Angles On Anonymous 383
A number of readers are sending in links related to Anonymous, the Internet phenomenon — don't call them a group — behind the controversial DDoS attacks on commercial entities that fail to support WikiLeaks. The best insight into Anonymous comes from the Economist's Babbage blogger, who hung out in one of their IRC channels. Reader nk497 points out that UK users looking to join Anonymous's DDoS army should be aware they could face a jail term of up to two years; simply downloading the LOIC software used in the DDoSing could suffice to earn a conviction. One 16-year-old has been arrested in The Netherlands and is charged with participating in the DDoS. Reader ancientribe sends in coverage of a claim by one security outfit that several existing criminal botnets have joined forces with Anonymous's Operation: Payback. And reader Stoobalou notes a Thinq.co.uk story on a manifesto of sorts that purports to come from "ANON OPS," even though Anonymous disclaims any central spokesperson or entity (press release here, PDF).
The most successful trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Funny)
They have a healthy dose of hating women? Do you mean a health dose of misanthropy? Or maybe Anonymous just hates women, I don't know. I'm too scared to be anonymous.
We do not hate women. (Score:5, Funny)
Now, TITS or GTFO.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Funny)
No, I’m guessing he did mean misogyny. He apparently hasn’t figured out that it’s mostly for show, just like the racism and hatred of furries.
I take that back, the hatred of furries is real.
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Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Funny)
We're no strangers to love. You know the rules and so do I.
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of. You wouldn't get this from any other guy.
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling. Gotta make you understand.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
We've known each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game and we're gonna play it
And if you ask me how I'm feeling Don't tell me you're too blind to see
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
(Ooh, give you up) (Ooh, give you up) (Ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give
(Give you up) (Ooh) Never gonna give, never gonna give (Give you up)
We've know each other for so long Your heart's been aching but You're too shy to say it
Inside we both know what's been going on We know the game and we're gonna play it
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.
Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Funny)
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Whoosh.
If you wanted a serious answer, there’s not one. There’s all sorts of people, and some probably really are racist, but my guess is that for most of them it is for show. So I said mostly.
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Wait. I thought the internet was for porn [youtube.com]?
In any event, yes, theoretically, you could be arrested for "participating" if you downloaded and installed LOIC.
On the other hand, protesters get arrested all the time in noble causes. There were dozens of arrests in lunch counter sit-ins and bus sit-ins and this is no different: people, by the mere weight of participation, showing abusive governments and businesses that their abuses will no longer be tolerated.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:4, Funny)
XKCD [xkcd.com]. They need to watch out who they troll though. It could backfire.
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4Chan (or more specifically, /b/) is not Anonymous, though they are anonymous. I think that capital A is starting to become the real point of distinction between the two terms.
Honestly though, if Anonymous decided to make Stephanie Meyer their next target, I would not have any problems with it.
Maybe I should hop on IRC and build a case against her...
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... Are you reading left to right, top to bottom?
They decide to troll the Twilight forums. The author comes on and asks them to stop. They say no, with attitude. She then writes about THEIR sanctuary in her next book.
Suddenly all the fans that they hate are frequenting the spot where the trolls would meet up, so its almost like trolling on their site.
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On the other hand, Pedobear would have a field day if that happened.
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The second most successful part of their trolling is convincing people that they're actually some kind of hacker group when 99% (at least) are nothing more than skiddies with no empathy and a healthy dose of misogyny.
In my opinion, I think thats what makes them more dangerous.
The Sixteen Year Old that Was Caught... (Score:3)
...was their oldest member. They're like a bunch of chipmunks without an Alvin.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, I'm starting to tire of this macho attitude regarding "hacker groups" and who qualifies.
First, I give these "skiddies" a lot of credit for deciding that actually trying to do something, however misguided, about a worldwide political situation was more important that discovering some n
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Charisma? Seriously? No. They are all just a bunch of like-minded people. Teens especially have a need to rebel in some way or another. It's all part of creating a sense of identity for themselves and all quite typical. It doesn't take charisma to "convince" a kid to take a firecracker and put it in a mail box. All you have to do is give them a firecracker and say "hey! put it in a mailbox!" Same thing here. Now if the same person said, "hey, firecrackers in mail boxes is wrong, don't do it!" you would probably see even MORE firecrackers in mail boxes. You get what I'm saying?
