AT&T Crippling Flashmob Organizer Backtracks
Remember the flashmob plan hatched by Fake Steve Jobs? Well now Fake Steve isn't so sure about the whole thing.
Dan Lyons AKA Fake Steve earlier this week posted about "Operation: Chokehold." The idea was to have so many users crowd AT&T's network that the whole thing would grind to a halt. Naturally, this idea received a lot of attention from the media and, while Fake Steve has yet to receive direct word from AT&T, it seems he's having second thoughts about the idea.
I an a post titled, "Is Operation Chokehold Illegal? Or just stupid? Should we do something else?"Dan writes that many have said the stunt could be illegal and that "Dear Leader might be facing years of prison time for his role in inciting this peaceful protest." Leaving aside the fact that the thinks taking down AT&T's network is a peaceful protest, Lyons does seem a little confused as to how to proceed. He's also not sure if he can stop it from happening anymore.
We presume that if AT&T believed the protest was illegal, they would have used that word in their statement about Chokehold.
Also for the record, from our point of view this is all just a joke that has spun out of control and gained a life of its own. We didn’t think anyone would actually do this. But now it’s on Twitter, and some kid has set up a Facebook group and it already has 1,600 fans. There’s even an opposition group on Facebook set up by critics of Operation Chokehold. They’ve only got 17 fans, but still.
The point is, I’m not sure we can stop this thing.
Anyone else think he sounds kind of like one those kids who advertised his or her birthday party on Twitter or MySpace and then realized what mistake it was when 400 people showed up and trashed the house? Yeah, me too. Read the whole post here.
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I doubt this would be illegal as this isn't quite the same thing as a DDoS attack on a web server.
This isn't a person/persons using malicious code from malware to intentionally attack a target and shut it down. This is getting every legitimate AT&T customer to use services provided by their paid subscription. A web server isn't designed to handle the artificial traffic created by a DDoS attack, however a cellular network IS designed to handle the traffic generated by its subscribers (at least in theory).
Yes there is a very, very fine line here as the end result of both actions is the same. I guess it depends on who has the better lawyer if any legalities arise from this should it happen, but personally since there's no distributed malware involved, just paying customers using the services they're entitled to use, I don't think anything could come from it.
Unless some wanker lawyer pushes this as the cellular equivalent of Incitement To Riot.
Now that he has set the wheels in motion I think this is just an ass covering exercise just in case it is illegal. He can say "well i tried to stop it before it happened!" I think he realy is still keen on it going ahead!