The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Douchebag Lawyer Defends Denial of Service (DDOS) Attacks as ‘Free Speech’

Posted on | October 3, 2012 | 12 Comments

At what point do those in the legal community who defend criminals — guaranteeing them their due-process rights, giving them “their day in court” — cross a line into advocating, endorsing or excusing the crimes committed by their clients?

Not a moot question, given how Jay Leiderman speaks of the actions of the “Anonymous” hackers he represents:

Take PayPal for example, just like Woolworth’s, people went to PayPal and said, I want to give a donation to WikiLeaks. In Woolworth’s they said, all I want to do is buy lunch, pay for my lunch, and then I’ll leave. People said I want to give a donation to WikiLeaks, I’ll take up my bandwidth to do that, then I’ll leave, you’ll make money, I’ll feel fulfilled, everyone’s fulfilled. PayPal will take donations for the Ku Klux Klan, other racists and questionable organizations, but they won’t process donations for WikiLeaks. All the PayPal protesters did was take up some bandwidth. In that sense, DDoS is absolutely speech, it should absolutely be recognized as such, protected as such, and the law should be changed. . . .
The government and people who write about tech tend to call it a “DDoS attack” but in certain circumstances it’s not a DDoS attack, but a DDoS protest. So the law should be narrowly drawn and what needs to be excised from that are the legitimate protests.

Let’s be clear about this: What “Anonymous” was engaged in was extortion and thuggery, not “protest.”

You can’t just say to a business, “Here, I’m holding up this hoop — jump through it, immediately, or I’ll shut down your business.”

Let’s also be clear about something else: It’s the Left who believes these thug tactics are legitimate, just like when they sent mobs to camp out in the front yards of bank executives, or to harass people attending last year’s AFP summit.

You will probably not be surprised to learn that Jay Leiderman has a highly selective sensibility as regards free speech. Leiderman is defending former “Anonymous” spokesman Barrett Brown — asserting, we suppose, Brown’s constitutional right to threaten FBI agents — and also representing Nadia Naffe against Patterico, who evidently doesn’t have a constitutional right to reproduce court documents relating to Naffe’s lawsuit against the Republican Party.

This is a legal manifestation 0f Herbert Marcuse’s “repressive tolerance” — only the Left has any “rights” worth defending.

UPDATE: Guess this is as good a place as any to quote an article Taylor Amerding wrote about Barrett Brown’s arrest:

Very few in the security community would comment on the arrest for the record, most saying they did not want the headache of becoming a target of Anonymous.
One of the few who did was Robert Stacy McCain, who wrote on his website, The Other McCain, that “a lot of the Anonymous people never trusted Barrett Brown, regarding him as an untrustworthy egomaniacal fame-seeker trying to cash in.”
“He did a TV interview with Michael Isikoff of NBC and announced a book deal with Gregg Housh, and did all of this while promoting himself as the official spokesman for Anonymous, whose members are … well, anonymous, and with good reason, because the cops would very much like to put a lot of them in prison,” McCain wrote.
McCain wrote that after the FBI raided Brown in March, but did not arrest him, other members of Anonymous suspected he might be cooperating with the agency. Of the latest video, he wrote: “Being a paranoid conspiracy theorist is not illegal, and Brown’s tinfoil-hat rantings about (various enemies) were just so much noise. But his threats to ‘destroy’ FBI agent Robert Smith? Yeah, the feds don’t take that kind of talk lightly.”

What stuns me is the timidity of “the security community” Amerding alleges here. Are people really afraid to comment on Brown’s arrest for fear of “becoming a target of Anonymous”?

This assumes that the members of Anonymous are so stupid they can’t see Barrett Brown for the reckless fool he is. Brown’s laughable foolishness is sufficiently self-evident that I have a hard time believing anyone could ever take him seriously, and I’ve never had any fear of reprisal for pointing it out.

Meanwhile, by way of playing catch-up with the Barrett Brown saga, his friends have published Brown’s letter from prison in which he vehemently denies having ever been a “spokesman” or “leader” of Anonymous, while continuing to rant about HB Gary, Aaron Barr, Jennifer Emick, and other such persons whom he accuses of involvement in a sinister conspiracy.

 

Category: Barrett Brown, Computers, Crime, Terrorism

Comments

  • Finrod Felagund

    It’s no wonder Shakespeare wrote “kill all the lawyers”.

    DDoS is about as much free speech as me coming to your house with a megaphone and screaming at you all day and all night. Jay Leiderman should be prosecuted for gratuitous idiocy and disturbing the peace.

  • http://wizbangblog.com/ Adjoran

    This lawyer is a piece of work, all right. He’s tweeted any number of times about the imminence of some filing against Patterico, over a period of months. I don’t think he ever actually filed anything, though. It’s just an attempt at intimidation – but like the little boy who cried “Wolf!” after a while no one pays any attention at all.

    Not sure about the law in CA but if he does file anything based on the utter nonsense supplied by Naffe and Rauhauser, I hope Patterico gets a good attorney and files notice to seek attorneys fees in a countersuit and files a complaint against Leiderman with the state bar.

  • JeffS

    What stuns me is the timidity of “the security community” Amerding alleges here. Are people really afraid to comment on Brown’s arrest for fear of “becoming a target of Anonymous”?

    Security types are professional paranoids, Stacy. They will ALWAYS be in the cross hairs of those who wish ill upon them. They don’t take risks that they feel compromise their security. Especially their personal security.

    It’s your job to get on the wires and put out the news. So you have to get out in the open. Security pros don’t, and doing so can compromise their ability to do their job. Your own personal experiences with NR and BK are an example of being a target. Fun it ain’t, as I am sure you understand.

    Some jobs are best done out the spot light.

  • JeffS

    “Out OF the spot light”, I mean.

  • JeffS

    Another example of jobs that shouldn’t be in the spotlight is the public spokesman of an organization called “Anonymous”, which, by definition, means, “You aren’t supposed to know who we are”.

  • JeffS

    At what point do those in the legal community who defend criminals —
    guaranteeing them their due-process rights, giving them “their day in
    court” — cross a line into advocating, endorsing or excusing the crimes committed by their clients?

    Well, shysters have been doing this for years — look how many criminals get off the hook because they had “a bad childhood”. Or some other excuse.

    What this piece of trash — Leiderman — does is taking that trend to new lows by offering the Constitution as a free pass to commit crimes.

    It’s bad enough that Obama is wiping his ass with the Constitution, we don’t need cheap shysters twisting it like any other Democrat, leftie, socialist, or communist.

    And, yes, I do repeat myself.

  • yestradamous

    Nobody has a right to impede another’s way of making a living.

    Also, I think the cruelest thing that could happen to Anonymous members is if nobody talked about them. They obviously preen their feathers on the attention.

  • Adobe_Walls

    We should include the economists in Shakespeare’s advice as I’m sure he would’ve had they existed or had any influence in his day.

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    If there’s any sign of collusion between the various members of Kimberlin’s Krew, I wonder if his various non-profit fronts could be RICO’d.

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    If “Anonymous” had any balls and believed they were doing right, they wouldn’t be anonymous.

    The men and women who held a sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter did so in-person, willing to face the probable legal problems and possible violence.

  • http://profiles.google.com/rob5136 Rob Crawford

    Barret Brown was never the brightest bulb in the string.

  • 20thCenturyVole

    The “Security Community” is just as bogus as most media-driven “communities”. It’s the guys who talk to reporters.

    Most don’t: not being egotistic is part of the job.