Unified beliefs (Score:3)
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Re:Unified beliefs (Score:5, Informative)
It's one thing to suspect government duplicity, it's another to see it written in black on white.
As an example, I am sickened how the German authorities caved to US pressure with regards to El-Masri's abduction by the CIA while calling for a "thorough investigation" publicly.
Source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,733860,00.html [spiegel.de]
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Re:Unified beliefs (Score:5, Informative)
-Our diplomates were instructed to get the U.N. leader Ban Ki-Moons biometrics, passwords, and encryption keys.
-We've pushed our own IP laws onto Spain
But holy cow, you may just want to take your pick of anything on the wiki page [wikipedia.org]. There's plenty there. Most of it is, yeah, stupid things like candid descriptions by diplomats. But some of is examples of people in power abusing said power.
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Lets be call this what this particularly wrong tradition what it is. Whilst I don't know the exact spelling it's called "batca bazzi" - which apparently translates to "to be with the boy" or "to have the boy" - in other word to have sex with boys.
This Afgan tradition of the warlords and other power elites is no more than a form of institutionalised paedophilia and is one of the sickes
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What I hate about the Wikileaks thing is that most of the headlines is stuff that isn't surprising at all and a lot of it has made it to the mainstream media as it happened
[Citation Needed]
No, seriously, plenty of this stuff makes it to the news and is promptly dismissed as being based on flimsy or no evidence.
We all "know" a lot of this stuff, but now wikileaks has provided the Citations Needed for anyone to verify the claims.
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There was nothing new in the leaks. At least, nothing that's been released so far.
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That indicates a central intelligence with charisma. It may be a group intelligence, but there's something there that is irresistable to disillusioned youths.
That is like saying when a site gets slashdotted, there is a central intelligence with charisma behind it. It's just a bunch of people who want to jump on the bandwagon and cause trouble for something they think is a good cause.
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Yeah. I did a major double-take when I read “the Internet phenomenon — don't call them a group” on a kdawson story. I had to go back up and check again.
kdawson has actually posted something that is very much not seeming like FUD.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not news. It's just 15 year olds on 4chan. Enough already.
They’re feeding the trolls. It’s hilarious. Laugh.
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Wikileaks, Co$, and any other campaign that anon has decided to act upon *are* causes worthy of bringing some serious media attention to. Do you really think having a 15 year old as the spokesperson for that cause (of which it is obvious they have no understanding) is a good idea? If you knew nothing of the wikileaks organisation, the most you will find out in the British media about it, is that some
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I'm one of the many people who actually pay for that news service
You pay for news?
Do you really think having a 15 year old as the spokesperson for that cause (of which it is obvious they have no understanding) is a good idea?
Some anonymous person on the internet saying something doesn’t make them a valid spokesperson for a cause.
and their leader is a rapist
Only in Sweden, where having consensual sex is rape if the condom breaks. Or something like that.
Do they have to figure out who really broke the condom? I mean it might not have been the male, it might have only broke because of the friction caused by the vagina. Since the condom is to protect the male just as much as it is to protect the female (STDs aren’t choosy), isn
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If he's British he does. The BBC is funded by British taxpayers. Also, I wish the BBC would give us Yanks the option of paying some portion of the TV tax to get access to the BBC One player...
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Great, now we're gonna have a bunch of obese trolls. ;)
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Must be a pretty quiet irc channel if no one has ever met another member.
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No, they are more like the Earth First people:
Loosely affiliated, no central control or organization. But prone to random acts of violence in the name of their twisted philosophy.
Re:The most successful trolls (Score:5, Informative)
There is no infighting for one thing, and those who participate have common, predictable goals and means.
You really don't understand Anonymous at all if you think that.
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What am I missing?
Those people are a subsection of "anonymous", and do not represent the whole. Most in anonymous are not taking part in the DDoSes, and many disagree with the attacks. So to say anonymous have "common, predictable goals and means", and that there is no infighting is simply incorrect.
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Seriously Don't Call Them a Group! (Score:4, Funny)
Who laugh? Hmmm? Who was it? Speak up so you can be added to the list. We'll see to it that your internet connection never functions right again.
