after embezzlers and some go after cybercriminals.
And yet none of them go after the real perpetrators, it would seem.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Perhaps with enough publicity from this case, the "members" of Anonymous will realize that throwing a tantrum is not useful activism. Unfortunately, it's more likely that the various police involved will be targeted next, along with their supporters, families, and barbers.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
oh the poooooor mom and pop stores.
perhaps they'll be more inclined to instead do buisness with companies which don't attract such... oh hey there's the point of the protest like any other.
any kind of protest will disrupt buisnesses in the local area or which rely on those which are being disrupted.
Think they don't?
tell that to the poor mom and pop store off a road blocked during any big protest.
Perhaps with enough publicity from this case, the "members" of the NAACP will realize that throwing a tantrum is not useful activism. Unfortunately, it's more likely that the various police involved will be targeted next, along with their supporters, families, and barbers.
--Obyron
Don't worry... we'll get just as upset if the police make false claims about the fallibility of their methods, arrest people who never had LOIC on their computers, arrest hundreds of people based on the same evidence, or start extorting settlements under the threat of an expensive court case with flimsy evidence.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Quoting from the section headed: "Unauthorised acts with intent to impair, or with recklessness as to impairing, operation of computer, etc."
(2) This subsection applies if the person intends by doing the actâ"
(a) to impair the operation of any computer;
(b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer;
(c) to impair the operation of any such program or the reliability of any such data; or
(d) to enable any of the things mentioned in paragraphs (a) to (c) above to be done.
Just intent to slow down a website, or prevent other people accessing it, or even ENABLING people to intend to impair it's operation (e.g. distributing click-and-point tools and encouraging people to aim them at websites).
For those interested, the relevant part is Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
"(1) A person is guilty of an offence if... (a) he does any unauthorised act in relation to a computer, (b) at the time when he does the act he knows that it is unauthorised; and..." he intends "(2)(b) to prevent or hinder access to any program or data held in any computer;".
It doesn't need to be aimed at any particular data, computer etc. (4), "causing the acts to be done" is enough (5)(b) and the effects can be temporary (5)(c).
That sounds quite a bit like a DDoS attack to me (I am a law student, but not a real lawyer).
Oh, and if you plead guilty, you get at most 12 months in prison (6 months in Scotland - I guess because they don't have real computers up there). If you actually go to trial, that jumps up to 10 years. Bearing in mind that a jury system has at least an 83% uncertainty, it is actually better to plead guilty even if innocent.
Despite there being little to no evidence outside of innuendo wishful thinking of that ever happening, since when has it ever been a moral or legal right to commit a crime because someone that doesn't directly influence you committed one that didn't directly influence you?
Two wrongs don't make a Right. Three rights make a left however.
Maybe this is only perception and the level of stupidity associated with the crime. You see, most organized (or otherwise) criminals don't want their name associated with a crime nor do they want publicity about the crime. This is especially true if they want to repeat the offense.Some do, and they get caught. So they take steps to hide the entire fact that a crime has happened in the first place in order to be able to commit the crime again and again. What happened here is sort of a complete reversal. These idiots wanted the publicity because it served their purpose. So obviously, when you depart from the entire, I hope no one ever finds out about this line and go with the I hope everyone see this, you are going to attract more eyes to looking for who is behind it and hence more arrests and accusations to the more publicly known crimes.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Are you trying to say that transparency of government is not an important enough topic to protest?
--Obyron
and some go after cybercriminals.
So I assume that the "collaborative effort between forces in the UK, EU and the US" is also searching for the people behind the DDoS attacks on the Wikileaks site.
Right? Right? [crickets...]