So they're going to arrest a kid for sending an average on one packet every two seconds, over the period of two-and-a-half hours?
One person taking a book means others can not see the same book. Acceptable DoS because the owner thinks you may purchase it.
One person taking several books means others can not see the same books. Questionable DoS because the owner thinks you're screwing around.
Many people doing taking several books out in the store leaves the owner to suspect a DDoS attack because there's not usually that many people and none seem to want to buy. It's especially malicious if there's intent.
Ugly thing about DDoS is that since there's unexceptionally large amount of people and no books to check out, loyal and new customers will be put off and may not return causing future loss.
They're going after these people to make an example of them, not because they did anything actually harmful.
Probably a crime, but a pretty minor one.
It really raises question as to whether you can trust something as flimsy as an IP header given the technical sophistication of Anonymous. These people could well be innocent and in fact victims of anonymous directing attention away from itself and towards these innocent victims. When Anonymous can gain control of HB Gary and FBI/CIA assets imagine what they could do to an off the shelf system that hasn't been through the rigorous security protocols that HB Gary, the FBI and CIA follow.
Given the mutability of data on a USB stick I'd also be very interested to see the chain of custody on that data and how it might have been modified. Also, the defense should request access to the source code for the IDS system in question so that it can be examined for bugs and problems that may affect its ability to generate reliable evidence.
This is wishful thinking, but there is a sense in which it is true. People running LOIC are typically if not exclusively clueless mooks duped into doing so by people who know better.
For all the mythos around Anonymous "having no leaders", I doubt very strongly that you'll find many examples of people who spontaneously downloaded LOIC and started flinging packets at PayPal. Instead what you'll find is people who say they got the idea from an image posted on 4chan (or elsewhere) or from "some guy" on IRC.
All you have to do is convince someone to willingly join a botnet (or anything else) is that 1) this is a way to relieve their angst and 2) other people are doing it. The affidavit even includes examples of the kind of image instructions that accomplish exactly this. The "orders" spread as would memes, and the originators of those orders put themselves at almost no risk to distribute them, while "innocent" members of the herd get caught.
Indeed: "When..." But AFAICR, Anonymous didn't gain control of either FBI or CIA assets. Hacking a self-described FBI "affiliate" and DDOSing cia.gov are hardly the same thing.
Also, holding up HB Gary Federal as an example of an organisation with "rigorous security protocols" is an amusing claim with no real evidence.
On balance I think the idea that DDoS is "ok" and should be tolerated is not a good road to travel down.
Regardless, it's questionable whether a DDoS and a sit-in are comparable. For one, DDoS does not require the presence of the individual, this makes it more difficult to form a connection with their cause and the activity. For another, a sit-in doesn't typically totally shut down a business, let alone at a national scale. With a DDoS a very tiny minority of people are able to disrupt the business activities of millions. This is not the sort of thing that we want to become accepted a legitimate form of protest. You may think it's all well and good when people who are "fighting" for causes you believe in are "sticking it to the man" but if it becomes the norm then everyone with a grudge will use it. And then it won't be the "good guys" wielding the power it'll be the people most fanatical in its use who will get what they want.
If you want to find a form of protest that mimics a sit-in, fine, go ahead, by find something other than DDoS, because that isn't it.
Furthermore, sit ins are by definition denial of service attacks. Assertions about differences of scale are 1) irrelevant, 2) questionable (most DDoS fail miserably).
This has nothing at all to do with my approval or disapproval of the politics.
As far as sit-ins vs. DDoS, it's patently ridiculous to say that scale is irrelevant. If I steal a single penny that is a much different crime than if I were to steal a penny from everyone in America. And if I stage a sit-in at a place of business and deny one or a handful of customers the opportunity to do business that's incomparable to if I deny a thousand or a million people.
One of the core reasons why sit-ins are a respected form of civil disobedience is because it preserves an important aspect of scale. One person one seat. The more popular a cause is and the more people are dedicated to fighting for it the more effective the sit-in can be. But unpopular causes will find it tough to use a sit-in to advance their agenda. The public will ignore their cause and turn a deaf ear to their arrests. And no one will take their place at the sit-in once they're gone. That sense of scale is important. In contrast, a DoS becomes very much more akin to a bomb threat or breaking windows. Because a far smaller and less popular group can effectively disrupt the business activities of a very large number of people. That is not in any way a good thing.
But I think the analogy to a bomb threat or breaking windows is a bad one, primarily because it's likely to be misunderstood. I'll agree that those are more similar in the sense of scale, but that's about the only similarity. Bombs and stones damage both property and individual human lives in ways that are likely to be traumatic and irrevocable. A DDoS is peaceful, causing only a temporary financial effect on a business.
He had the functional impact of a single person at a sit in. No, realistically even less.
I suggest you read this article, since I am beginning to suspect you are operating under a very very distorted definition of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sit-in
Any real protest in front of a real store is in turn also kind of DoS - thinking about that i wonder whether real protests can be more successfully prosecuted on such a grounds, especially that stretching DoS to an "act of domestic terrorism" is very acceptable today.
How to launch a worse attack than these people did:
1) Browse to website. 2) Place heavy object on F5 key.
Seriously.
As a general principle, if it is illegal for one person to perpetrate an act against a victim, I don't see how it should not be illegal for a large group of people to perpetrate the same act, even though the individual contribution of each member of the large group might be small enough that if he were alone it would not rise to the level of a crime.
To do it any other way would open up a hell of a big loophole, it seems to me.
And why are people complaining about the FBI going after people anyway? It's their job to catch (probable) criminals, so they can't really start deciding which ones to pursue. It's the judges and jurys (and lawmakers) who make that decision.