I heard [slashdot.org] that if you post something bad on Slashdot, CmdrTaco hands over your IP address to Anonymous -- where do you think all the GNAA/Goatse trolls went?
Did somebody just sneeze? That's a DDoS. Who laughed when the witnessed testified that Assange has a smaller than average penis? That's a DDoS. If you're replying to this post? Oh, boy, you better believe that's a DDoS. In fact, if you're reading this right now let's just say there's not a lot you can do to stop from being DDoS'd by Anonymous for trying to find out more information about that particular group %*&#$^#%@#$ no carrier
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The first rule of Anonymous club is "you don't talk about Anonymous club".
The second rule of Anonymous club is that you don't talk... oops sorry the second rule of Anonymous club is "No Smoking"
The thir....^%&$*NO CARRIER
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Very easy explanation (Score:3, Insightful)
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I've always found it sadly ironic that Anonymous, who very much wants to keep online anonymity alive, is doing more than almost anyone to destroy it. Their antics just keep giving politicians reasons to clamp down on the internet. Way to go, idiots!
Re:Very easy explanation (Score:5, Insightful)
Their antics just keep giving politicians reasons to clamp down on the internet. Way to go, idiots!
Politicians don't need reasons to clamp down on the internet, they are going to do it either way. Just like they have with airline security, it's gotten worse over the years despite nothing happening after 9/11.
Their antics are at least trying to bring about some change or awareness before the internet gets clamped down. Think about it, some script kiddie in junior high has contributed more to the world situation these past few months than you might ever in your life. If you think they are idiots, why don't you try and stop them for ruining things for you?
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Because DDoSing people over Wikileaks is the only nefarious thing that Anonymous has ever done, right?
Uhhh, I don't remember saying that. But It's definately the issue that's brought them to the spotlight, isn't it?
Politicians will try to screw with everything, but Anonymous has done PLENTY over the past few years to hand them excuses and rationalizations on a silver platter. This isn't about awareness. For the vast majority of Anons, this is about hopping on the bandwagon to do some damage. That's it, really
Then you didn't read the article nor do you really understand how it works. Yes - for a vast majority of them, its just about doing something when you're bored. Hop on the net, run your LOIC, pretend you're a leet hacker, totally cool. But these Skiddies aren't really running the show. They are just the assembly line workers, they don't decide what gets made. The ones who propose targets, build c
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If they were smart, they'd try to go after the servers that are actually used for transferring financial data. Which, of course, would be highly illegal and a grave threat to our liberty and our way of life, and I'd never, ever advocate that sort of thing.
Maybe you just figured out WHY they went for the webserver and not the transaction servers.
They're not as dumb as you think they are.
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1. It sent the message "We saw what you did."
2. It drew massive attention in the media. NPR (National Public Radio) had covered the wikileaks situation only sparsely before, but I've heard about it at least a few times a day now.
Good idea, crappy implementation ..... and (Score:4, Insightful)
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Doing something isn't always better than doing nothing.
so (Score:2)
and when we actually do anything, we should go back to doing nothing, because there will always be someone who himself does nothing but comes up saying "doing x is better than doing the thing you are doing"
please, act, or shut up. world has enough people who never act, but talk.
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A) It does absolutely nothing to help Wikileaks. It's just a revenge tactic. The decisions have been made.
B) It makes Wikileaks and their supporters look like a bunch of hooligans.
So tell me how that's a good thing, please.
Re:Good idea, crappy implementation ..... and (Score:4, Interesting)
A) It does absolutely nothing to help Wikileaks. It's just a revenge tactic. The decisions have been made.
it does.
paypal was at frist blabbering about 'tos violation' regarding wikileaks cut-off. after what anonymous did, they have come up saying that they did it due to political pressure.
other companies will probably follow suit or take similar routes to unload responsibility. this will put the blame where it lies.
this, if anything, is much more important in that it will make it clear that censorship is being attempted by politicians.
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But one of the problems is more conventional means of protest are equally liable to garner negative publicity.
Either you are carted off to freespeech zones which are equivalent to no protest at all, or some instigator turns the whole event into a riot, garnering the derision of the public.
