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Britain's GCHQ Attacked Anonymous Supporters With DDoS
An anonymous reader writes "NBC News reports that, during a 2012 NSA conference called SIGDEV, GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group bragged about using Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against members of Anonymous during an operation called Rolling Thunder in 2011 (there is evidence that says it was a SYN flood, so technically it was a simple DoS attack). Regular citizens would face 10 years in prison and enormous fines for committing a DoS / DDoS attack. The same applies if they encouraged or assisted in one. But if you work in the government, it seems like you're an exception to the rule."
In other news, the UK military can drive tanks, fire missiles & carry weapons - but regular citizens cannot.
It's all about oversight, not an attitude of "why can't we legally do this too?".
But they're trying to stop T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !
Protesters are not terrorists. Sadly our governments don't make that distinction.
I believe you'll find Anonymous is breaking the social contract because governments have already done so.
You've completely missed the part where the GP said:
I find it difficult to disagree with the notion that the governments have already broken the social contract, and Anonymous is a reaction to that.
I don't necessarily agree with everything Anonymous does -- but I sure as hell understand the reason for them existing. When your rulers are unjust, you have little recourse except to break the social contract as well.
That those same unjust governments decide that gives them free reign to continue to be unjust is just more of the same.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But they're trying to stop T E R R O R I S T S ! ! !
Protesters are not terrorists. Sadly our governments don't make that distinction.
No, that's not sad, it's quite terrifying.
What's sad is that the secret agencies been treating activists like terrorists to maintain the corporate status quo since their inception over a century ago. That's what "national security" is.
If government agents lobbed military-grade ordinance at innocent civilians in the UK, we'd call that unlawful killing and lock the bastards up. And by the same token, if GCHQ had DoS'd targets belonging to legitimate wartime enemies, we wouldn't be criticizing them.
As a rough rule of thumb, the government isn't allowed to do things to citizens above and beyond what any civilian could do without a court mandate or a valid piece of legislation. Unless GCHQ have such a thing, they did wrong.