And at this point a clear-cut criminal activity becomes something that might arguably contribute to the democratic experience and would be within the scope of constitutional protection. Other searchable terms for this behavior might be Virtual Sit-In (a throwback to the student protest movement of the late 60’s), Online-Protest, or Online-Demonstration. Taking this into account, not all political activists use the term DDoS attack to label their activity of mass-visiting a certain website, with or without the explicit intention of overpowering its processing capacity. Participants in DDoS attacks may use this label to describe their activity to add a certain rebellious image. While the term “DDoS” may have a nerdy charm, “attack” is an obvious red flag word. From a website owner’s perspective, “DDoS attack” is a term that already implies someone with a black hat being well-deservedly marked for criminal and civil lawsuits. But liberal western-style constitutions tend to be biased towards a protected realm of personal liberty, especially when basic rights important for a functioning democracy like Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Assembly are involved. Does society consider DDoS attacks a legitimate form of protest? When an anonymously posted petition appeared on the White House’s We the People page and advocated the legalization of DDoS attacks most commentators didn’t look to kindly at the idea. The Right to Bear Low Orbit Ion Cannons DDoS Attacks as Constitutional Problem: Germany’s ExperienceĪ distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack targets a computer system’s resources by flooding it with requests beyond its capacity in hopes of negatively impacting its functionality.