Soā¦ is the argument that DDOS attacks should be legal for everyone or that the law should be changed to make them legal for authorised government bodies? Iām afraid I was confused by the hyperbole and missed the point.
What next? Police kidnap man, hold him in cell against his will for twenty years?
This is rubbish on a number of grounds. 1) The maximum term of imprisonment for DDOS attacks in the UK, as set out by s.3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, is 2 years, not 10 years. 2) The act specifies, without explanation, that to be a crime, any such act must be āunauthorisedā. I think its not too much of a stretch to see the actions of law enforcement, acting to prevent DDOS attacks by taking out communications nodes, would be seen by any court as being authorised. 3) There is nothing remotely morally wrong about this - its exactly what law enforcement ought to do to protect websites from being taken down by illegitmate DDOS attacks.
Possibly illegal in the strict sense under the computer misuse act - but I think the difference here is that it would be deemed there was āno public interestā in prosecuting GCHQ, so the Crown Prosecution Service could simply refuse to uphold the law - so in principle private citizens or the ISP companies or the members of Anonymous affected could bring a prosecution against GCHQ for instigating a DDoS attack, if GCHQ had made the DDoS and the ISPs were willing to testify in court that they thought GCHQās activities were āmisuseā - but the prosecution would likely have to be brought at the expense of the private individuals or the ISPs involved. Itās also entirely possible that all major ISPs have signed a memorandum of understanding with GCHQ that states that DDoS originating from GCHQ is not āmisuseā
THAT I would like to see.
Holy crap, 10 (or more likely 2)years for encouraging a DDOS?
Kids - donāt DDOS. It makes you smell funny.
EDIT: BBS doesnāt like an edit to add a spacebetweenwords.
It would be interesting. The CPS could take over and stop the prosecution if there was no case to answer or if it was against the public interest - but it might force them to say āit is in the public interest to allow the government to run DDoS attacksā - which could then be reviewed judicially, etcā¦
http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/p_to_r/private_prosecutions/#an01
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