Even commenting to your congressman is pointless if the one topic that drew the largest public disapproval is passed anyway (bailouts).
So what options do you have left?
I'm just pleased that there are enough folks paying at
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Their antics just keep giving politicians reasons to clamp down on the internet. Way to go, idiots!
As if.
Politicians make up reasons if you don't give them some. It really doesn't make a difference. What do you suggest instead? Bending over and taking it like a man?
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People have every right to protest sites that have tryin
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Sending cash, mirroring the site, and even reading the documents are deemed illegal, and thus give the politicians reasons to clamp down on the internet. Should they all send letters of disapproval?
[citation needed]
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If no one is in charge (Score:4, Insightful)
then how can you official say no one is in charge?
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I don't follow.
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Because they don't have a theater to shout, "fire" in.
Re:If no one is in charge (Score:5, Informative)
This is a fair question and hard to answer in a way that is convincing. I know no one is in charge because I know who anonymous is. Explaining the back story (and thus the joke) takes a lot of ink; you kind of had to be there. All I can say, briefly, is "Trust me," which is not going to be convincing to you.
There *are* some clueless people who are trying to be "Anonymous the group", which I call captial-A Anonymous because this is what reporters have insisted on saying since the Scientology raid. That was a bad raid, because even though it was funny it brought in too much attention by supporters who were not in on the joke. Ever since then, and just before then with the Fox News piece on "Anonymous", reporters trying to cover this have been saying "Anonymous" like it's an organization or group of some kind. If you were anonymous at the time, even if not participating in the raids, it would have been obvious how silly this was. Actually, a lot of fun was had making fun of this mistake. A lot of fun is still being had.
Some anonymous are definitely out to be activists and like trying to incite the mob for their personal agendas, but mostly they are not successful. The mob will react when it is interesting to do so.
By now, thanks to reporting, there are people out there who want to "join" the "Anonymous protest group." I assure you that 99.99% of these people are ineffectual and are not involved in any actual site takedowns. Some who try are like the guy who got arrested. Arrests like that won't stop the DDoSes because they're just picking off the fringe hangers-on.
The thing to keep in mind is that anonymous is a name, not a plural, or it is a description of a characteristic. Anonymous is no more a group than "Youth" is a group; yes, it's a group in the sense that it's a classification, but in no other way. A bunch of kids in a schoolyard may represent Youth in a certain sense, but they do not speak for Youth. In a similar way many are anonymous and many groups of anonymous exist, but no one speaks for anonymous. More accurately no one speaks *directly* for anonymous; anonymous tends to make his opinions known in the form of memes--not image macros or catch phrases, but ideas that appear without apparent direction in the minds of many different people and spread through word of mouth. You can get a broad sense of what anonymous thinks and feels from the aggregation of a lot of things. These thoughts and feelings are by necessity few and/or general, and they may not be universal to every anonymous. It's just that, on the whole, anonymous tends to agree. Quintessential example: furries are bad.
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Your description is good, so I'll attempt to ride your coattails and tack on my own. It's not an original idea, but I think it's a good one.
Anonymous is a Stand Alone Complex [wikipedia.org], or a group of copycats with no original. Or, a sort of similar thinking (and action) caused by a confluence of similar media and the rapid exchange of ideas (such as over the internet). Particularly (from above link):
A Stand Alone Complex can be compared to the emergent copycat behavior that often occurs after incidents such as serial murders or terrorist attacks. An incident catches the public's attention and certain types of people "get on the bandwagon", so to speak. It is particularly apparent when the incident appears to be the result of well-known political or religious beliefs, but it can also occur in response to intense media attention. For example, a mere fire, no matter the number of deaths, is just a garden variety tragedy. However, if the right kind of people begin to believe it was arson, caused by deliberate action, the threat that more arsons will be committed increases drastically.
What separates the Stand Alone Complex from normal copycat behavior is that there is no real originator of the copied action, but merely a rumor or an illusion that supposedly performed the copied action. There may be real people who are labeled as the originator, but in reality, no one started the original behavior. And in Stand Alone Complex, the facade just has to exist in the minds of the public. In other words, a potential copycat just has to believe the copied behavior happened from an originator-when it really did not. The result is an epidemic of copied behavior having a net effect of purpose. One could say that the Stand Alone Complex is mass hysteria over nothing-yet causing an overall change in social structure.
