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How the FBI raided Anonymous

arstechnica.com

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Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#71

Post by steveklabnik »

wmf wrote: post #65
steveklabnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Could you expand on this a bit? I actually believe that it's very close to the same thing, but I'd like to hear your reasoning. > Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. You are correct. This is why it's called 'civil disobedience.' Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. And break it publicly. It doesn't mean that you'll be spared a sentence…

The real question is whether Anonymous's legion of teenage trolls understands what civil disobedience means (i.e. that you are supposed to get arrested).

They do.

EDIT: Anonymous has demonstrated an increasing political savvy and awareness, first via the protests against Scientology, but also with some smaller things that were tried that didn't spark such media coverage, like Operation CNTroll, for example. Characterizing all of Anonymous as being ignorant children is just wrong. Not all of them are doing things for political reasons, but the leadership most certainly is.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#73

Post by tptacek »

ugh wrote: post #68
tptacek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does being a teenager have to do with being liable? If they're criminally liable, they'll be tried by a juvenile court. If they're civilly liable, their parents will face civil suits.

Are parents civilly liable in the US when their kids do something? That’s under most circumstances not the case in Germany. It is possible but the barriers are extremely high. A thirteen year-old downloading software off the internet and using it is age appropriate (i.e. it is not reasonable for parents of teenagers to check everything they are doing online), the parents would consequently not be civilly liable in Ge…

The laws vary from state to state, but, generally, yes.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#74

Post by tptacek »

steveklabnik wrote: post #63
InclinedPlane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to pretend that a DDoS attack is the same as a sit-in, such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. If you choose to attempt to disrupt a place of business and you refuse to leave private property when asked to do so you can be arrested.

> such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Could you expand on this a bit? I actually believe that it's very close to the same thing, but I'd like to hear your reasoning. > Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. You are correct. This is why it's called 'civil disobedience.' Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. And break it publicly. It doesn't mean that you'll be spared a sentence…

The best way to change the laws about distributed denial of service is to participate in DDoS attacks? We're going off the rails here.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#75

Post by tptacek »

lukeschlather wrote: post #57
InclinedPlane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to pretend that a DDoS attack is the same as a sit-in, such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. If you choose to attempt to disrupt a place of business and you refuse to leave private property when asked to do so you can be arrested.

Well, if we're going to insist on an ironclad analogy, I would say it's something like opening up a fire hydrant and splitting the stream into a bunch of smaller streams, pointing them at a building, and walking away. Except it's more like everyone's garden hoses somehow reach the building with no loss in PSI, and it's a few dozen people each with their own paltry residential water supply. Now, this does have the pot…

This is absolutely absurd logic. DDoS attacks can and do cause measurable hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. You had to have known that. You just choose to overlook the potential damage here because you support the cause.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#76

Post by gojomo »

steveklabnik wrote: post #63
InclinedPlane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to pretend that a DDoS attack is the same as a sit-in, such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. If you choose to attempt to disrupt a place of business and you refuse to leave private property when asked to do so you can be arrested.

> such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Could you expand on this a bit? I actually believe that it's very close to the same thing, but I'd like to hear your reasoning. > Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. You are correct. This is why it's called 'civil disobedience.' Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. And break it publicly. It doesn't mean that you'll be spared a sentence…

Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it.

Very few sit-ins are protesting the same law (trespass) they're breaking.

Protesting censorship-via-government-pressure with censorship-via-DDoS is similarly nonsensical, a tantrum more than a statement.

Build censorship-resistant systems instead of more censoring weapons.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#77

Post by burgerbrain »

pyre wrote: post #64
burgerbrain wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody bursting down your door in the middle of the night isn't "reasonable belief that you were in imminent danger of being robbed or attacked"? What world do you live in? Ignore the silly mechanism described, and imagine you're sleeping in bed with your wife at 3am, and are a completely law abiding citizen as far as you are concerned. Why would you possibly have any reason to believe that the people violently bre…

You're supposed to trust them because they yell "police" or "fbi" as they burst in. Sure an intruder could yell the same thing, but it's the same idea as their badges. Easily faked, but they just have harsh penalties for impersonating law enforcement.

It's 3am and you're sleeping. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't notice first what they were yelling, but rather that there are a lot of flash-lights and load yelling where my locked front door used to be. You could also argue that you're supposed to trust them because they have badges, but the fact of the matter is that expecting you to be reasonably aware of that is, well, unreasonable.

Go read the accounts of people who encountered this sort of situation and were lucky enough to not get killed in the process, whether they fought back or not (just jumping out of bed or daring to act surprised can get you shot here).

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#78

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

lukeschlather wrote: post #57
InclinedPlane wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's silly to pretend that a DDoS attack is the same as a sit-in, such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. If you choose to attempt to disrupt a place of business and you refuse to leave private property when asked to do so you can be arrested.

Well, if we're going to insist on an ironclad analogy, I would say it's something like opening up a fire hydrant and splitting the stream into a bunch of smaller streams, pointing them at a building, and walking away. Except it's more like everyone's garden hoses somehow reach the building with no loss in PSI, and it's a few dozen people each with their own paltry residential water supply. Now, this does have the pot…

Are you being deliberately disingenuous? It's a distributed Denial of Service which by definition means someone who wants that service can't have it and by extension means that the merchant performing that service expecting revenue from it is denied that revenue.

A single denied credit card transaction can easily exceed the $500 misdemeanor limit. And try telling a business that's operating on razor-thin margins that not being able to process credit cards for a day will "only make some sysadmins lose some sleep."

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#79

Post by steveklabnik »

tptacek wrote: post #74
steveklabnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Could you expand on this a bit? I actually believe that it's very close to the same thing, but I'd like to hear your reasoning. > Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. You are correct. This is why it's called 'civil disobedience.' Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. And break it publicly. It doesn't mean that you'll be spared a sentence…

The best way to change the laws about distributed denial of service is to participate in DDoS attacks? We're going off the rails here.

I was making a general point about civil disobedience.

In this case, Anon believes (and I'm inclined to agree) that MasterCard made a business decision that not dealing with Wikileaks would be the better thing for them to do. However, a DDOS does two things: makes not serving Wikileaks an actual expense, and manages to bring their message to a wider audience. If anon had ran around just saying "MasterCard sucks," nobody'd care, but they've gotten tons of media coverage multiple times (like from this very article) covering their cause. Apparently they think that this is worth going to jail for.

I don't, and didn't participate. But that doesn't mean that I don't see their point.

Re: How the FBI raided Anonymous

#80

Post by steveklabnik »

gojomo wrote: post #76
steveklabnik wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> such a contention is intellectually and morally bankrupt. Could you expand on this a bit? I actually believe that it's very close to the same thing, but I'd like to hear your reasoning. > Moreover, sit-ins are not legal either. You are correct. This is why it's called 'civil disobedience.' Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. And break it publicly. It doesn't mean that you'll be spared a sentence…

Sometimes, the best way to change a law is to break it. Very few sit-ins are protesting the same law (trespass) they're breaking. Protesting censorship-via-government-pressure with censorship-via-DDoS is similarly nonsensical, a tantrum more than a statement. Build censorship-resistant systems instead of more censoring weapons.

Please see my response to tptacek, it's not about censoring them, it's about dollars.

Your point about protesting the same law is a good one, it's the coverage that's really valuable. However, sit-ins are only one form of civil disobedience, and many of them are actually doing the thing that's illegal.

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