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Sometimes flayers are made to advertise a raid.
Since the death of
Of course there are image boards with positive attitude about invasions, indeed there are entire sites dedicated to this. ( Their effectiveness is another thing )
Don't bother with the darkreading link (Score:2)
I stopped after I got to "www.irc.paypal" being named as critical infrastructure. It's also reported that at least *two* ISPs have been found supplying an internet connection to Anonymous. Two! That's probably all of them right?
I swear this must have been written by a quick AWK script (not even perl)
Download LOIC ? hahahahaha (Score:2)
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You managed to cause 5 requests in the course of about 5 seconds, whereas LOIC can do that tenfold.
Re:Download LOIC ? hahahahaha (Score:4, Interesting)
You managed to cause 5 requests in the course of about 5 seconds, whereas LOIC can do that tenfold.
50 requests in the course of about 5 seconds? That's 10 requests a second... a puny (and false) figure.
Meh, just hold ctrl while clicking the links to those sites as fast as possible.
Then, click: Bookmarks > Bookmark all tabs.
Then use the "Open all in tabs" option multiple times. Then right click the tab bar and select: "Reload all Tabs". I can easily use Firefox to generate hundreds of requests per second; This is still very small amount of traffic.
My hardware can send more than 1 packet per 10 milliseconds, but we'll go with that nice round number.
A true DDoS attack works by sending spoofed SYN packets to many servers while including the target IP as the spoofed "origin" IP. Then, one machine can cause many hundreds of machines to send the target "syn-ack" packets. One attacker is distributing the denial of service flood attack, hence the name: DDoS.
When an "ack" packet is not received, the TCP protocol states that multiple "syn-ack" packets should be sent -- one spoofed "syn" and we generate 5 or more "syn-ack" packets. Spoof a hundred TCP syn packets a second and you easily generate 500 or more distributed packets per second. 100 spoofed packets per second to 2000 different IPs in a rolling list, remember, one syn gets you 5 syn-acks from that host, spoof a few syns, move to the next.
Get a large number of machines to do this type of DDoS attack and it can generate an order of magnitude more traffic than just the network itself can produce... very devastating, much more so than reloading browser pages. 50 machines can produce 25,000 packets per second directed at one IP.
Angles (Score:2)
Who is Anonymous? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who is Anonymous? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I'm pretty sure 99% are unemployed college students, with the other 1% having dropped out of college to write DDoS scripts.
In other words, 1% evil, 99% hot gas.
Re:Who is Anonymous? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anonymous is everyone you depend on. They're the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. They make your bed. They guard you while you're asleep. They drive the ambulances. They direct your call. They are cooks and taxi drivers and they know everything about you. They process your insurance claims and credit card charges. They control every part of your life.
"They are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday they'll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but they won't. And they're just learning this fact."
While poetic, that's not very true (I realize you probably know this, but I feel like I should chime in). Yes, I know that's just an interesting quote from Fight Club, but its not accurate for 4chan's anon. 4Chan's anon is mostly just fat teenage boys. And some older people. But mostly fat teenage boys. Although anon is no one in particular, it tends to be the people that have jack shit else to do other than spend time on 4chan. So they don't guard anyone, or drive ambulances, or direct your call. Though they will run your raids in WOW, or x-ray some picture you got off of facebook of a girl you want to see naked.
I wish it was as poetic as Fight Club, but it's just not.
-Taylor
Not this s**t again (Score:4, Interesting)
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You know, just yesterday I came to a very sad realization: That they're not really that different from the religious loonies that blow up abortion clinics. No, wait, well, they are. But the motivation is the same: Boredom, the feeling of emptiness in their life and finally finding something "righteous" to fight for.
The difference is that the average /b/tard isn't too religious to begin with, so the whole "fighting for the will of God" thing doesn't really fit well with his set of believes. But aside of that
And the winners are: Governments and businesses (Score:2)
Angels on Anonymous (Score:2)
LOIC (Score:2)
DOWNLOAD: loic.sourceforge.net
Works OK.
Y'all got trolled (Score:2)
How ridiculous to define Anonymous and issue "press releases from the group."
Simultaneously they explain that the "group" is decentralized and ad-hoc'ly organized, yet they present quotes and info on "group activities" as if they're interviewing authorities within the "group", or "leaders" or something.
Because Anonymous is NOT a defined group, anyone can claim to be Anonymous and anyone can define it. In fact, I'll go on the record as an "authority" and define Anonymous thusly:
Anonymous is any individual wh
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I'd like to know how you are making the distinction - because a lot of people say that Democracy IS Mob Rule, and those who argue it's seperation would say that Anon's setup is more like Democracy than Mob rule.
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The only thing that prevents democracies from becoming mob ruled is with limited government
No, there's also the fact that most democratic governments are actually republics; certainly the USA is.
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I'd argue that it isn't limited government, but limited transition of power. Had we not had that *it-works-because-it's-broken* feature, the US would have probably have gone through numerous republics by now.
It keeps thing an angry public from voting in communists and giving them full power, who kill off the capitalist, who destroy themselves before a group of oligarchs buy out everyone and sell off the military and Washington monument, who get killed off by a group of nutty-home-spun nationalists, who then
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It's perfectly legitimate to have many different views, but when they're primarily driven by emotion without any consideration, that's dangerous.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Democracy" what country are you from?
In the good `ol USofA we have:
Sham elections
Faux news
The largest prison population in the world
The highest infant mortality rate in the "developed" world (right up there near the top worldwide)
The shortest life expectancy in the "developed" world (right down there near the bottom worldwide)
The worst/most expensive educational system by far (outside of Haiti/Afghanistan)
"Democracy" Who among us voted for the patriot act? Or enhanced screening, Or Tax free billionaires? Or crumbling roads/bridges? Or the endless farce of the Washington crowd pig fucking us over and over again?
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""Democracy" Who among us voted for the patriot act?"
Did you vote for anyone that voted for it? If so, then you did vote for the patriot act.
"Or crumbling roads/bridges?" If you voted for someone running on a "no new taxes" platform that would save you some money it was likely that you voted for crumbling roads/bridges.
Re:Convicted for "posession" ? (Score:4, Informative)
They can quite easily hit you with a federal conspiracy charge. Your IP on a list of "downloaders of LOIC" is plenty for a search warrant. A creative examination of your hard drive will come up with enough "suspicious material" to convince a grand jury. (Free lunch and $8 per diem is plenty to convince a grand jury.)
So, ok, you then claim you did nothing. The AUSA says "we do not believe you. We think you are an OP in Anonymous and are charging you with violation of 18 USC 1030 [cornell.edu] How's twenty years sound, hm?"
And conspiracy is so tangential, that anyone can be accused of it for pretty much anything. For example, I say to you "Hey dude! How about a free pound of coke!" You jokingly say something like "LOL sure dude, bring a big straw." And we both laugh it off. But you're neighbor overhears and calls the cops/DEA.You just conspired to buy a pound of cocaine. And you'd lose in court, like 97% of fed trial defendants. But I digress. This is the conspiracy section of the federal hacking law: .....
Whoever conspires to commit or attempts to commit an offense under subsection (a) of this section shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
(c) The punishment for an offense under subsection (a) or (b) of this section is—
(1)
(A) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than ten years, or both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this section which does not occur after a conviction for another offense under this section, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this subparagraph; and
(B) a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both, in the case of an offense under subsection (a)(1) of this section which occurs after a conviction for another offense under this section, or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this subparagraph; ....
Now, the AUSA says to you "ok, you have two choices. Go to trial, and I will beat you and you will absolutely do at least fifteen years. Or sign this admission of responsibility, plead guilty to this minor count and do five. Your choice."
Many people say "I'll fight!!" Almost all of them will reconsider that as they pass year 12 at Fort Dix.
Re: (Score:3)
How can "simply downloading the software" earn a conviction? This software (LOIC) seems to have been developed for legitimate uses for testing networks.
You need criminal intent:
"A person is guilty of an offence if he obtains any article with a view to its being supplied for use to commit, or to assist in the commission of, an offence under section 1 or 3." (Computer Misuse Act 1990)